Wild Country

him, it wouldn't have been there long.'

'When?' She could read nothing from his face.

A slow sip; then, 'The day after the Simpson woman was killed at the dude ranch. I didn't make the connection until you told me about the amulet — how important it was. I let Childe play with the damned thing until she managed to synthesize a stink like last year's eggs.' No response; he just kept looking at the device cupped in his hand. 'When I did realize what it was… well, you were the one who said a thing like this would change the world.' This time she saw him nod, sun-bleached straight hair falling over his brow. 'Ted, will you please say something? Or hit me, if that's what you feel like. My love, I was afraid! I don't want my world changed, Ted; I like it pretty much as it is — with a few reservations.'

He dropped the amulet in her lap, flicked his forelock back with one hand absently, and leaned back cradling his mug in both hands, staring at the fireplace. 'Well, it isn't important anymore, Sandy. You had four years to mull it over. Do you realize you could've been filthy rich with this thing?'

'In some ways, I am. Maybe I thought you'd understand.'

'Maybe I do. Hell, I don't know, honey. Hold it: you sold the Ember of Venus from this thing? My God, no wonder you could buy all the stuff I see around here. You must have a king's ransom squirreled away somewhere.'

She told him, to the penny. 'Lufo probably cheated me,' she added gloomily.

'That goes without saying. But it's too late to worry about that now. Sandy. The real question is, what do we do with that amulet?'

'Give it to a museum? You said it isn't important.'

'I hadn't thought it through. You tell me: what would the Japanese give for it?'

Aghast: 'You wouldn't!'

'No. And I really have to talk to Jim Street.'

Sniffing it: 'Huh. That old man put you in harness, and you'll die in it.'

'He's the nearest thing to an incorruptible man that I know of and this time I don't want you to get chiseled out of what's coming to you. Will you trust me on this?'

'I already have, Ted.' She moved nearer, her hand caressing his arm, setting his coffee mug aside. 'Are you… terribly angry with me?'

'Oh, I'll survive,' he said, trying to keep it light, pulling her near for an embrace. Then, feeling her tremble in his arms, he realized how seriously she took the matter. 'Look,' he murmured, 'you did what you thought was right. It was your decision.'

'But not one of my better ones, hm?'

'I don't know. Maybe we'll know more when I get back from Corpus.'

'And it's late, and you need to be fresh tomorrow,' she said, beginning to arrange the couch so that he could stretch out. She would sleep with Childe, as always.

He helped her in the dim light of embers, then sat down while she stood above him, his chin in his hands. He was laughing softly. 'To think that blowsy bitch is still running our lives, four years after she dies,' he said.

'Who? Oh; Eve Simpson. Should I be jealous of her?'

'That's obscene, Sandy. Forget how she looked on holo; she was very fat and very kinky.'

Sandy put her hands on his shoulders. Almost whispering: 'For all I know, that turned you on. You once said that if Eve Simpson had been on the Titanic, it couldn't have sunk — but it might have gone down.'

'OM-rageous,' he chuckled. 'There was a time when you wouldn't repeat such a thing.'

'It was just a monkey do,' she said, teasing him in a near whisper, playing the contrite schoolgirl as easily as she had played the whore for him in SanTone Ringcity. 'You know; monkey see, monkey do.'

'Cute,' he growled, and began to chuckle through it. 'If you're not careful, your monkey will get something to climb on.'

Now she stepped astride his legs, flouncing her skirt to free her movements, and now she was lowering herself down facing him, hands gripping his shoulders, hips gyrating over him, whispering, 'Ah, yes,' and, 'There, love,' and, 'Yes, there; easy, quickly, yes and yes,' as she bent to find his mouth with her tongue.

Evidently, thought Ted Quantrill as he drifted into sleep, her monkey was about half rabbit…

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Quantrill found Concannon true to his word. The van never coughed once, either in fan mode across open country to Hondo, or on its wheels down decent roads to Corpus Christi. He checked export prices on Friday evening, slept in the van, and wired over five thousand dollars to Sandy's account late Saturday morning after buying spare parts to accommodate Garner Ranch.

En route to Alice at noon, he wondered if some of those parts would help ferry hard drugs through Wild Country. Supposing the answer was 'yes,' had he unwittingly crossed his own ethical borders? Perhaps not, so long as it was unwitting. The more you know, he reflected, the more you're responsible for. By the time he reached Jim Street's ranch home near Alice, he was ready to envy fools.

He recognized the area by the creek that lazed between grassy banks, and the huge pecan trees nearby. Street's place was less inviting now, robbed of some of its charm by cyclone fencing that stretched out of sight and a polite giant manning the gate. On earlier visits he had thought of the rambling stone house as a gracious lady; now she was a suspicious old dame with a leashed Doberman. There would be no parking inside for any van — explosives were too easily hidden — but Quantrill's appointment and his thumbprints gained him entry for a long walk along a flower-lined path to the house. The groundskeeper patted him down but showed no concern over what was in Quantrill's pockets; it happened again with the receptionist, a plain-faced woman to whom Ted Quantrill was no more than a side of beef. They found Attorney General James Street puttering among potted shrubs before a huge solar window of his study, and then the woman left them. Quantrill suppressed an urge to stare.

'Looks like you're stayin' healthy, boy,' said Street, extending his hand. It had the mottled color of great age and, noting the Gov's liverish complexion, Quantrill took the twisted hand carefully. He smiled at the old man's firm grip and his welcome: 'Enjoy it while you can; one of these days they may turn you into a gawdam machine, too.'

Street's motorized walker surrounded the old man's squat bulk with linkages, fiber rods, and slender hydraulic tubing. It cupped him in pads up to his beltline. its power source hidden inside a hard plastic pack at the small of his back. Ungainly as it looked, it permitted the old fellow to move around without the agony of earlier days. Arthritis had ruined his hips and feet long before. Seeing Quantrill's scrutiny, Street turned back toward his potted plants. 'Don't ask how I take a leak with all this plumbing, boy. You mind if I cultivate my coffee while we talk? This and football are two things I can still enjoy.'

Quantrill showed interest that delighted the hobbyist in the old man. Harsh winters following nuclear war had at least brought a few small improvements: hardy, knee-high citrus and corn, even tiny coffee bushes that produced a good crop in a windowbox. It wasn't a real economy, Street admitted, now that you could get the 'reg'lar stuff again. It was just something to make an old curmudgeon want to rise in the mornings.

Presently the old man leaned back, locked his walker so that he could relax, and clicked his pruning clippers with a gnarled hand. 'I don't like clippin' live branches without a good reason, son. Did you know somebody clipped Boren Mills this past week?'

The parallel took Quantrill by surprise. 'First I heard of it, Gov. I thought he vescoed out to Cuba or some such.'

'Or some such,' said Street vaguely, with a keen glance at the younger man. He did not reveal that he had the news from Canadian sources in Oregon Territory. 'I suppose you can account for your whereabouts last weekend.'

Quantrill folded his arms, leaned against a huge Mexican pot, and took his time answering. Much of that weekend he had been wearing contact lenses and dyed hair as randy Sam Coulter. For damn sure, he did not enjoy