Alex refused to continue. Reasoning from insufficient data almost invariably produces suspect conclusions. He would think more on this later.
They fed Tjanting a couple of drinks, then announced that they had to get back to their hotel.
Tjanting watched them leave. After a moment, she frowned, and a queer expression crossed her face.
Halfway across the Empire, two men were drinking raw alk and knocking the shots back with homebrew in a portabar not far from a construction site. One man was a contact welder, the other a bank vice president, slumming.
"You heard," the welder began, "about what happened when the Eternal Emperor picked up a joygirl? First time he says I'm gonna ravish you and make you moan. He does and she does.
"Then he says I'm gonna ravish you and make you scream. He does and she does.
"Then he says I'm gonna make you sweat. And the joygirl pulls back and says Huh? And he says because the next time's gonna be midsummer..."
The banker chortled politely. "Way I heard it, the Emp just thinks that there's some things a man's gotta take care of himself. And in his case, it's th‘ little stuff."
The welder returned the compliment of laughter, turned serious. "You never notice, Els, that the Emperor never shows up on a livie cast when he's somewhere doin‘ something ceremonial with a woman?"
"Why should he?"
"No reason," the welder said. "But if you was top dog, I'd assume there'd be a ton of honey trying to lurk on you, right? Like if you got promoted Chief Suit tomorrow?"
"Maybe. But my wife'd have words about that."
"Something else the Emperor's lacking."
"Maybe that's why he lives forever," the banker suggested. "He's just saving his precious natural resources."
"Assumin‘ he's got any."
Both men snickered, and attention was drawn to the livie screen and the gravball match's third quarter just beginning.
Both "jokes" were the work of Rykor's staff. Funny or not, they were intended to accomplish just what they were doing: to reduce the Eternal Emperor's image of omnipotence. In this particular instance, quite literally.
These jokes, and a hundred hundred others, coupled with some really nasty whispered rumors and legends, were moving through the Empire at a speed slightly above stardrive.
The nighttime ritual was for Alex to check their room to see if they had been blackbagged or bugged. Then he would wash up in the fresher. Afterward, Hotsco would get showered and powdered and join him in the great, old-fashioned feather bed. But only to sleep. Alex, the professional and the moralist, would never dream of taking advantage of a cover. Nor was he attracted to the slender young woman. Not at all his type.
Or so he lied at increasingly frequent intervals.
He lathered and scrubbed, luxuriating in the soft water that needled against his body, remembering times and missions when there was no water for anything but drinking, and barely enough for that. He turned to adjust the shower from NEEDLE to BLAST, and a giggle sounded in his ear, a giggle whose Alex's expert ear sonared at two centimeters' distance.
"Move over," Hotsco said "And give me the soap. Your back needs washing."
"Uh, lass..."
"I said, move over."
Alex did as he was told. Hotsco began scrubbing his back, soap moving in slow, sensual circles.
"I'm not looking," she said. "But I have a wager on what a Scotsman has under his kilt"
"Aye?" Alex said, a smile beginning to grow across his face. "An‘ y'd like't' feel someat thae's twenty-five centimeters? Reach under m‘ sporran twenty times."
Hotsco laughed. Her fingers moved on. Traced a red, ragged trough on Kilgour's biceps.
"What's that?" she wondered.
‘Thae's where Ah zigged like a clot when Ah should'a zagged. Wounds are a good way't' keep y'r ego frae gettin‘ overweenin't.
"Lass, thae's noo m‘ chest y're scrubbin't"
"That's all right," Hotsco said dreamily. "That's not the soap, either."
"If Ah turn aroun‘," Kilgour said, his voice a little husky, "Ah'll be startin'‘t' take th‘ wee game a bit seriously."
"Mmm."
Alex turned, reached down, and lifted Hotsco in his arms. Their lips met, and her legs closed around his thighs.
A bit later, they got out of the shower. They had to use Kilgour's robe as a towel, since the fresher looked like the site of a water-main explosion.
Outside was the moon shining on the bay and the dying lights of San Francisco.
"An‘ noo," Alex said, "we'll hie ourselves't' th‘ feathers, an' Ah'll noo hae't‘ worry aboot whether m' McLean powers are runnin't dry."
"Is that what you call it," Hotsco wondered. She crossed to her dresser, picked up a tube of aromatic oil, and slowly began rubbing it into her skin, smiling over her shoulder as she did.
"‘If y're th' lass wi‘ th' soap," Alex volunteered, "dinnae it be justice if Ah'm th‘ lad whae goes slip-slidin' away?"
He took the tube from her, squeezed some oil on his fingers, and then, suddenly, his instincts cut through the lust. He flipped Hotsco sideways, across the bed. She thudded into the feathers, too startled to shout—and the dressing-table mirror exploded.
Kilgour backrolled to the door, came up, pistol magically in hand, kneeling, braced... three rounds crashed as one... and out on the balcony the assassin's chest exploded.
Someone or something crashed against the door, and Kilgour sent three more AM2 rounds through it, the wood wisping and charring. There was a scream outside.
Alex grabbed the tiny transponder that was their only back door, shoved it in his mouth, and scooped up Hotsco in one arm. He took two gigantic steps across the room, shattering what remained of the balcony door's framework, high-stepped onto the balcony, and jumped. Hotsco yelped.
It was seven meters to the grassy turf below, and as Alex fell, he twisted his body, feet together, and used the uniformed cop who was gaping up at him as a trampoline.
The cop's ribs snapped, and he screamed a bloody gargle. Kilgour collapsed to his knees, absorbing the shock of the landing. Then he sprang back up, and, without pausing or dropping either Hotsco in one hand or his pistol in the other, hurtled toward the brushy cover around the inn.
An AM2 round exploded turf next to him—so, i's th‘ Emp's boyos, Kilgour recognized—and he spun and, without bothering to aim, pumped four rounds back up into the room they had just vacated.
Then he was juggernauting again.
By the time the pickup/hit squad of San Francisco cops and Internal Security operatives recovered, the white blur that was the naked heavy-worlder had vanished into the scrub.
Sirens ululated then, and lights flashed and corns crackled.
But Kilgour was gone.
Two kilometers away, Alex stopped running. He estimated that he was somewhere in that great jungle close to the end of the peninsula, where tigers who had been freed from the zoo aeons earlier stalked the night
The tiggers, he decided, would hae't‘ take their risks.
"Ah'm in no mood't‘ be trifled wi'," he announced softly. "Ah had plans f'r th‘ remaind'r ae th' evening."
Even though Hotsco had grown up on the far side of what most beings called the law, she was not used to this sort of thing—especially when it came at a blur of lightspeed. But she was clotting damned if she would lose face in front of Alex.
"I assume," she said, "the Empire just caught up with us."
"Aye," Alex said. "Thae hae willyguns. Th‘ custom's lass narked on us. Ah dinnae catch her last name, Hotsco. Dinnae y' ken i‘ it wae Campbell?"
He seemed completely oblivious to the fact they were both stark naked—and that their sole assets, against a city and a world that would be raising a hue and cry against them, were a pistol and a transponder.