Wild Country

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 edge, and you can't do that and settle down, too. No, I don't think I've slowed down. Next year or the year after? Maybe."

Marrow nodded, listening to the moan of a cold prairie wind around the porch outside. He got up, chose a hunk of mesquite from the nearby pile, and thrust it into the belly of the cast-iron stove before sighing back into his rocker. Somehow the woodstove, across the office from a computer terminal, said all that needed saying about Jess Marrow. He kept what he enjoyed of the old while learning the best of the new. And he knew how to broach an idea. "There's a way to duck all that celebrity, of course." Pause. "Naw, I guess not."

"What?"

"Forget it, you wouldn't go for it. You'd say some fool thing like, it ain't your style."

"Try me," Quantrill insisted.

Marrow took his time, slipping into the slow cadences of the tale-spinner. This was the kind of day for it, a sunless day before a potbelly stove, waiting for this "blue norther" weather front to pass. "Well, I was at a WCS staff meeting yesterday at the New Driskill. Seems they expect big holiday crowds, weather or no weather, after all that holo coverage. And this robotics bigbrain named Hyson showed us a tape of some new androids they've got in California." The older man pursed his lips, shook his head. "Teddy, you would not believe it. You know that Copycat 'droid near the Thrillkiller?" He saw Quantrill nod. "It ain't a patch on the ass of what we saw on tape. They'll cost ten thousand each, but you could enter one in a decathlon and nobody would be the wiser. 'Cept for urine tests." He chuckled. "I bet they could rig that, too.".

"That tape could be enhanced video," Quantrill replied.

"Nope. Hyson's got a rep to uphold; he says what we saw is what WCS can get." Pause. "Now, the problem is how to make one of those things pay without breakin' any laws. After the staff meeting I jawed awhile with Schreiner, Stewart, a few others. Somebody came up with a real dipshit idea. A minute ago you said, 'Try me.' You're a household word now. What if anybody at all could try you — not you, of course, but a'droid built to your specs?"

Recalling the swiftness with which that busty mechanical bimbo had drawn a tiny derringer on the doomed Sorel, Quantrill shrugged. "No fun in that, Jess. A'droid could beat anybody, me included."

"You still don't see it, do you? I mean, exactly to your specs. It would have your speed, but no more. In other words, your limitations. Your size and weight and, as near as possible, programmed to make the kind of decisions you'd make. Your face and voice, too." A dramatic pause: "Teddy, it would fool your mother."

Quantrill's expression suggested that he had just inhaled a fat green fly. "What the hell for?"

"For the money it could rake in; Stewart thinks it'd pay for itself in a year. And for the royalties you'd get, if you let 'em run you through a battery of tests and answer a bushel of dumb questions by programmers." He saw a look of negation in Quantrill's face, then added his clincher. "And it'd do the one thing you say you want most, Ted. It would give those piss-and-vinegar types a way to try you out on the streets of Faro, without havin' to hunt you up personally. Ultrasonics instead of lasers in the pistols; hell, it oughta double the crowd. But it was just a dipshit idea. I said you wouldn't go for it."

Quantrill sniffed his sherry and thought it over, taking Marrow's reverse psychology for granted, also accepting the fact that it worked. Finally, "Just whose dipshit idea was this?"

Marrow looked away. "I forget."

"Uh-huh. You realize that a copy of me might kidney-punch some poor bastard's lights out?"

"They swear it can be programmed not to. And just between me and you, they intend to do it anyway, Ted. As long as they're gonna copy somebody, why not you?". After a moment's reflection, Quantrill began to laugh. In explanation he said, "Jim Street may try to get that 'droid drafted."

"More likely, they'd be interested in anybody that beats it."

"Never happen," said Quantrill.

Both men were laughing now and ignored the buzz of the telephone until its eighth repetition. "Awshit," Marrow grumped. and stumped over to his desk. The call was for his assistant.

Jess Marrow tried to ignore the conversation, cussing his stove and shaking its lower grate even though it was working perfectly, on the theory that if he made a hell of a racket, he couldn't be listening to a private confab three meters away. He looked around as he heard his name called and saw Quantrill press the "hold" button.

"Jess, just how much money could I pry out of WCS for that scheme you mentioned?"

Marrow showed a pair of callused hands. "Five thousand. Maybe ten — if somebody on the staff thought you were worth a shit," he said. The higher offer was implicit, of course, because Marrow was a well-regarded staff member of WCS.

Quantrill punched another button and said to the phone, "How would those payments look if I could put ten thousand down?" He waited, then his face became impassive. "Well, thanks anyway. Oh, sure, it's fair, but I couldn't make the spread pay enough to make payments that size for a long time." Then he was listening again.

Marrow seemed to be rumbling it to himself, but that rumble carried: "'Course, the royalties off a concession can go a thousand a month." He saw Quantrill looking his way and returned to fiddling with the stove. Jess Marrow was not about to open himself to a charge, ever, that he wanted to make a man's decisions for him. But a young stud needed a prod into the right chute now and then. It sounded as if someone was turning Ted Quantrill out to new pasturage — literally. And why not? Marrow smiled to himself. My daddy always told me real estate was for youth. "Get lots while you're young." he said. And I only thought it was the oldest joke in the world, but it's a good way to settle a man down, too.

Quantrill rang off but did not return to his rocker as Marrow did. Instead he padded bootless to the window, staring out at the swirl of bruise-tinted cloud that rolled across the horizon. "Now I've done it," he muttered.

"Spit it out."

"I want to marry Sandy Grange, Jess. She wouldn't have me until I quit the dangerous stuff. We both want to ranch that spread of hers, add to it, maybe, and she's recently… uh… come into a pile of cash. Turns out that Mulvihill Garner's property goes to a married sister in Beaumont. Sandy made some calls, says the woman likes the Bayou country and hates it out here. She'd sell the Garner spread whole or in parcels. Sandy was tickled to death at that. She called me last night, said she'd made an offer on about twenty sections of Garner land that adjoins hers."

"Good sheep land. So where's the problem?"

Quantrill toed one of the feet of the squat iron stove and said, almost mumbling it, "I just made the woman a slightly higher offer."

Marrow quit rocking and sat up straight. "For the same parcel?"

"Yep."

"Well, for pity's sake," said Marrow, sipping and rocking, rocking and sipping. Presently he added. "I always heard there was a reason for everything, but I do believe you just blew that one out the window."

"Jess, I'm years older than she is, but what did I have to bring to the marriage? Not a thing. I didn't want to marry property, I wanted to combine it."

Marrow emptied the last of the sherry into his cup, commenced rocking again. He knew that Quantrill was watching him ruminate, tipping his cup in a game of try-not-to-spill-it as he rocked. It wasn't hard to figure; this young buck simply refused to accept himself as worthy of the union without dragging a dowry of twenty square miles along to improve his value. A ridiculous view, from a man who had the self-confidence of a manhunter. Still, it was a measure of his regard for the Grange girl that Quantrill would think himself unworthy of her without some land to sweeten the deal. Doubtless she would see that instantly; women understood these things.

"Jess?" Quantrill was still looking out that window.

"Hm?"

"I can still back out. I mean, if there's any doubt about WCS going for that up-front money or the royalties."

"Stewart's word is solid granite. If I tell him I've made you a half-assed offer, he'll chew on me for not letting him make it, and then he'll back it up just like he intended to all along. Truth is, I figured that call would be him calling from Kerrville, and he'd be more anxious if I let it ring awhile. He knows a good idea when he hears one, and I know him. Hell, he thought I was a genuis for… anyway," he trailed off, sipping. Rocking.

For perhaps ten minutes they followed their respective thoughts in silence. Then from Quantrill: "Boy, Sandy will be mad as a hornet. But I had to do this, Jess." He wheeled about, troubled, and went on. "I don't expect anybody to understand."

"Oh, I think I have it pretty well figured out."

"Then explain it to me."

Marrow was shaking silently with laughter as he met Quantrill's gaze. "The way I figure it… you're just a damn fool, Teddy."

Quantrill, fondly: "Screw you, Jess."

Marrow, cackling: "I'll drink to that."