Wild Country

Chapter Eight

The villa of Judge Anthony Placidas shared the breeze off Lake Medina on Monday morning with a dozen other homes, all postwar country residences of neodobe, the envy of those in SanTone whose high-rise windows faced the west. Judge Placidas had done very well for himself while still an attorney; was known in the ringcity as a man sympathetic to the rights of defendants. He was also known as an ardent sportsman; though well into his sixties, he could still shoot an ibex while in the saddle and was not averse to bucking the tiger at the Faro gaming tables — both legal entertainments on the half-million acres of Wild Country Safari. Somewhat less well known were his occasional meetings there with men he would not dream of entertaining anywhere else. The money that changed hands during those meetings had little to do with gambling. It had a lot to do with the rights — and the gravest wrongs — of some defendants.

It was not that Judge Placidas had expensive tastes, but his daughter Marianne was another matter. On this Monday morning, the judge was berobed, earning his money in SanTone. Marianne Placidas had ordered a breakfast for one sent to the villa; chorizo sausage and eggs, fresh orange juice, a double daiquiri, and a slab of butter for the villainous acorn-flour bread that still disgraced the menus of even the rich. (As wheat harvests improved, the acorn content of flour dwindled.)

Marianne slipped off one low-heeled glove-leather sandal by toeing it with the other foot, then shucked the other sandal and stared through the polyglass table. Something would have to be done about those feet, and soon! They were attached to slender ankles, the calves wonderfully long with muscular convexities. The knees seemed too narrow for the demands she made on them, her tanned thighs highly developed. Any dullard knew by staring at the Placidas legs — and who didn't? — that the rest of her was equally athletic and well cared for. Marianne was the perfect image of the synchronized swimmer, but she scorned both the strict discipline and the public titillation involved. Hers were elite sports.

It was only those feet with the heavy veins and prominent sinews that hinted at approaching middle age. Marianne never wore heels before dinner, never wore flats afterward; that was the rule her mother had followed while she was alive. Whether gifted by genes or by constant attention to her body, Marianne had to admit that the regimen hadn't hurt those gorgeous limbs any. She pushed the eggs aside, sipped the daiquiri, and pondered throwing out her dozen pairs of footwear that showed too much sinew. Perhaps a few pairs of ankle-strap pumps? The high straps would draw men's eyes upward. Eyes, and importunate fingers, and perhaps a suitor would not pause to read the message of those treasonous feet as they marched Marianne away from her youth.

Her diet would have swollen the waist of a less active woman, but she was not her father's only daughter for nothing. She eyed the windsurfer sails on the lake, wondering if she would have time for an impromptu race before her tennis date. Her wide smile brought faint crinkles to the corners of her eyes; she could lose at tennis, but rarely did at windsurfing. Usually she won on superior balance. Now and then she relied on the tiny hydrazine propulsion system hidden inside her foam platform. In her lifelong pursuit of admiration, she had found no advantages in fairness. To Marianne Placidas, "fair" was strictly defined as a condition halfway between "pretty good" and "lousy."

She was inside, reaching for her bikini halter, when the phone chimed. It was probably that militarily correct Englishman. Alec Wardrop, calling to cancel their tennis date. No doubt he'd heard of her prowess and did not relish losing his veddy British aplomb. He was hell on horseback, she knew; a steeplechasing, Indian pigsticking fool from a long line of English career officers. Well, if she couldn't test him on a clay court, he would never test her in bed.

"Hello, Alec," she called to the phone. It recognized her voiceprint, but not her bored resignation.

The caller was not Lieutenant Alec Wardrop. Somewhere, on the other end of that connection, someone was holding a cheap commercial language tutor to the speaker. "Marianne Placidas la linda, par favor," the voice said.

She almost forgot the correct response, but: "She is out, and she is in," Marianne replied in a rush.

"Stand by to record," the voice said after a moment.

She lunged at the nearest speaker terminal. "Recording."

A long series of phone beeps ensued. They meant nothing specific to her yet, but they came in groups of five, and that meant a great deal in itself. She coded the doors locked, opened her jewel case, extracted a small dispenser with its stack of hormone pills. She swallowed the first pill — it was candy — and sucked furiously on the second, which was something else.

Before the last beep died away, she had dried her saliva from the little information lozenge and was inserting it into her own, very special tutorial voder. Sometimes it taught her French, sometimes the updated slangs of jazz buffs and soccer jocks. This morning it had already taught her that she, and not Alec Wardrop, would have to cancel that tennis date.

She remembered to cancel calls from outside, then placed her voder near the recorder speaker and encoded instructions. She scribbled the letters out in full caps as the voder, functioning as a very fast version of a one-time cipher code, began to recite the message, one letter at a time. There were faster ways to decode a message, but no way quite so innocent in its hardware, given the possibility that some very hard dudes might show up one day with a search warrant.

She smiled grimly as the first two words were assembled. Her father might have heard them in testimony; probably had, in fact. He could have no earthly idea that they referred to his darling, his pampered, his celebrated little girl.

The first two words were a greeting. CIELITA LINDA… No, she was not Judge Placidas's daughter for nothing. She was whatever she was, for all the sorrel-golden gratification she received.