The landscape was dehydrated, and he felt thirsty already. He sloughed out of the sand. His footwear had sustained a thirty-dollar depreciation, and he preferred not to assess the remainder of his apparel. The trail before him resembled the baked bed of a sun-crazed mud shallow attacked by amateurs with dull jackhammers.
His eyes passed over the wind-scarred rubble and focused on memory. It seemed that certain essential records had been misplaced during the transfer of management from the pioneer company A-Plus Fabrics, Inc., to its more solvent purchaser. A great deal of time had been absorbed in running down the diverse and inefficient experimental projects of A-Plus, and the files were still overloaded with corporate trivia. Thus there had happened to be a seven-year delay in the follow-up to a certain test-marketing project. He had uncovered portions of the records by diligent and increasingly circumspect part-time research, and now was taking a week's vacation to investigate the situation more directly.
Zether was glad he was a healthy, large-boned, brown-haired, virile junior exec, because this torrid hike would mean trouble for a wealthy, fat-fleshed, white-haired, febrile senior exec. He had covered about half a mile, and the locale seemed more and more like Death Valley during a drought. Blisters were surely burgeoning grandiosely on his trodding feet.
The product being test-marketed was a fabric—a very special one. Thermal-insulating, semiporous, transparent material of extraordinary lightness, elasticity, and strength. Absolutely nontearable. Cuttable only by a specifically designed tool. Unique yet embarrassingly cheap to manufacture. Or so the scanty and almost furtive records hinted. Probably the material was no more than the wish-fulfillment dreaming of a doodling A-Plus deadwood executive—but Zether had to know for sure. It just might be a live bombshell.
He was increasingly tired and thirsty. How many more miles could this tattered ribbon of crusted sludge wend its weary way through the inferno? His hope for some reasonable termination to this trek was evaporating along with the fluids of his body.
A-Plus Fabrics had developed it, and so it had been dubbed APFI via acronym. A remote site had been selected for test-marketing of apfi swatches while A-Plus wrestled with patent and mass-production bottlenecks. A report had been contemplated within a year, had not the business foundered for unconnected reasons. Seven years ago.
He stopped, letting the dust settle around his feet, rubbing his gritty eyes to verify the mirage. There was a structure ahead. He had arrived at Violet!
"Sweet Violet, sweeter than the roses," he sang as he staggered toward it, but the remaining words of his verses were not to be found in print.
It was an ordinary backwoods hamlet. There was one general store, one church, one school, one hotel, one gasoline station, one small bank, half a post office, and a dozen TV antennae—none of these artifacts modern except the last. One farmer-type male ambled away down the single street. Violet.
Well, this did fit the specification of "reasonably isolated community." It could take years for news of import to leak out of a burg this sleepy and serviced by a road this bad. No problem about any aggressive competitors tuning in on the survey and beating the originator to mass marketing. Here near the headwaters of the polluted Schist River was a township that sustained itself nicely at poverty level through farming, logging, and freelance quarrying....
What use would such a populace have for the modernistic apfi material, assuming the fabric existed? These people hardly seemed to have caught up to nylon. Yet, through the years of the test-marketing's inadvertent duration there had been a continued and rather healthy per-capita demand, if another thread of his researches spoke truly. The company lab had continued to produce a limited supply of something labeled "A," and the company shipping department had continued to route it to this one town, while the executive offices were unaware that the product existed. Typical coordination! But this suggested that there was a practical market for something, and Zether meant to cut himself in on the take by discovering on the QT exactly what it was. He had a few shares of stock and knew a few key people; he could gain control of this one product if it turned out to be worth his while. Provided no one else caught on prematurely.
Just as soon as he had cleaned up and coddled his blisters for maybe a fortnight....
He tromped into the lobby of the ancient hotel, heedless of appearances. It was empty, but in a moment a young woman appeared from some dusky recess. Even in the poor light and his disgruntled state he was impressed by her attributes: high fair cheekbones, elegantly coiffed black hair, finely molded neck, superlative breasts. "Room—hot bath—steak dinner with aperitif, delivered—do not disturb for anything short of Ragnarok," he said as he signed the register. Oh, to get off his flaming feet!
"Rag what rock?" she inquired, perplexed.
"Armageddon. Kaput. End of the—"
Then it hit him. Cheek, hair, neck, breasts—no wonder they had caught his glazed eyeball. All were thoroughly displayed. The girl was naked to the—he double-checked—feet. All she wore was a lumpy necklace.
It was a little late to react, so he didn't bother. In the morning he would realize that it had been a hallucination inspired by heat prostration though the lobby was air-conditioned and of conservative decor. Hardly conducive to visions of this nature.
She put away the register and took his coat, carrying it over one slender arm. "This way, sir," she said, coming into full view and preceding him to the curving staircase.
And the view was full, and the curves not confined to the stairwell. He followed, eyes lubricated by her amply flexing buttocks. He should get fatigued more often! The effect became dazzling as she ascended the steps, her hindquarters (though in truth they were full semicircles) now at his eye level, close.
She let him into the room, then entered herself. In a moment he heard water running and realized that the nymph was drawing the hot bath he had specified. "Uh, thank you," he said when she emerged, offering her a dollar tip.
She declined it. "You may settle your account when you leave, Mr. Zephyr."
"Zether," he said automatically. "Th, not ph."
She acknowledged the correction with a smile, and departed.
He stripped and dumped his sodden clothing on the easy chair, too weary to be fastidious, and marched into the bathroom. The water was fine, and he sank into its steaming ambience gratefully. Maid, proprietress—whoever she was, she had the touch. And the figure! His imagination wasn't that facile; he had seen what he had seen, every voluptuous bulge, crease, and ripple.
He soaked for forty minutes and felt much better. His calves retained some hard-core stiffness, and there were blisters on heels and toes, but he was otherwise in physical comfort. He dried off, stretched, slung the towel aside, and reentered the room. The door swung shut behind him, its latch clicking.
His steak dinner was there, reposing beautifully on its serving cart. So was the girl.
His clothing—all of it—was on the chair beyond. The towel was in the bathroom, and somehow his frantically fumbling hand couldn't locate the doorknob. He was ludicrously stranded in the ultimate dishabille, and it hardly became him.
"Is everything satisfactory, Mr. Zether?" she inquired, hefting her derriere off the edge of the cart and approaching him. Her bare breasts jiggled provocatively.
"Yes, yes..." he mumbled, feeling idiotic and more than politely embarrassed. Naked women tended to give him a reaction. What was he supposed to do now?