Mills's secretary had been hired not for her thirty years of experience so much as for her seventeen-year-old voice. Vibrant and girlish as ever, now it was also troubled. "It's some manager of a ranch in Wild Country, Mr. Mills, on line one. He says he can't speak with anyone else — and he seems to be crying."
CHAPTER 56
The hardest part about getting from New Vegas to Eureka was persuading Chabrier to shave. The man flatly refused to let anyone but a female registered nurse scrape the fur from his back, buttocks, and thighs, and finding a woman they could trust took Quantrill's contacts nearly a full day.
Quantrill was shipped in a container labeled 'Radioactive Waste'. No one had expected Marengo Chabrier — for that matter, they hadn't really expected Quantrill — so the scientist underwent six hours of cosmetic work. Chabrier was wheeled into a Greyhound omnibus as a sallow drooling fossil by the same slender nurse who had shaved him. Before they reached Eureka, Chabrier and the woman passed narrow scrutiny several times, and knew the stirrings of a beautiful relationship.
Quantrill was in no position to read faxpapers. Chabrier's nurse bought a fresh four-page edition at every stop and read it aloud as one might read to a bedridden child. Nowhere was there any mention of an explosion in the desert wilds of Zion, but the Reno Tattler was of the tabloid persuasion and squandered ink on a bizarre report from Wild Country. The Tattler confided that, according to unimpeachable sources, a creature the size of an elephant had emerged from its age-long sleep in local caverns to gorge on human flesh. Its most recent victim was a lovely young girl, one Eva Simmons, whose talon-ravaged parts had been found in the ruins of her isolated cabin.
So much for tabloid accuracy. Nothing in the piece gave Marengo Chabrier the slightest cause for concern.
Quantrill never saw young Brubaker again but, while retrieving a vacuum vial from one of old Brubaker's light fixtures in Eureka, he reminded the older man of their bargain. "I've had my paranthrax shots," he admitted, "so I'm not worried about Nashville. But if you have contacts in Corpus Christi, that's my choice. Is there some way I can go without climbing into another box?"
There was, said old Brubaker, if he didn't mind routing through Alta Mexico. "Port of Oakland or Los Angeles to Tucson, El Paso, Matamoros, and then to Corpus; Mexican territory all the way to the gulf.
You speak Spanish?"
"Enough to get by unless they grill me."
"They won't, with your papers. You'll be a security man, keeping your eye on dredging machinery that Midas Imports ships to Corpus. Mex transport is cheap with all their oil, so we route heavy stuff around Streamlined-ptooey-America. Anyway, you'll be safer on Mex soil than you'd be crossing Wild Country."
Quantrill recalled his days in Southwest Texas; the free-wheeling ways of the people who had a law unto themselves; and smiled. "I doubt it."
"Then you haven't heard what happened while you were earning your passage. Your friend Chabrier was debriefed last night with some LockLever people — he beat you here by a day, sorry 'bout that — when he heard about Eve Simpson."
Startled: "My God, Brubaker, I know the crazy broad!"
"Not any more, you don't." Old Brubaker gave him a sketchy version of the woman's death as reported by UBC Press. "It hit Chabrier pretty hard. He clammed up right away, but evidently she was carrying a keepsake he gave her. Would you know why it might be important to him?"
"Haven't the foggiest." Staring out the window at the growing port city, Quantrill mused, "I'm tempted to believe in fate, Brubaker. I mean, that huge boar is something I know about first-hand. I tracked him once after he snuffed a little kid I knew — but I never located him.
"And I met Simpson once. And now I find that Chabrier was a friend of hers, God help him! It's almost as if there really were only a few hundred people in the world…"
Old Brubaker stood beside him, chuckling, fondling his one-a-day cigar. "In a way it's true, Ted.
When you're as old as I am, you'll realize how few people there are who do pivotal things; people full of ideas and vitality, gamblers for the most part; stepping on people's toes as they pass, shaking the rest of us in our little ruts and striking sparks from each other. Not exactly a prescription for a quote, nice guy, unquote. My only surprise is that some of you live so long. Oh, you're obviously one of the breed," he said, showing patently false teeth, laughing at Quantrill's quizzical look. "So is Governor Street; so are those quintessential assholes, Young and Mills. I'm not saying all you hyperactive wowsers are good for us; only that you're all agents of change, one way or another. And I wouldn't trade places with you. I like to play chess, read a Michener epic I've read twice before, watch a long sunset; things I couldn't cram into a short life."
"And you expect to outlive me; is that it?"
Pause to light the stogie. A long pleasured puff. Gently, then: "Yes, I do. I got a look at the Canadian file on you, Ted. You've lived several lives' worth of risks and you're barely old enough to vote. If you keep living on the cutting edge — hell, as a cutting edge — you'll run out of reflexes or luck one day. Soon, maybe. Or later, maybe."
"It's been years since I had a chance to bullshit with someone like this," Quantrill sighed. "I'd like to try a slower pace, myself. I intend to, when all this is over."
"It'll never be over! There'll always be a gamble somewhere with your name on it, Ted."
"You don't think I could change?"
"Not sure you ought to. Remember, I sit in on the game too, now and then — with you, for instance. One day it could get me snuffed. But I've found a slot, call it a rut if you like, that isn't too hectic for a family man like me. If you weren't in such an all-fired hurry I'd invite you for a home-cooked meal. You're one guest my grandkids couldn't terrorize," he laughed.
"You keep sliding away from giving advice," Quantrill observed, studying the play of fine wrinkles that fanned from old Brubaker's eyes.
"Don't know you well enough. I just know that whenever you've been run through a meat-grinder, it's the machine that got busted." Now he was laughing again as he watched cigar smoke swirl in the afternoon light. "That's no small talent, Ted."
Quantrill, wistfully: "There must be another slot for me beyond that. Any ideas?"
Old Brubaker rocked on his heels, nodding, taking his sweet time. "Foreign correspondent," he finally murmured, "if you can face a holo camera."
"Scares me shitless."
"Security staff? God knows your training has taught you most of the angles."
"Possible," Quantrill hedged. "My trouble is that whether I worked for government or some corporation, they're always screwing somebody and I'd be likely to change sides."
"True," said Brubaker. "Then you'd just have to decide where your ethics pointed you. I can't tell you what your ethic is; I can only tell you that everybody has one, however twisted it might be. You're a long way ahead if you know what's likely to keep you awake nights. And," he said with a wink, "I've wasted ten minutes playing guru on the mountaintop to a man who knows what he wants."
"Do I?"
"Sure: temporary work with Midas Imports, and papers to get you to Corpus Christi. That little container seems to be burning a hole in your pocket. I don't want to know what it is, but I imagine Governor Street will. Am I right?"
Quantrill thought again of the critic, and of
Sanger, and felt his scalp tighten. However much he might long for the satisfactions of a Brubaker, he yearned more for redress. One day he might luxuriate in unhurried disputes of ethics. But for now, his was still an ethic of destruction.