Wild Country tq-3 Page 8

  "Actually," she said, purring it, "I'm only a gifted amateur."

  He leaned back and guffawed, then wiped his eyes and, after a glance around, said, "There's not a man in this cafe who couldn't make a list of those gifts from memory, twenty years from now."

  "That was the idea," she said, and emptied her glass. "Now that you've won my heart with sweet talk, I wonder what else you can win. No, don't get up yet," she said, rising, probing in her bag. She swept around the table, bent down, cupped his head between her hands. The kiss she gave him was enough to raise the local humidity. The twenty dollars, clinking from her fingertips to the table, broke a silence maintained by a dozen envious idlers.

  She crooked a finger to bring her young man up from his chair, linked arms with him, then glanced at their audience. "This one," she said to them all, "will be on me." She noted with joy that her companion was too flustered to hold his hat down where he really needed it.

  She expressed surprise at his Lectrabout, an obvious rental but still expensive for a West Texas saddle-slapper. Was he, perhaps, a foreman? No, he said, not even a cowpoke; he was one of the lucky ones who'd taken a chance with a wildcatter outside Odessa and hit a pocket of natural gas. And by the way, it was almost siesta time. Before doing the town, would Margarita care to see his motel room and catch a few winks?

  She agreed with a single wink, the only one that counted, and played the ticklish tease while he drove as she let his free hand wander. In ten minutes and after one near collision he navigated them to the underground parking at his motel.

  Like many new motor lodges, this one offered maximum privacy by placing the whole complex into insulating earth, with one glass wall of each room facing a sunken private sundeck. This man who called himself Sam Coulter, she mused, may have carried a heavy need out of Wild Country, but he wasn't too antsy to put careful planning into a private conquest.

  Once inside the room, she took her shoulder bag into the dressing alcove and prepared her tawdry magics. When she strode out, he was still standing by the sunlit deck, hat in hand. Her forthrightness had a devastating effect.

  He turned and saw that her skirt and blouse were gone, the gold-auburn hair parted so that it flanked her throat, hiding her nipples while permitting a view of the undercup bra, itself an architectural marvel. Under the skirt she had worn — still wore — a black lace apron no larger than a doily, with a similar tiny tapestry over her ample behind. And she still wore the stylish needle heels, hardly more than stiletto-tipped sheaths, cemented lightly to the soles of her feet.

  He watched her approach, scanning every centimeter of her, and his Adam's apple bobbed convulsively. Then: "I just discovered there's such a thing as too much," he said with an idiot grin, and put his Stetson on. She saw that he had intended a modest surprise of his own, protruding through his open fly. It was now a limp surprise.

  A series of unspoken responses wafted across her face, and the one she kept was with narrowed eyelids, hands on her hips, one seminude foot tapping in pornographic satire of a vexed schoolmarm. "I told you and told you, don't touch it 'til I get there," she said.

  "What? No, I — uh, dammit, I didn't! I said you'd be sorry," he said, palms out at pocket height.

  "No you didn't, lover," she replied, near enough for him to feel the heat of her body. She took the hat from his head, her smile full of warmth and promise and without the faintest hint of smugness. "You said I'd pay for it." Her brows asked for endorsement; he nodded. "And as it happens, I will love paying for it," she said, tossing the hat into a corner. "Get over on that bed, mister; your first payment's going to be a massage."

  By the time she got his boots off, he was already functional. When she pulled his synthosuede briefs down, he met her with a salute of sorts. "No you don't. Mister Coulter," she said, even though she was brushing it with her hair as she continued, "it's your shoulders that I massage first. Just stay there on your back, buckaroo."

  Of course he had taken a room with mirrors on the closet, and she caught him watching as she kneaded the muscles across his shoulders; and the sight of herself astride him, his erection fully vertical and only a hand's span behind her buttocks as she rubbed the bronzed shoulders, made her gasp with desire.

  Now their glances locked in the mirror and held as she moved back, still massaging, pretending to ignore the probe between her thighs, and even when he slid into her she did not abandon her attention to his upper torso.

  His arms had been flung wide, but as she began to utter soft moans to pace him, he reached up and separated the bra, titillating her breasts with feather touches. She wanted to look directly at him but remained fascinated by the sight of herself, somehow not herself, ravishing a man in ways both familiar and strange; plunging on him, turning to favor one nipple or the other for his attention, controlling and dominating him through raw sex. And with his wholehearted assent.

  When she felt the warm climactic flood spread through her body, she urged him to accompany her; felt him thrust more slowly but more deeply, too, and when they began to cry out, the name each of them called was not the name the other had given. And this was somehow an added ecstasy.

  She collapsed on him eventually, and now it was he who gave the massage, progressing to her buttocks, clasping her, rolling her over. She lay with lips parted, her face partially masked by masses of honey hair with those strange auburn highlights he had never seen before, an addition to his joy.

  He never withdrew but came to his knees, his blunt nails running gently down her legs until he gripped her feet, now holding her legs up, using those lascivious heels as handles. "A very, very gifted amateur," he teased as she reached down to tickle him.

  "I watched a holoporn cassette," she said in bogus innocence. "Can you really come again?"

  "I faked it," he said, burying himself in her. "You're not through paying yet, Margarita."

  "You bastard," she said, more blessing than curse. Then she reached up and grasped her feet in glorious abandon. "Fake it again. Mister Coulter."

  "Never trust an oilman," he began, and ended, "from Mon — a — hans," and this time there was no question of fakery.

  They lay together for a long while, exchanging kisses, caressing one another as though afterplay were foreplay. Presently she disengaged, showered, and dressed while he showered. Then, before emerging into the sunset for dinner and dancing, they enjoyed a second engagement featuring broad variations on oral and manual themes.

  Sometime before midnight, after touring half the ringcity, they sat through a short double feature "living presence" holoshow, the first feature a broad farce, the second rated X, and Y, and Z, and just as comic in its own way. Later, they found that they could not copy every position they had seen — but it was not for lack of trying.

  On Sunday they went to church together. Neither of them found anything odd in that. In parting, they agreed to repeat their liaison "sometime soon," but they were cheerfully vague about details.

  Chapter Twenty

  Sandy's journal, Sun. 24 Sept. '06

  I am going to sleep for a solid week. Poor Ted, those brown contact lenses had him teary-eyed until I convinced him that his hair-dye deception was enough! I could convince myself that all this was entirely a stratagem toward marriage. But no lies in these pages. Liked it so much it scares me — but only because the illusion of sex without love was an illusion, and one that we discarded during the night. Perhaps if he did not give up male domination so easily, I would like the illusion less. And will he still like it, after sober reflection?

  We did not talk as we usually do — but why should we? Often, words between lovers are slaves of the poor, a few doing the work of many, doing it tiresomely, over and over. This may be a blessing, since it sometimes bids us hush. It is only then that we can hear the silence filled with the sibilance of unspoken yesses.

  Mutual oral sex may be the most profound communion of all, if for no better reason than that our tongues are silently occupied!

  God, I m
iss him already…

  Chapter Twenty-One

  On Saturday, Felix Sorel arrived in Oregon Territory with papers claiming he was one Ernst Matthias. Within the hour, he and a second man were seated in a monorail lozenge as it slid up broad green valleys toward a tumble of mountains on the horizon. Sprawled like an apron across the lap of one of those mountains lay their destination, the southernmost township under Canadian protection: Ashland.

  Sorel studied maps and promotional pamphlets, noting that many of the prewar roads shown on the maps were "no longer maintained," to quote the map legends. Now and then Sorel stared at some local landmark, identifying it on the map. Long ago. he had learned to use every means to brief himself on an unfamiliar region — especially one where his pelt had a price on it. By the time they reached Ashland, Sorel had a bare-bones working knowledge of the town and the arterials that fed it.

  The second man, Harley Slaughter, carried forged ID as well. The lank, yellow-haired Slaughter talked little and, as he stepped from the lozenge into sunshine, watched the crowds a lot in his heavy-lidded way. From the first. Slaughter was uneasy among the tourist throngs who made Ashland seem a major city in miniature. If he felt any premonition, he kept quiet about it.

  Harley Slaughter enjoyed perfect health but had hollow cheeks and gaunt limbs suggestive of a man recovering from serious illness. His expression said he was half-asleep, if you missed the way he scanned his surroundings for trouble. He had the trick of noticing everything without the faintest show of recognition, and he carried another trick up his sleeve — literally. Strapped to the underside of his right wrist was the barrel of a coldgas weapon, its pressure cartridge snugged into his armpit, its trigger mechanism a flesh-colored tongue of plastic hidden by a long shirt-sleeve. By flexing his wrist sharply outward. Slaughter could fire the weapon through his sleeve without the wasted time and effort of a fast draw. Though its range was limited, the weapon was quiet and flashless.

  A product of North African genius, the coldgas mechanism was semiautomatic, firing porous metal balls of medium caliber. Each ball was coated with a plastic film that peeled away when penetrating a target, and then the ball tended to disintegrate. The pores of the ball contained formic acid, the same stuff that fire ants used to such effect, except that a hundred ants did not carry as much formic acid as a single ball from Slaughter's weapon. Harley Slaughter did not depend on muzzle velocity or impact effects; anyone who took the slightest flesh wound from him became hors de combat from sheer agony, tearing at his own flesh, sometimes dying from toxic shock. Slaughter's was not a very nice weapon, but Harley Slaughter was not known for nicing.

  Marianne Placidas found the men at the monorail platform and did not remark on their roundabout route (Chihuahua to Portland by laserboost, before the long glide through Eugene to Ashland by electric monorail). She was too nervous for small talk and guided them to her rented diesel-electric Chevy without preamble.

  "I assume," said Sorel once they were inside the Chevy, "that you are not as unarmed as you seem to be."

  In answer, she reached under her skirt to produce a tiny six-millimeter automatic. It was flat enough to fit a thigh holster but, "Strictly for point-blank use," Sorel criticized.

  "I didn't need it at all," she said.

  "The need may yet arise," he said. "Do not imagine that these Israelis came here for a harmless weekend of costume drama at the local Shakespeare festival. Are you ready to use your weapon if need be?"

  "You know I'm damned good with a pistol."

  "Against two-legged targets?"

  Licking her lips: "If I have to."

  From the backseat, Slaughter drawled, "They'll all be packin' some kind of heat behind the smiles. Count on it."

  "Ah: Marianne Placidas, meet Leo Cherry. You must introduce me as Ernst Matthias. You may as well start using the name now," he insisted.

  "Shouldn't I have an alias, too?"

  "No. They will check and discover that you are operating without cover, and so they will consider you harmless. It is your best protection," he lied. "Now, put this thing in motion and take us to the hotel."

  She glanced at the man behind her, then at Sorel. "No more preparation than this. Pel — Ernst? We're just going in cold?"

  "You and I will seem to. Smile often, and listen as if you were bored. Leo here" — he jerked his head to indicate the man behind them—"will join us when he has seen to exits and — monitors." He had almost said "ambushes," but the woman was already agitated enough. Her silent beauty might be useful in several ways: as distraction, as apparent proof of his own harmlessness, and if necessary as a shield. Women never seemed to expect a man of Sorel's reputation to use them this way. Yet Felix Sorel owed his reputation to planning for the unexpected.

  Slaughter left them two blocks from the hotel. Marianne found a parking lot and made a good entrance on Sorel's arm. Her spirits were buoyed by the trappings of the Lithia, an excellent hotel in the old style with a subdued opulence. Glass walls on two sides of the lobby added an informal western touch, bringing passersby on the street very close to the interior. The Lithia's ambience seemed to deny the remotest chance of danger.

  Marianne and the balding Mills recognized each other instantly in the crowded lobby, he rising to greet her from one of the booths that lined the great glass-enclosed room. She introduced Mills as "St. Denis" and Sorel as "Matthias." Mills turned and included a confederate. "Mr. Matthias, you may have heard of my colleague. Professor Aron Maazel-the-agronomist."

  Sorel nearly laughed to hear this homely phrase. "Your accent seems very American," he said to Mills, then extended his hand to the seated man.

  The ex-American's handshake had been firm, his summer suit almost offensively stylish. Maazel, the rumpled fat man in the booth, seemed to lack vitality, and his smile was as welcoming as a slit cut in thin cardboard. Maazel's round, hairless head perched on a body that had been too long inactive in reduced gravity; when he stood up to acknowledge Marianne, flesh quivered at his chins. Sorel guessed that this was not the sort of agronomist who got din under his fingernails. Perhaps he was the sort who studied computer graphics in the search for hardier stock, faster sprouting, more deceptive poppies. No telling what his attaché case contained, but Maazel never let go of it and replaced it against his ample belly as they ordered a round of champagne cocktails.

  "I understood there would be three of you," Sorel murmured as the waitress swept away with their order.

  "One of us was… delayed. We expect him any moment," said Mills.

  "With your third member," Maazel added in a wheezy tenor, drumming his fingers against the black case in his vestigial lap. "How was your trip to Ashland?"

  "Very nice," said Sorel and the woman simultaneously, prompting grins all around. From Sorel's grin, no one would guess that he was damning the woman. Obviously, someone had spotted her earlier; had seen and reported the threesome before Slaughter separated. Now Maazel had told him, in so many words, that the Israeli surveillance and comm network were superior. It was supposed to make him feel outclassed. It did, and that was Maazel's mistake.

  But the agronomist, if that was what he really was, looked at Sorel expectantly. "I rarely travel for pleasure," Sorel said. "It is only a means to conduct business." he added with a shrug.

  "Then you honor me," said Maazel, fiddling again with his case, and Sorel felt a wave of satisfaction flow like damp heat from the fat man.

  Mills saw something dangerous in Sorel's expression. "Don't worry," he said, "I'm sure they'll both be along any minute. Excellent service," he added, beaming as their waitress unloaded her tray. "Prosit."

  "Ah, they are coming," Maazel said, and reached for his cocktail as he continued. "Surely you realize, sir, that if your voiceprint did not match that of Felix Sorel, I would have little to say to you." Into Sorel's glare the fat man made a half salute with his glass and bestowed a genuine smile. "I have long been a follower of your athletic feats. Would you prefer that I kept my knowledge to
myself?"

  Marianne had frozen in midsentence while talking with Mills. Sorel glanced at her, then saw Mills shrug. The natty Mills reached for his cocktail and murmured, "Dr. Maazel deals in science, and I'm afraid that scientists have a horror of hoaxes."

  During a slow count of perhaps four heartbeats, Sorel smiled and nodded as always when he contemplated violence and did not want that contemplation to show. During that time he concluded that Maazel's attaché case contained some kind of comm set with a readout visible or audible to him only; that he, Sorel, had underestimated the speed with which these clever bastards could analyze new information; and that Maazel was a fool for tipping his hand. A fan of Sorel's, perhaps. A cool negotiator backed by high-tech gadgetry and an unforgiving government, yes. But when dealing with a man like Sorel, a fool for all of that.

  Encouraged by Maazel's foolishness, Sorel relaxed. "Forgive my caution, gentlemen," Sorel said, and sipped his cocktail, letting his eyes smile at Marianne over the rim of his glass. He was not certain, but he'd had the momentary impression that her hand had been drifting down to the vicinity of her hidden pistol.

  Sorel sipped and let his glance stray toward the entrance, feeling less vulnerable. Marianne Placidas might be an amateur, but she hadn't panicked; had evidently made herself ready to follow his course of action — or, in this case, inaction. Then he saw the yellow hair of Harley Slaughter, and when the tall Texan knew he had eye contact, he turned with great deliberation and stared toward a side exit before facing Sorel again. That exit, then, was the quickest way out. Sorel scratched his jaw to show that he understood and only half noticed the swarthy, hawk-nosed little fellow who eased past Slaughter, murmuring some excuse in close quarters.

  But hawknose spied his friends and moved gracefully to the booth, nodding to Maazel.