Wild Country

him in the rib cage with the man's weight behind it.

As Quantrill's torso rebounded from the stair, Sorel gathered his feet under him and leaped away. He glanced behind him as Quantrill, face now streaming with gore from that scalp wound, vaulted up to follow. The distance was right, and Sorel was certain this Anglo hellion did not expect his next maneuver. It had killed more than one man.

An upward left-footed sweep, then the follow-through with his right as Felix Sorel began a bicycle kick, a backward flip with a whiplash foot that could fire a soccer ball seventy yards, or crush the skull of the man following. Sorel's glory, and much of his confidence, lay in his ability to use these skills as killing techniques.

Yet Sorel had failed to account for the synaptic edge honed into the tissues of Ted Quantrill. That murderous flashing kick missed Quantrill's head, and before he struck concrete Sorel felt a hand grip his left ankle to wrench him sideways in midair. He completed three-quarters of his flip, striking the floor on his belly, and this time Quantrill's backward heel kick against Sorel's knee found its target. The snap was audible, and the follow-up against the back of his head knocked him all but unconscious against the concrete floor.

There might be time, Quantrill thought groggily. to hammer Sorel to mush. Or time to weave up those stairs for lungfuls of fresh air. There would not be time for both. Nearly blind, lungs aflame, nauseated from the fumes, Quantrill reeled up the stairs gasping. He did not look back. If Felix Sorel chose to fire that H&K, it would make no difference where his slugs went.

Quantrill stumbled from the upper room to the sidewalk, missed his footing, and fell to his knees, retching. His fit of explosive coughs made it worse, robbing him of air, his throat muscles at last beginning to convulse from the deadly fumes. He lowered his bloody forehead to the street cobbles, shuddering, his breath whistling through a larynx that seemed to be on fire. Dimly, he imagined Felix Sorel navigating those stairs, hobbling to the street, raising that handgun. And there was not one — goddam — thing — Quantrill could do about it. He'd been breathing those fumes a half minute longer than Sorel. Coughing, fighting down his gut spasms, he waited for the sound of footsteps.

No pursuit. Too shaky to stand, Quantrill moved on hands and knees within arm's length of a clerestory basement window. He snapped his palm against the thin pane and heard shards of glass strike the concrete inside. Near fainting, he put his forehead against the sidewalk and closed his eyes, breathing deeply now. He kept down, aware that the sight of him might tempt Sorel to fire regardless of the consequences. God, how that man could move! That bicycle kick had come within a finger's width of taking his head off. 'Sorel? You there?'

A disembodied voice issued from the basement. 'Do you need to ask?' Then a fit of coughing.

Even from that broken window the fumes were overpowering. You were the worst, and the best. Can't let you suffocate. 'I can see the stairs, Sorel. Toss your jacket in that patch of sunlight, and the pistol on the jacket.'

More coughing. 'No. This weapon is my freedom.'

'Goddammit, I won't come down there for you unless you do.'

'If I fired now, the result would be the same.' The sounds of a tortured stomach stifled the voice.

'Why haven't you?'

'Cannot walk; the game is yours. My rules. My decision.'

'Game, shit! You're goddam dying down there.'

'Correct, in good time. Leave me. I will not say this again.' Still more coughing.

'I can't, you crazy bastard. I liked you.'

'Odd,' said the voice from below. 'We are much the same, but could never understand each other.'

'We're not that complicated, Sorel. I'll visit you in Huntsville Prison and prove it, if you like. Don't ask me why.'

'Prison.' It was a snort. 'Have you ever known the loss of all hope?'

Quantrill recalled the tiny mastoid implant that had once compelled his obedience on pain of instant death; felt again the helpless rage at learning that his lover lay dead at the hands of his own agency. But years ago. Worlds ago. 'Yes. But we always get it back, somehow.'

'Not the loss of youth and freedom.'

'Everybody loses those. One gets taken away, the other we give away,' Quantrill answered.

'Not I.'

'Sure. We give away some freedom to friends, wives, kids — everybody who knows they can depend on us.'

A terrible mirthless laugh, then spasmodic coughs. Then, growling it: 'Not I.'

'Have it your way,' Quantrill said. 'But when you pass out, I'll have you. You'll feel different after a spell in the slammer.'

So faintly that Quantrill almost failed to hear it: 'Not I. If you love me so much, then go with me.'

Because the H&K's safety would make no audible click, Quantrill rolled and staggered to his feet, trying to put some distance between himself and that fume-filled hell. There was something hideously final about Sorel's final comment.

The shot was muffled, and Quantrill blinked in astonishment as he realized that it had not caused a vast explosion. The reason was not hard to find; a man's mouth will sometimes contain a muzzle flash.

Chapter Sixty-Nine

'I wouldn't worry about it, Teddy,' said Jess Marrow, reaching for the bottle of sherry that sat between their cane-bottomed rockers. He poured a dollop into his cup, shifted his feet before the bulbous little woodstove at the corner of his office. 'You coulda let a hundred Lufo Albenizes go and they wouldn't indict you now. You're a goddam he-ro, according to the holo. You'll be so uppity now, I got half a notion to fire you,' he added with a grin, swirling the dark liquid in the bottle. 'Let me top off your cup.'

'One's plenty,' Quantrill said. A week had passed since he'd begun a manhunt with a hangover. That was one thing he'd avoid now for the rest of his life. One of several things. He was in stocking feet at the moment, saddle-soaping one of those sharkskin boots for the third time. They hadn't felt right since he'd retrieved them from a puddle of gasoline in that basement, along with the ruin that had been Felix Sorel. It was a hard thing to admit, but on learning the full extent of Sorel's activities he knew that he would not have visited the man, even on death row. A man is not what he has. but what he does, and Felix Sorel had done all the damage he possibly could.

Now Quantrill rubbed gently at the scab near his hairline, feeling a faint twinge through the bandage covering his left palm. 'I saw that holocast at Sandy's place night before last, Jess. You know as well as I do, enhanced video's a bunch of horseshit. Half of those scenes never happened.'

'Try and tell that to your adorin' public.'

'That's what really worries me. I remember what you said the other day.'

Marrow sipped and nodded. 'Well, it's true; there'll be a few fools lookin' for you, tryin' to make their reputations.'

He sighed, fell silent for a moment. 'You could take a new name. Wild Country's full of people who did.'

'Like Lufo? I'd be found out just like he was.' Smiling, Quantrill elevated his cup in a toast to the memory of the big TexMex. 'I'd still like to know how he disappeared right under everybody's nose. He didn't get help from Marv Stearns; from what the Gov says, Stearns was already in custody. Lufo just vanished — with a nine-millimeter hole in him. Christ, he deserved to get away!'

'Prob'ly hid 'til the next day when the roadblocks were down and all those network people were clutterin' up the place. Made WCS management happy as a pig in shit to get all that publicity, Teddy. They'd like you to do an encore every week.'

'Su-u-re they would. Like I told the Gov, Jess: I'm retired. I damn near got retired.'

Marrow, with a sidelong leer: 'Finally got your good strong sign, I reckon. Don't take this wrong, Teddy, but… you think you've slowed down? Or are you packin' it in at your peak?'

A long, thoughtful pause, flexing the fingers of that bandaged hand. 'I was rusty. You have to keep your