Drakon (21 page)

Probably has visions of me with long straight hair, granny glasses and a sign about LBJ.

"My brother Maurice was there," she said. His face changed, remembering the picture on her desk.

"In the Fifth Cavalry."

***

"What a nice guy," she mused, as the cat rubbed against her ankles.

It had been a long time since she
ate
that much at one sitting.
Amazing. I pig out on lasagna and
crank calls don't worry me anymore.
You heard about great ethnic eateries at moderate prices, but she'd never actually found many. Mind you, the crowd on the Street tended to apply the Universal Dollar Yardstick to restaurants as well. And Henry
was
a nice guy. No getting bent out of shape about her picking up half the bill . . . well, it was scarcely a
date,
but still. He'd even asked if she wanted her phone number back now that the calls from whoever-it-was had stopped; which was a gentleman's way to find out if she wanted to hear from him again. Old-fashioned, but nice.

Mother would have a cow if she knew.
Italian,
and
a cop. "Mother, I just had dinner with him, we didn't elope to the Poconos."

Maybe she'd go out with him again. He had a sense of humor, and conversation from something outside the incestuous world she worked in. It beat listening to David talk about his therapist and how he was dealing with his Inner Child. What the Inner Child needed was a good spanking, and anyway she preferred to talk to adults.

Well-preserved, if you like them mummified,
Thomas Cairstens thought, shaking the woman's hand.

Janeen Amier had been a notable actress in her day, and something of a celebrity in radical circles in the 1960s. Later she'd made a fortune of her own in exercise videos, and then married a much larger one. Now she was just plain lean and stringy, and the effects of too many facelifts were showing; you could see the same face anywhere in L.A. or San Francisco, anywhere money and a losing struggle against time came together. Her husband, Fred Lather was carrying his age better, a trim slender man with a graying mustache. He was the real power here in terms of money and political influence, but everything Cairstens had been able to learn said that his wife was at least half the brains.

"Glad to see you again, Fred," he said. "Janeen."

Fred was, he noticed, in cowboy gear again; well, this
was
a ranch—a buffalo ranch, to be precise; Lather was a fanatic for the beasts when he wasn't doing those Civil War re-creation things. All fieldstone and exposed Ponderosa-pine beams in here, with a fireplace big enough to roast one of Lather's bulls. The communications magnate led them in and poured drinks; white wine all round, Cairstens noticed. Evidently his Western act didn't extend to actually drinking whiskey.
Some evidence of bicoastal civilization
surviving,
he thought mordantly, as they got the small talk out of the way.

"Now, what was it you had to say that was so urgent and confidential?" Lather asked.

Cairstens smiled with professional warmth. "Let's be frank, Fred, Janeen—you've both been a little puzzled about IngolfTech, haven't you?"

"I like to see a new company with a progressive attitude," Janeen said.

On Cairstens's advice IngolfTech had made carefully calculated donations to a number of Amier's favorite causes over the past few years. For that matter, they were mostly
his
favorite causes too, or had been back when such things mattered. Fairly soon the fight against tobacco smoking was going to become completely irrelevant. Even nuclear waste wouldn't be much of a concern. If the Project succeeded.

"I am a little puzzled by some of the stuff you've come up with," Lather said. "My technical people are too."

"It's all been satisfactory, I hope."

"That's just it. It's
too
satisfactory." Lather spread his hands. "I know that sounds odd. But there aren't any bugs in any of them. Everything works perfectly; and new products are never that way. There's always teething problems, things that have to be worked out in practice."

"You mean the products we've been selling you work like
finished
products. Like things that've been in widespread use for years."

"Yes, exactly."

"That's because," he said, opening his briefcase, "they have been in use for years."

***

He slowed. The roads to JFK were not at their best on a Saturday afternoon in February, not with sleet added in. Especially once you were off the Van Wyck Expressway, although the layout wasn't as bad as the spilled-spaghetti setup they had at La Guardia, thank God. He peered through the windshield and its sludge of water and ice, then took the right-hand turn in a spray of slush and a long
beeeeeep
from the minivan behind him.

"I still appreciate it, Henry," Jenny said, smiling at him in the mirror. "You're the first person I've known in Manhattan in years who actually has a
car.
Real people, not CEOs."

"Yeah, well, it sort of goes with the job." He grinned. "New experiences—I drive, you get me to go to the opera."

He'd actually enjoyed it, which was a surprise. Although come to think of it, granddad had loved Neapolitan operettas, which wasn't quite the same thing.

"Wish I was going to the Bahamas," he said as they pulled in. "So. Want to catch a movie next week, after you get back?"

His voice was a little too casual. Three dates in a month meant more than we-get-together-sometimes . . . .
Christ on a crutch, how can I be worrying about
that
at a time like
this?
Part of being human, he guessed.

"Sure," she said quietly, reaching over to touch him on the arm. "I'd like that."

The weather was a little less ghastly under the overhang. Carmaggio popped the trunk and swung out the driver's door, buttoning his coat. She had a surprising number of bags for a five-day trip, all assembling onto a neat little folding carryall. Efficient.

"Look, Jenny . . . there's something I've got to tell you." She looked up, startled at his tone. He continued:

"This Ingolfsson broa—ah, woman. Her name's come up in my line of work, you know? No charges, but . . ." He spread his hands. "I can't go into details. Let's just say she's been associated with some questionable people down there."

Jennifer nodded, serious. She knew all about confidentiality. He could see she wasn't surprised; well, dealing with offshore Caribbean money probably involved
rumors
of that sort fairly often.

"So watch yourself down there, okay?"

"I will, Henry." She leaned forward and kissed him, a quick touch. "And thanks. Don't worry, nothing happens to investment analysts."

He stood and watched her vanish into the terminal before slamming the trunk shut and dropping back into the driver's seat of the Mazda. She was right.

"Shit, I hope so," he said, waiting with his hand on the keys.

Should I have said something else?
What the hell
could
he say: "Your company's prospective client is some sort of mad-dog inhuman killer with a ray gun who consorts with giant spotted baboons"?

Oh,
great.
That would
really
be convincing. Talk about consigning yourself to the tabloid-reading realms of the trailer trash in one fell swoop.

"The hell of it is, when I come right out and say it I don't believe
myself,
" he mumbled.

An airport security guard was looking at him from the shelter of the overhang; probably for taking up too much time at the drop-off.
Fuck you very much too, asshole,
Carmaggio snarled under his breath, pulling out into the laneway.

Jenny wasn't in any danger, anyway. Whatever Ingolfsson was after, right now she seemed to be concentrating on making large amounts of money, serious money,
legitimate
money. You didn't do that by hurting investment analysts; the financial world had a severe aversion to physical violence in its own ranks.

The most that could happen would be a heavy swindle and the loss of her job, and he didn't expect that to happen either. Jenny was as bright as anyone he'd ever met, and she knew the twisted rules of her field as well as he knew his.

Carmaggio slammed on the brakes. Sweat broke out on his forehead and clammily under his arms as he felt the greasy skid of the tires on slick pavement. When the car halted he took several deep breaths before restarting the stalled motor; you could get yourself dead easy in this weather, driving with your mind in a fog of worry.

He concentrated on the road with a ferocious effort of will. Occasionally his hand would reach into his coat for cigarettes that weren't there.

***

He had been twelve feet up the coconut palm. A half-scream of terror turned to a giggle. Gwen tossed the slender black form up again, rolled him over her shoulders and tucked him under one arm head-down, grinning toward the ground and the delighted white smile.

"Hey, put me down now!" the boy said in the Haitian Creole patois.

Gwen did, watching with mild affection as he somersaulted off his hands and ran to join a half-dozen other youngsters playing outside a small concrete-block schoolhouse. This section of the property was sand and rock, scrub-covered with a few taller pines or coconuts. It was a fine winter's day, sun bright through the thin foliage overhead, a little over seventy degrees. The brisk sea breeze brought scents of salt, silty mangrove swamp, pine, fresh-cut stone, and human. That was more agreeable now that she was used to it again, although she missed the odors of Draka and
servus.
She walked slowly, bare feet gripping the stone beneath her, savoring a feeling of relaxed well-being.

"You like children?" Tom asked over his shoulder as they walked; he and Alice preceded her down the pathway. She could hear undertones of surprise in the man's voice.

"Children and puppies, yes," Gwen said. "They're among my favorite things."

He nodded thoughtfully. "And wild geese that fly with the moon on their wings, no doubt," he said.

Gwen looked at him, liking his smile. There was no insolence in it, and outright fear was a crude tool of dominance.
I'm getting the knack of dealing with humans,
she thought. Killing them was fairly easy, gross manipulation with terror, bribes or pheromones not too difficult, but really managing them took skill. Centuries of dealing only with
servus
and her own kind had let hers rust, but mining her memories and careful study were bringing it back.

"That's a quotation?"

"From a musical . . . a movie with singing. An unbearably sentimental one."

"It's unhealthy not to like children," she said. "Not good evolutionary strategy. I'm very fond of mine."

"Hard to imagine you having children," Alice said.

"Oh, I only contribute the egg," Gwen said. "We fertilize
in vitro
and transplant the ovum. Sex is recreational and social, for us."

Alice looked back over her shoulder, caught Gwen's eye on her and blushed—thoroughly visible, since the Australian was in bikini and sarong—put a nervous hand to her hair, and glanced away.

Delightful,
Gwen thought. She'd become enthusiastic very quickly. Besides being an efficient administrative assistant.

A splendid pair,
she thought, viewing them together.
And they'd make a good breeding
combination, when we have time.
They might be past prime reproductive age when this operation was complete; best if she had sperm and egg samples preserved. The
servus
modifications only applied to a minuscule fragment of the archaic-human genome, and there were other qualities here it would be useful to preserve.

She inhaled, catching a feral scent.
Chalmers,
she thought with distaste.
Here again.

"Ms. Ingolfsson!"

A human hurried up, carrying a clipboard. One of the local officials; and not one of the many that the energetic Captain Lowe had on the payroll.
Lowe's strain I will
not
preserve.
Even modified. He was useful here and now, though. This other feral wasn't useful even in the short term. A nuisance.

"Dr. Chalmers?" Gwen said politely.

Tom and Alice turned at her back; the plump Bahamian health official goggled a little at the Australian's cleavage, notable even here on an island nation of beach resorts. He reacted to Gwen with a bristling nervousness that stained his white shirt at the armpits despite the mild air. Her sex pheromones were naturally low right now anyway, with her appetites satisfied for the present, and she kept them throttled back. Aggression she let swell a little, watching with a secret amusement as the human's fear-defiance cycle intensified. The Bahamian didn't know what he was sensing, but his subconscious was wiser than his waking mind. It remembered the caves, and the smell of tiger.

"Ms. Ingolfsson, I've completed the health inspection of your Haitians."

Dislike and fear understressed in the word. The Bahamians' contempt for their southern neighbors was well-seasoned with consciousness of their numbers and desperation, and of the difficulty of keeping them out—the more so as the native-born were increasingly unwilling to do the menial work the Haitians accepted gladly.

"Yes?" Gwen arched an eyebrow.

It was a bit frustrating not to simply grab the annoying little human by the neck and arm and pull until he came apart—the image made her smile slightly—but there was a hunters satisfaction in playing him along, for now. Time enough to rebuke insolence when the beacon was established.

I'll throw him to the ghouloons,
Gwen decided, making a mental note.
They like to play with
their food.
This planet was inconveniently overpopulated, anyway. She imagined him weeping slow tears of absolute despair as he clung to the top of one of the palms, long wet fangs beneath him, and clawed hands reaching up with mocking slowness. The first scream . . .