TEN

Reapers of the sea, the Vikings could not have kept a schedule had they wanted to. Not until the last short leg of her voyage did Yvonne know the precise date on which it would end. She arranged for the duplicated paintings to be posted to Armstrong. The government would justifiably have balked at meeting the bill for having them copied over, especially after Skip turned in his list of what else he wanted, pictures he had never been in doubt about and other items like figurines, Asian bowls, and a Grecian urn.

'I may as well give you my luggage too,' she told the purser.

'Hoy, keep a suitcase,' Skip said. 'We aren't hopping the first jet for Denver.'

'I'm not sure about that,' she answered against her will. Tve been thinking and—'

'Awe, come on. Don't back out of your last chance to be a free woman. I know places here that the tourists never see, and I don't refer to respectable back yards.' He tugged her sleeve. 'Do. Throw a toothbrush and a change of vests into a bag, same as I've done, and hang on to it. Hurry, if you want to watch us dock.'

She surrendered. 'I'm a bad girl. The colonel will be horrified. And he's a nice man, really.'

'What you need,' Skip grinned, 'is practice in badness. I'll train you. Let's lift off.'

The scene topside was impressive. The blue glister of San Pedro Bay was nearly hidden under swarms of ships, tugs, barges, fishing boats, yachts, police and watercleaner craft. Private and commercial helicopters filled heaven; beyond them, contrails criss-crossed white and thunder drifted down. Ahead stretched the immensity of the megalopolis, a thousand pastel hues of buildings chequered in green by parks, pierced by spirelike skyscrapers, knit together by soaring arcs of railway, each detail diamond-sharp through Los Angeles' crystalline air until vision was stopped by the curvature of the planet. The sound of men and machines flowed outward, a deep steady querning that reminded of the tides or of the bloodbeat in some enormous animal.

It was hot, and sailors were abustle. Skip and Yvonne found shaded refuge on a lower deck. 'What are these untouristy places you speak of?' she asked.

"Fraid we won't visit the most interesting, he said. 'They're too bloody interesting, and I don't mean British bloody.' At her inquiring look: 'I once knocked around in local Underworld circles. I wasn't joining them, I was simply the bouncer in a tough nightclub. That led me to know several full-fledged Underworlders, and after I helped one in a fairly nasty fight, he took a fancy to me and— Forget it. I don't want to make noises like a romantic hero. Truth is, what I saw and heard was what decided me to move on, in spite of liking it where I worked.'

Since he was happily observing the action, she could let her gaze dwell on him—disposable tunic purchased aboard, the extreme flare in the collar and red in the colour proclaiming its cheapness, worn with as much dash as if it and the faded trousers and scuffed shoes were the latest mode from Rio; cowlicked brown hair, freckle-dusted brown face, boyish nose, mobile mouth, eyes big and green and the alivest into which she had ever looked. Why had he, child of long roads and the weather, liked spending his nights in smoke and din and the breath of vicious morons? A girl, beyond doubt. Or girls?

She could imagine that body, hard, supple, and warm, giving joy to a whole chorus line.

She could imagine herself in that chorus.

I'm not falling in love with him, am If The thought was dismaying. Or was it? She asked hurriedly,

'Where do you propose we go?'

'How 'bout Afroville for lunch and browsing? Sure, you must've been there, but I'll bet you ate only at nationally advertised restaurants and talked only with shopkeepers.'

'No,' she said, 'mainly I was at its university, conferring. They have the best sociology department in the country, which includes a couple of first-chop linguists. My colleagues were, are somewhat bitter about the ethnic facade. They don't want their community known as a variation on Chinatown.'

'Then those prominent sociologists ought to get off their prominent duffs and discover how much more there is to a Chinatown than tourist traps. As for Afroville, I guarantee your lunch • won't be standard prettied-up chitlin's and collard greens, and it'll be cheaper to boot.'

She bit her lip. How can I say what I must? 'You… had better watch your expenses… till we have you on the government payroll,' she forced out. 'Unless you'll… let me be debited. A loan, if you wish, till—'

She ground to a halt, her cheeks burning with more than the light splintered off the water.

Skip gave her a surprised glance. 'What's wrong?' His puzzlement cleared. 'Oh, yes. Male pride. Sure, Yvonne, you keep track and bill me after my first pay crediting.'

How will he survive in the Ortho? she mourned. It's not for the light of heart and feet.

He won't, and he doesn't care. When he grows tired of running in the squirrel cage, he'll hop out, accept no more reward of cashew nuts imported, roasted, and salted; he'll merrily go back to his woods where acorns grow for the taking.

I am too conditioned to the cage and the cashews. Nor can I forget that the cage is connected to a shaft which keeps the world turning. If the world stopped, the forest would die.

The ship was warped against its pier. 'Get ready to dash,' Skip said. He took their suitcases. They had already spoken their farewells and could disembark with no more fuss than showing proof of citizenship—credit cards would do—to the machine at the gate.

She dreaded seeing a man from Armstrong or being accosted by a polite official agent. But it didn't happen, perhaps because of the deft way Skip manoeuvred them through a warehouse rather than the passenger reception area. When they were on a muni train and it had rolled from the station, she let out a breath and a shaky laugh. 'Now I am irredeemably a bad girl,' she said.

'We'll make you worse,' Skip promised. He consulted a displayed map. 'Change at Lomita and we can catch the Harbour Express straight through to Afroville. Uh-huh.' Turning to her: 'You haven't made clear how long a time you can spend.'

'I haven't been clear about it myself,' she said in confusion. 'I suppose… if we take an evening flight to Denver—'

' This evening? You josh.'

'I—really—'

'Well, we'll see how the bones fall.' Skip leaned back.

He obviously plans to tempt me. Do I plan to be tempted?

If we stay over a night or two or three… separate rooms? If we stay, he'll take for granted that we— we— He won't be angry if I say no. Not him. He could pretend not to remember what I said that night on the fantail, and is still pretending to believe that I believe him. He might be hurt

—no, I can explain how the trouble is in me, not him. I can do that much for him.

After I've gone to bed, he may stroll out and find somebody else. But he won't insult me by introducing her next day. Unless— He might not realize it was an insult.

'For a person on an escapade, you're tol'able glum,' Skip said. 'Smile.' He twisted about on the seat, put thumbs at the corners of her mouth, and lifted.

She gasped. He dropped his hands. 'I'm sorry,' he said.

'No. Nothing. You surprised me.' She took the nearest of those hands in her own. Sunlight, smiting through the window, turned the hairs on his knuckles to gold. How tough the palm was! Her words fumbled: 'I've been a prickly pear these past few years, but it wasn't intentional, it just happened.' 7s that true?

'A condition to remedy.' His free hand cradled her chin. He smiled into her eyes. She wondered in near panic if he would kiss her in this earful of people. He let go after a moment. She did too. 'Lomita ahead,'

he reminded her, and rose.

Their change-train took a cigarette and a half to arrive. Meanwhile Skip suggested she stick her card in a cash vendor. 'They use cash a lot in Afroville,' he said. 'Why not give me a thousand? Easy sum to recall I owe you, and I can play grand seigneur the rest of the week on that.'

'Dare you carry so big an amount on you?' she asked.

He shrugged. What he lost, he'd earn back eventually, he assumed. She gave in. A kilobuck wouldn't damage her account. She drew more than a hundred a year after taxes, and had no one to spend them on but herself.

They boarded the express. It accelerated to a smooth and noiseless two-hundred kph. The cityscape reeled hypnotically past. Yvonne lost other sensory awarenesses, staring out.

Why not? My whole body wants to. Oh, it cries to!

The world would goggle and snigger to learn that Yvonne Canter was living with a twenty-two-year-old boy.

The world needn't learn. Almeida would make certain her address stayed confidential; probably she'd reside under her alias. He himself wouldn't care, might indulgently smile. The rest who'd know—to hell with them. The very cold hell she had a talent for consigning people to that she disliked.

But did Skip have more in mind than a few days' romp before they reported for duty? He liked her, he admired her intellect, he wanted to paint her portrait—•

'Do you feel warm, Yvonne? Want to move over on to the shady side? You look like you're blushing.'

From temples to breasts. 'No, I'm comfortable.'

—in the nude?

Why not a romp, then? What harm could it do? Afterward they could decide___But if the decision was to end the relationship then and there, how much would that hurt, for how long?… And if they did go on a while, at last he would grow restless and kiss her and depart whistling some or other tune he'd have been whistling while he painted her, and would that leave her hobbling around the resj of her life on chemical crutches, and if so, would it have been worth it?

Or can't I too be casual? Must I forever work, even at joy?

Or could I mahe him want to stay, if that turned out to be my dearest wish?

The train glided to a halt. 'Watts Towers,' Skip said. 'Here we are.'

They checked their luggage and stepped forth into dazzling light. Behind them, the people's park mushroomed with the amiable eccentricities of its high structures. There must have been twenty, no two alike. A group of youngsters was gleefully at work on yet another.

Before them, palms lined the main street. It was reserved for pedestrians and the wagons of many children; the 'sidewalks' were for bicycles. The buildings, all one- or two-storey, were each surrounded by a garden. Colours blazed from the walls and the often conical roofs. The functions were wildly mingled—homes, a number of which had their own businesses in a front room, among shops, offices, small manufactories, restaurants, bars, theatres, a church, a mosque, and more and more. Folk sauntered, laughed and chatted, sat on their porches and plucked guitars, bought roasted ears of corn from a pushcart, stood in their storefronts and chanted the wonders of what they had to sell. Dashikis, tarbooshes, and laplaps were less frequent than the National Geographic intimated; however, a brand-new style was common, a flowing gauzy cape embroidered like butterfly wings, that Yvonne guessed the entire Western world would soon be copying.

The flower-scented warmth seemed to bake unhappiness out of her. She clapped her hands.

'Enchanting!'

'The cliche Afroville,' Skip said. 'Run by some of the shrewdest people on two feet. Mind you, I don't put this part down. You can find unique stuff here, handicrafts especially, likelier to be honest value than what comes in through your home delivery tube. We may as well wander till lunchtime.'

Yvonne had worried about being recognized, but Skip's reassurance was sound. 'Nah. The sensation's died of old age. Your picture hasn't been on a screen for two or three weeks. Ninety-nine per cent of the population has lousy memory, which is why circumstantial evidence is generally better and fairer than eyewitness testimony. Unless somebody's looking for you specifically, or we chance on somebody who knows you personally, no one will pay attention. You stayed pseudonymous on the Long Serpent, didn't you?'

She enjoyed herself in the shops and couldn't resist a snakeskin belt. And the Black History Museum had added a nautical section since she was there last; the Vikings ought to see those juxtaposed models of the bronze-age canoe from Denmark and the medieval ocean-goer from Ghana. Lunch became late.

That was in an offside section, mainly residential. They were the only whites. The restaurant was tiny, on a trellised patio riotous with bougainvillaea, rustling with bamboo, splashing with a fountain that sprang from the uplifted trunk of a stone elephant. A young man sat cross-legged and produced unbelievable flams and paradiddles on his bongo drums. 'No entertainment,' Skip said. 'He feels like it.'

The handsome waitress did not surprise Yvonne. You always got live service in Afroville. But then Skip rose and cried, 'Why, hello, Clarice 1 Remember me?'

'Hey, Skip, baby!' They hugged. Nevertheless Yvonne got the impression that, while neither would have had any objections jhey had never been lovers. Maybe I think this because I've read that Afroville

)V

has a higher proportion of couples who are forrhally married, and the marriages average a longer life, than in the Ortho of any Western nation. Or maybe I want to think this.

'I figured you were in Australia yet, Clarice.'

'I was. You've been away longer'n you've counted. Want to swap brags?'

'Sure do.' Skip performed introductions, wincing the least bit at 'Yolanda Cohen'. Yvonne remembered him remarking, 'Sigaroons don't lie among themselves as a rule. If I'd rather not tell a friend something, I say so and he accepts.' While the food was being prepared, and after Clarice had brought it, she sat down, drank coffee, and conversed.

Yvonne almost regretted being too interested to pay due attention to the meal, which was superb, especially the ham-stuffed Brussels sprouts. Furthermore, she thought, I'm too wistful. Clarice was not a female equivalent of Skip; her roots in Afroville struck firm and deep. But she had travelled, and not by careful first-class conveyance

—shank's mare, bicycle, motorbike, car, truck, bus, train, chopper when she could wangle it, horse, camel, and once a zebra—from Yukon to Yucatan, Copenhagen to Capetown. Her Australian tour had been in a semi-amateur theatrical group, playing the outback more than the cities. Between jaunts she worked here and studied chemical engineering at the university. 'Meant to land a job in a desalination plant,' she laughed. 'Turns out they prefer employees who don't take my kind of leaves of absence. No harm. We're gettin' more of our own industry all the time. Or maybe I'll teach.'

In her absence, Skip said meditatively, 'There goes the shape of the future, or I miss my gUess. We're not headed into an age of speed and steel. That's already behind us. We'll use its capabilities otherwise.

The old Egyptians learned tricks that're still handy to know, but we don't build pyramids any more, do we?'

Yvonne thought of Almeida's fears, and thrust the thought from her, stood up and said, 'She makes me hope you're right. Excuse me a few lambshakes. Which way is the ladies?'

A vendor in the room offered Just Before mints, twenty-five for a new dollar. Yvonne demurred. Then: Why not? They won't commit me, he needn't know I have them, they'll merely give me the option.

Her coin rattled down the slot. She stuffed the roll into her beltpurse and washed her face to cool it.

Clarice suggested the newcomers end their afternoon in a nearby amusement park. They did. Yvonne was slightly upset by a holographic animation in a plastidome labelled 'Grandpa's World'-^less by the phantom hippies, protesters, peace marchers, rioters, embattled policemen and college deans, lecturing professors, roaring orators, and the rest of that section, than by the giggles and guffaws of the mostly teen-age visitors. Youth is cruel. Even Skip? However, the astronautical division was tasteful; her spirits could not but rise with the great rockets. Back in the open, they found the usual shows and rides and, miracle, an old-time carousel or excellent facsimile, complete with sentimental painted scenes, calliope music, and animal figures to be whirled on.

They had supper in a Mexican restaurant. 'Tell you what,' Skip said over the last wine, 'let's unhock our bags and skite down San Clemente way, junction up in a little beach hotel, start the morning with a swim and maybe go to Catalina.'

'AH right,' she said, more huskily than intended. 'That sounds like fun:'

They walked out hand in hand. She knew that if he hailed a taxi and they snogged on the way to Watts Towers, she w^ould share his bed. But that didn't occur to him. His merriment on the shuttlecar suggested to her that she might anyhow.

At summer sunset, the Towers station was moderately crowded. Skip wrinkled his nose. 'Too much racket and bustle for me,' he said. 'Well, the LA-San Diego line is pretty good. We can be in our room, window open to the surf, in an hour.' He started towards the storage area, not noticing her expression.

She followed automatically, her world gyrating. What did he mean? Anything? Every-thing? What should I say?

Skip opened their locker and took the suitcases out. A man who had been seated on a bench approached them. Quietly dressed, he was an unobtrusive man unless you took heed of his lithe gait and hard features. 'Dr Canter?' he said. 'How do you do? Excuse me, please. I'm Gerald Lasswell of the United States Secret Service.' He showed her an identification card and returned it to his folder.

She stood wondering numbly why she felt so very numb.

'What's this about?' Skip demanded, annoyed.

'Are you with Dr Canter, sir?' Lasswell asked. Skip nodded.. Lasswell quirked lips in a tight brief smile.

'We had two men to meet you in port,' he said at Yvonne, 'but somehow they missed you. Admiral Granstad told us you'd spoken of touring in this area. Our best chance seemed to be to post a man at every station. We have searchers out too.' Roughly: 'It's that important. Thank God you're safe.'

'Suppose you tell us what the matter is,' Skip snapped.

Lasswell shook his head. 'Not in a public place, sir. Would you both come along to the office? The chief will, explain.'

Yvonne looked at Skip. 'Should I?' she heard her voice ask.

'I can't force you, short of non-criminal arrest,' Lasswell said. 'Wouldn't you agree, though, Dr Canter, neither my service nor Colonel Almeida is given to hysterics? You were nearly murdered. Now we have more information. I've sat here since morning and sweated blood.'

She nodded. Skip swore and picked up the suitcases. "This way, please,' Lasswell said. 'My relief has our car parked near here.'

It was a Neptune with a civilian number, inconspicuous among a million similar teardrops. The man who scrambled forth was clad like Lasswell but a good deal tougher-looking. 'You got 'em!' he cawed.

'Hurry,' Lasswell said. 'Rear seat, please, Dr Canter and sir.'

He and his companion took the front. 'Let me,' Skip said, and leaned over to fasten her safety harness.

His •breath tickled her ear. 'Too bad,' he whispered. ' 'Nother time.'

Pilot set, the car hummed into motion. 'Better we opaque the windows,' Lasswell said, and did.

'Hoy!' Skip exclaimed suddenly. He pointed to a twisted, leathery object suction-clamped on the dashboard. 'What's a juju doing in a Secret Service whirr?'

'I can tell you that,' Lasswell replied.

He unsnapped his harness and turned around. From beneath his tunic he had drawn a flat gun. Skip snarled and grabbed under his own garments while snatching at his buckle. The gun hissed. Skip jerked, made a rattling noise, rolled back his eyes, and slumped. Horror took Yvonne in a tidal wave. She screamed. The second needle pricked her in the stomach. A jab of cold radiated to hands and feet and head. The wave became a maelstrom and sucked her down into night.