“I could have told you all that, Roy,” Sandra said, refilling her own wineglass. “How anyone can live FirstSide, from what the video shows, is beyond me.”
Tom looked at her. “What if you didn’t want to work the horses here at Seven Oaks?”
“Why shouldn’t I?” she said, obviously puzzled. “I love horses, and this is my home—I was born here and so was my father.”
“But if you didn’t?”
“If I didn’t like it here, I’d go somewhere else and get a job. We aren’t slaves, and I’m good at what I do. A dozen places would be glad to take me on; and I’ve had more than one guy offer me a ring, you know—men with their own farms, or horse trainers.”
“I don’t suppose you get invited up here for dinner all that often,” Tom said. “When it isn’t harvest supper, that is.”
“Once upon a time—you might be surprised,” she said, with a twinkle in her dark eyes. “But anyway, yeah, that’s true for most people, but how often did you have dinner with… oh…” She stopped, obviously searching for a FirstSide equivalent to Adrienne or her grandfather.
“The governor? Bill Gates?” Tully said, grinning. “All the time, girl. Why, just the other day I dropped in on Bill at home and went into the kitchen and popped myself a brewski. Then I slapped my ass down on the sofa beside Billy-boy and his old lady and I said, ‘Bill, how’re they hanging? And dude, you gotta do something about the bugs in the new—”
Tom waved him quiet. “OK, OK, Tonto, I get the idea. Nice not to have to feel too guilty about my own take on things, you betcha.”
Sandra went on, “And can you call up the governor or this Gates guy and get help or backup if you need it?” she said. “Doesn’t sound like it; from what I’ve heard it’s sink or swim over there. I can go to Adrienne or her dad if I have to—I’m a Rolfe affiliate and so was my dad. We back them up—they back us up.”
Tom nodded; it wasn’t what he’d been brought up to think of as the ideal system, but as Tully had said, it didn’t seem impossibly bad; he’d been in places—Turkmenistan, for instance—where people literally physically broke out into a cold sweat of fear when someone mentioned the Maximum Leader’s name without implying he walked on air, or publicly doubted that he’d earned every one of the votes he needed to come out at ninety-nine percent plus every single election.
Adrienne had turned back and caught the last of that. Her leaf-green eyes were full of an ironic amusement… and real fondness. “Satisfied?”
“No,” he said. “But I’m not completely repulsed, either.” He smiled back at her. “In a manner of speaking…”
“Glad to know I’m not completely repulsive,” she said.
“Roy and I will help you with this… political problem you’ve got,” he went on, and felt an absurd lurch at the brilliance of her smile. “Once the”—carefully unnamed conspiracy, in this rather public venue—“problem is solved, all bets are off, of course.”
“Of course,” Adrienne said gravely. “And now… we can dance.”
The band pealed out a high sustained brass note, then swung into action. Tom led Adrienne out; Tully was already cutting a jitterbug rug on the way over, with Sandra clapping her hands as she followed. A pair of heels and long slender bare legs suddenly appeared over the head of the crowd, as one girl did a daring handstand on her partner’s palms. Tom met Adrienne’s eyes, nodded, gripped her hands and swung her over one hip, over the other, down between his legs, up in an overhead twirl….
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“Now, this is the way I like to go on an op,” Tully said. “Landed gentry of goddamned Little Rock, that’s me. Natural affinity for horses. Make way, ye peasants!”
“You’re not falling off anymore, at least,” Sandra replied.
When I stop feeling vaguely guilty, I’m really going to enjoy this place, Tom thought as he watched. And when I don’t have the prospect of a long deadly hike through deserts and savage hostile nomads toward a fortress stuffed full of heavily armed Aztec mercenaries. Of course, if I get a chance to get back, all bets are off. He’d made that clear.
He and the object of his thoughts stood watching side by side, each with a foot on the lowest plank of the board fence, leaning on posts with their elbows—his at breastbone level, hers just under her chin. Tully was staying on better; he didn’t have any particular gift for horses, but he did have good balance, excellent coordination and physical training to draw on. And falls didn’t faze him, which had won him a good deal of respect from Sandra, who had evidently been put on her first pony about the time she graduated from diapers.
Tom wasn’t surprised in the least; he’d never yet met anything in the way of physical danger that did faze Roy. He had the scrappy determination of a terrier.
And if we win, and then there’s no way to get out of here… I won’t die of grief, he thought, breathing in the mixed scent of horses, pepper trees, warm dust and greenery.
He’d miss his brother Lars and his sister-in-law and nieces and nephews, but he didn’t see them more than once a year anyway. And he had no other close ties….
“Elbows in, and don’t flap them!” Sandra called to her pupil. “You’re supposed to hold the reins, not try to fly like a crow!”
Tully grinned and obeyed, turning his mount with leg pressure. It broke into a canter—Sandra called again, telling him to keep his knees bent to absorb the harder gait—then into a gallop, and rose over an obstacle of poles and barrels.
“Not bad,” Adrienne said judiciously. “He’s really a very quick learner.”
“Glad you like him,” Tom said, and found that he was. I keep getting these irrational bursts of benevolence, he thought. Must be love.
“Jim Simmons heard from Frontier Scout HQ this morning,” Adrienne said more softly. “He and his tracker will be taking a coastal schooner down to San Diego—he’s been assigned to look into the tribal raiding there.”
“Convenient,” he said, and she grinned back at him.
“And how are we to make our descent on the southland look casual?” he asked.
“By making it casual,” she said. “Hmmm. Can you fly a light airplane?”
“Yah, you betcha,” Tom said. “Roy too. Fish and Game liked its field people to qualify.”
“Then we’ll—”
One of the stable hands came up and cleared her throat. “Miz Rolfe,” she said. “Fella from the paper wants to talk to you.”
Adrienne muttered an impolite word under her breath. “Fetch him, then, Terry.”
The reporter was a photographer too, carrying the latest digital model. To Tom’s eyes it clashed horribly with the suit and snap-brimmed fedora and pencil-thin trimmed mustache; it was like a computer terminal in It Happened One Night. He looked to be about thirty, with reddish-brown short-cut hair and hazel eyes and a sharp, foxy face.
“Miz Rolfe,” the man said, “you may not remember me—”
“How could I forget?” she said with a charming smile, extending a hand. “Charlie Carson, isn’t it? Society news column for City and Domain magazine? I remember the article you did when I got back from Stanford.”
“Yeah,” he said, flushing a little with pleasure. “That was the first under my own byline. Nice of you to recall. I was wondering if you could give me a few words on the Toni Bosco matter? And maybe a picture?”