borrowed Spanish Barb over the horizon. There would be time to discuss it over a second helping of stew; meanwhile he had plenty of time to winch those pallets into the cargo bay.
By suppertime he had scrubbed down, removing the pesky hull fibers that gave a fair imitation of seven-year- itch. Childe bustled about, officious as a Park Avenue doorman in an apron that came down to her ankles, convinced that she had created the main dish alone — a dish she particularly enjoyed because it allowed her to use a word that was otherwise taboo. When she crowed, 'Come get the sonofabitch,' Sandy decided this had gone too far. But Ted Quantrill could not stop laughing, and Childe wallowed in her small victory.
Sawing away at a loaf of sourdough bread, Quantrill broached the subject of Wardrop's training. 'If you can keep Ba'al down home here for a couple of weeks,' he said, mostly to Childe, 'our crazed Brit will probably give it up. He can't afford to hire scout choppers forever, and the first blue norther that blows down here will teach him who the real enemy is.'
'He won't stay hid,' Childe said with authority. 'I'll have to stay with him.'
'You will be in school in Rocksprings next week, young lady,' Sandy said, brandishing a wooden spoon like a paddle. 'I can keep him busy hauling mesquite now and then but he loses interest in it pretty fast. If anybody fires one shot at Ba'al on my spread, he can count on me shooting back.'
Around a mouthful of succulent bread-soppings, Quantrill said, 'Not Wardrop. Give the fool credit for courage; he's not even carrying a sidearm.'
Sandy, perplexed: 'This man has seen pictures of Ba'al, and is going to face him with a little bitty spear?' Her headshake consigned Wardrop to some heavenly asylum.
Childe: 'If he's crazy, and doesn't have a gun, that's the only chance he has.'
Quantrill: 'Come again?'
Childe waved a hunk of bread airily. 'You know how rabbits go weird in season? Jumping flips, stuff like that? Ba'al likes rabbit, but he lets the crazies alone.'
'This Brit will not be turning flips or making faces,' Quantrill warned. 'In some ways he's a helluva guy. But if he ends up with his innards spread all over Wild Country, Ba'al may get a sure-'nough posse on his trail. The best answer is for them not to meet.' The same, he realized, was probably true for himself and Jerome Garner.
'I could get him drunk as a coot on rotten apples,' Sandy reflected. 'But only for one day, and when he wakes up you don't want to be around here.'
Quantrill thought about that and shivered. 'Christ; Ba'al with a hangover! Boggles the mind,' he said, chuckling as he chased a hunk of kidney around his bowl with more bread. 'By the way, it's nearly eight. Sandy. Wasn't there something you wanted to see on the holo?'
'
Soon Quantrill had a good subdued fire of mesquite going in the fireplace, and with its flicker for a nightlight they settled down on the couch with hot mugs of coffee. Childe nestled between them, secure under her old rabbit- fur blanket, and ten minutes into the show she had begun to snore. Sandy gathered her sister up, kissed the small brow, placed Childe in the closetlike bedroom. Then she returned for some serious snuggling. She knew the power of this bittersweet old film and the tenderness it provoked even if it was in the old 'flatvision' style.
A big down comforter can cover a multitude of sins. They massaged each other while watching the holo; eventually — despite her earlier decisions on the matter — made slow, careful love made more delicious by Sandy's fear of waking Childe. When Quantrill began to moan, Sandy muffled his mouth with her own. Then they lay silent, inert, and watched the ancient film to the end.
Quantrill was gently licking away a tear from Sandy's cheek when the late
'… announced a breakthrough at Bell Laboratories in development of a matter synthesizer,' said the announcer. 'Doctor Marengo Chabrier, Bell project scientist, refused comment, but a spokesman for the Federal Recovery Administration did respond to CBS reporters. More from Denise Young.'
Cut to a stunning blonde in smart tweeds who may even have understood her pitch: 'Ever since the last days of the war, rumors have persisted that China developed a machine that could create many substances starting with any simple chemical.'
Quantrill sat bolt upright. 'Rumor, hell. Sandy, you remember that lab I trashed in Utah?' He saw her nod. 'The guy I brought out with me was Marengo Chabrier. I see he landed on all four feet.' But Sandy had a finger across her lips, staring at the holo.
The lady in tweeds continued her upbeat tempo: '… and only small fragments of the devices survived the blast, which leveled a secret laboratory funded by Boren Mills, the former head of IEE. Mr. Mills pulled a vesco; his whereabouts are still unknown.
'But Dr. Chabrier did survive. As supervisor of the IEE lab, he provided the one living link to reconstruction of the matter synthesizer. Under hush-hush contracts with Bell Labs, he has spent the past four years, in a phrase he has since disavowed, reinventing the torus. Chabrier would not comment tonight, but Mr. Kelvin Broadie of the Federal Recovery Administration spoke with me here in Missouri, D.C.'
Flick to a taped sequence where a graying, conservatively dressed man faced several microphones with a look of triumph. 'We always felt it was just a matter of time. Bell's people deserve a lot of credit; they never lost hope. Only in a dying culture can any important technical breakthrough be truly lost.' A faint wry grin, suggesting years of doubt: 'Or not for long, anyway. And Reconstruction America grows healthier by the day.'
At this point Broadie paused to hear a question off mike and fielded it cleanly: 'Not at any price, for a while. You have to realize that a synthesizer is about the size of a bread-box; in theory we can make them smaller, but not larger; and the yield is rated in kilograms a day. We have a few of them now at Sandia National Labs, producing exotic metals.'
Another unheard question, and a cautious gnawing at his lower lip before Broadie replied. 'I doubt it. We might synthesize living tissue one day, but that's a tall order. Right now we can use air as input and select cobalt or a passable bourbon as output, and' — a grin creased his face—'what more could you ask for a few cents' worth of electricity?'
Cut back to the tweedy Miss Young, whose doubtful smile faded as she showed, to millions of investors, the other side of this coin. 'Trading on the Columbia market was heavy and mixed as the news broke this afternoon. Bell stock showed a sharp upturn, but firms engaged in the production of rare metals and Pharmaceuticals did not fare so well. Trading in stocks of both Teledyne and McDonnell Douglas was suspended by closing time.
'The FRA's news release hinted that this amazing device will not be used to compete against private enterprise. But as of tonight, the matter synthesizer is no longer legend or rumor. Now back to you. Matt.'
In the soddy, Quantrill sipped cold coffee and stared at the mesquite embers. 'Jesus freeze us,' he muttered, ignoring the rest of the news. 'I thought that thing was dead and gone.'
Sandy snapped off the holo, leaned back, worried at a cuticle with her teeth while she watched her lover. 'Dead, maybe, but not gone. It's been haunting me for years.' She saw his puzzlement and tried to smile, but it was a rickety construction that collapsed into silent pleading. She had to tell him now; not 'someday,' and not tomorrow, but tonight.
She rose from the couch and rummaged on a high shelf near the kitchen, among her few keepsakes, for the only existing miniature of a matter synthesizer.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
She held the amulet by its chain. With its great oval jewel missing from the bezel, it pendulumed slowly in the firelight, the silvery stainless steel and black diamonds gleaming. She let him grasp it before she released the chain. 'I sold the big opal in the center,' she said, and set about warming their coffee.
Quantrill had never seen the thing but recognized it from sketches. 'They said Chabrier gave this to Eve Simpson,' he murmured, turning it over to see the display on its back. The amulet had been a calculator as well! He saw that the thimble-sized yield chamber unscrewed, sniffed at it, glanced up as Sandy handed him a hot mug. 'How did you get hold of this?'
'Believe it or not, Ba'al brought it here. The chain was caught over one of his tusks, but if it had bothered
