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Chapter 18
"Goodbye and
good luck, Mr. Taverner," the pol chick named Peg said to him at the wide
entrance to the great gray academy building.
"Thanks,"
Jason said. He inhaled a deep sum of morning air, smog-infested as it was.
I got out, he said to himself. They could have hung a thousand busts on me
but they didn't.
A female
voice, very throaty, said from close by, "How now, little man?"
Never in his
life had he been called "little man"; he stood over six feet tall.
Turning, he started to say something in answer, then made out the creature
who had addressed him .
She too
stood a full six feet in height; they matched in that department. But in
contrast to him she wore tight black pants, a leather shirt, red, with
tassle fringes, gold hooped earrings, and a belt made of chain. And spike
heeled shoes. Jesus Christ, he thought, appalled. Where's her whip?
"Were you
talking to me?" he said.
"Yes." She
smiled, showing teeth ornamented with gold signs of the zodiac. "They put
three items on you before you got out of there; I thought you ought to
know."
"I know,"
Jason said, wondering who or what she was.
"One of
them," the girl said, "is a miniaturized H-bomb. It can be detonated by a
radio signal emitted from this building. Did you know about that?"
Presently he
said, "No. I didn't."
"It's the
way he works things," the girl said. "My brother ... he raps mellow and
nice to you, civilizedly, and then he has one of his staff - he has a huge
staff - plant that garbage on you before you can walk out the door of the
building."
"Your
brother," Jason said. "General Buckman." He could see, now, the
resemblance between them. The thin, elongated nose, the high cheekbones,
the neck, like a Modigliani, tapered beautifully. Very patrician, he
thought. They, both of them, impressed him.
So she must
be a seven, too, he said to himself. He felt himself become wary, again;
the hackles on his neck burned as he confronted her.
"I'll get
them off you," she said, still smiling, like General Buckman, a
gold-toothed smile.
"Good
enough," Jason said.
"Come over
to my quibble." She started off lithely; he loped clumsily after her.
A moment
later they sat together in the front bucket seats of her quibble.
"Alys is my
name," she said.
He said,
"I'm Jason Taverner, the singer and TV personality."
"Oh, really?
I haven't watched a TV program since I was nine."
"You haven't
missed much," he said. He did not know if he meant it ironically; frankly,
he thought, I'm too tired to care.
"This little
bomb is the size of a seed," Alys said. " And it's embedded, like a tick,
in your skin. Normally, even if you knew it was there someplace on you,
you still could never find it. But I borrowed this from the academy." She
held up a tubelike light. "This glows when you get it near a seed bomb."
She began at once, efficiently and nearly professionally, to move the
light across his body.
At his left
wrist the light glowed.
"I also have
the kit they use to remove a seed bomb," Alys said. From her mailpouch
purse she brought a shallow tin, which she at once opened. "The sooner
it's cut out of you the better," she said, as she lifted a cutting tool
from the kit.
For two
minutes she cut expertly, meanwhile spraying an analgesic compound on the
wound. And then- i t lay in her hand. As she had said, the size of a seed.
"Thanks," he
said. "For removing the thorn from my paw."
Alys laughed
gaily; she replaced the cutting tool in the kit, shut the lid, returned it
to her huge purse. "You see," she said, "he never does it himself; it's
always one of his staff. So he can remain ethical and aloof, as if it has
nothing to do with him. I think I hate that the most about him." She
pondered. "I really hate him."
"Is there
anything else you can cut or tear off me?" Jason inquired.
"They tried
- Peg, who is a police technician expert at it, tried - to stick a voice
tap on your gullet. But I don't think she got it to stick." Cautiously,
she explored his neck. "No, it didn't catch; it fell off. Fine. That takes
care of that. You do have a microtrans on you somewhere; we'll need a
strobe light to pick up its flux." She fished in the glove compartment of
the quibble and came up with a battery-operated strobe disc. "I think I
can find it," she said, setting the strobe light into activity.
The
microtrans turned out to be in residence in the cuff of his left sleeve.
Alys pushed a pin through it, and that was that.
"Is there
anything else?" Jason asked her.
"Possibly a
minicam. A very small camera transmitting a TV image back to academy
monitors. But I didn't see them wind one into you; I think we can take a
chance and forget that." She turned, then, to scrutinize him. "Who are
you?" she asked. "By the way."
Jason said,
" An unperson."
"Meaning
what?"
"Meaning
that I don't exist."
"Physically?"
"I don't
know," - he said, truthfully. Maybe, he thought, if I had been more open
with her brother the police general ... maybe he could have worked it out.
After all, Felix Buckman was a seven. Whatever that meant.
But still -
Buckman had probed in the right direction; he had brought out a good deal.
And in a very short time- a period punctuated by a late-night
breakfast and a cigar.
The girl
said, "So you're Jason Taverner. The man McNulty was trying to pin
down and couldn't. The man with no data on him anywhere in the world. No
birth certificate; no school records; no -"
"How is it
you know all this?" Jason said.
"I looked
over McNulty's report." Her tone was blithe. "In Felix's office. It
interested me."
"Then why
did you ask me who I am?"
Alys said,
"I wondered if you knew. I had heard from McNulty; this time I wanted your
side of it. The antipol side, as they call it."
"I can't add
anything to what McNulty knows," Jason said.
"That's not
true." She had begun to interrogate him now, precisely in the manner her
brother had a short time ago. A low, informal tone of voice, as if
something merely casual were being discussed, then the intense focus on
his face, the graceful motions of her arms and hands, as if, while talking
to him, she danced a little. With herself. Beauty dancing on beauty, he
thought; he found her physically, sexually exciting. And he had had enough
of sex, God knew, for the next several days.
"Okay," he
conceded. "I know more."
"More than
you told Felix?"
He
hesitated. And, in doing so, answered.
"Yes," Alys
said.
He shrugged.
It had become obvious.
"Tell you
what," Alys said briskly. "Would you like to see how a police general
lives? His home? His billion-dollar castle?"
"You'd let
me in there?" he said, incredulous. "If he found out -" He paused. Where
is this woman leading me? he asked himself. Into terrible danger;
everything in him sensed it, became at once wary and alert. He felt his
own cunning course through him, infusing every part of his somatic being.
His body knew that here, more than at any other time, he had to be
careful. "You have legal access to his home?" he said, calming himself; he
made his voice natural, devoid of any unusual tension.
"Hell," Alys
said, "I live with him. We're twins; we're very close. Incestuously
close."
Jason said,
"I don't want to walk into a setup hammered out between you and General
Buckman."
"A setup
between Felix and me?" She laughed sharply. "Felix and I couldn't
collaborate in painting Easter eggs. Come on; let's shoot over to the
house. Between us we have a good deal of interesting objects. Medieval
wooden chess sets, old bone-china cups from England. Some beautiful early
U.S. stamps printed by the National Banknote Company. Do stamps interest
you?"
"No," he
said.
"Guns?"
He
hesitated. "To some extent." He remembered his own gun; this was the
second time in twenty-four hours that he had had reason to remember it.
Eying him,
Alys said, "You know, for a small man you're not bad-looking. And you're
older than I like ... but not much so. You're a six, aren't you?"
He nodded.
"Well?" Alys
said. "Do you want to see a police general's castle?"
Jason said,
"Okay." They would find him wherever he went, whenever they wanted him.
With or without a microtrans pinned on his cuff.
***
Turning on
the engine of her quibble, Alys Buckman spun the wheel, pressed down on
the pedal; the quibble shot up at a ninety-degree angle to the street. A
police engine, he realized. Twice the horsepower of domestic models.
"There is
one thing," Alys said as she steered through traffic, "that I want you to
get clear in your mind." She glanced over at him to be sure he was
listening. "Don't make any sexual advances toward me. If you do I'll kill
you." She tapped her belt and he saw, tucked within it, a police-model
weapon tube; it glinted blue and black in the morning sun.
"Noticed and
attended to," he said, and felt uneasy. He already did not like the
leather and iron costume she wore; fetishistic qualities were profoundly
involved, and he had never cared for them. And now this ultimatum.
Where was her head sexually? With other lesbians? Was that it?
In answer to
his unspoken question, Alys said calmly, "All my libido, my sexuality, is
tied up with Felix."
"Your
brother?" He felt cold, frightened incredulity. "How?"
"We've lived
an incestuous relationship for five years," Alys said, adroitly
maneuvering her quibble in the heavy morning Los Angeles traffic. "We have
a child, three years old. He's kept by a housekeeper and nurse down in Key
West, Florida. Barney is his name."
"And you're
telling me this?" he said, amazed beyond belief. "Someone you don't even
know?"
"Oh, I know
you very well, Jason Taverner," Alys said; she lifted the quibble up into
a higher lane, increased velocity. The traffic, now, had thinned; they
were leaving greater L.A. "I've been a fan of yours, of your Tuesday night
TV show, for years. And I have records of yours, and once I heard you sing
live at the Orchid Room at the Hotel St. Francis in San Francisco." She
smiled briefly at him. "Felix and I, we're both collectors ... and one of
the things I collect is Jason Taverner records." Her darting, frenetic
smile increased. "Over the years I've collected all nine."
Jason said
huskily, his voice shaking, "Ten. I've put out ten LPs. The last few with
light-show projection tracks."
"Then I
missed one," Alys said, agreeably. "Here. Turn around and look in the back
seat."
Twisting
about, he saw in the rear seat his earliest album : Taverner and the
Blue, Blue Blues. "Yes," he said, seizing it and bringing it forward
onto his lap.
"There's
another one there," Alys said. "My favorite out of all of them. "
He saw,
then, a dog-eared copy of There'll Be a Good Time with Taverner Tonight.
"Yes," he said. "That's the best one I ever did."
"You see?"
Alys said. The quibble dipped now, spiraling down in a helical pattern
toward a cluster of large estates, tree and grass-surrounded, below.
"Here's the house."
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