CHAPTER 70
Quantrill found his round-trip longer than he bargained for. He used the excuse of job-hunting to meet the Schreiner safari manager, a grizzled professorial fellow named Jess Marrow whose degrees in veterinary medicine gave him enviable job security.
The unflappable Marrow conducted the interview while repairing a split horn on a sedated Texas longhorn bull of stupendous proportions. Why sure, there were Fed agents around; they stuck out a mile, said Marrow, applying cement to the horn. 'Course, they hadn't found that necklace the fat lady lost. For one thing, Marrow and others had given false directions to places where Eve Simpson had supposedly visited. For another, if she'd worn it the night that monster got into her cabin, the boar could have eaten it.
Did Quantrill know there was good evidence that she had let the boar into her cabin? Quantrill hadn't known and could hardly believe it, let alone understand it. Wouldn't a Russian boar charge the moment he saw a human? Not necessarily, Marrow said; you never knew what the brute might do unless you presented him with an oestrus female or a snake. A boar was very dependable then: all solicitude to a ready sow, pure hell on any snake.
Marrow bound the horn expertly with biodegradable tape, slapped the bull affectionately and eased off the tension from head bindings as he talked. As for the necklace, Marrow and two other Indy employees had gone high and nigh looking for it in the right places. With metal detectors? Sure, and r-f detectors too! A slow drawl, Marrow twinkled, didn't have to mean a slow brain.
Maybe Marrow could describe what the necklace looked like. Indeed he could, if the picture those young Search & Rescue fellas flashed was any guide. Marrow could describe it with a pencil, he said, and proved it with an exquisite sketch, his stubby fingers moving with surgical skill.
Quantrill studied the piece of polypaper, grubbing into his memory for the phrase Marrow had penciled:
'Ember of Venus'. Wasn't that a priceless jewel all by itself? Pretty near, Marrow admitted, but he suspected the decorations on its mounting meant that the thing was also a memory-storage gadget. Why else would the Feds put so much effort into its recovery? The bastards already had all the money in the country. And by the way, if Quantrill intended to go nosing around on the Schreiner spread, he'd best set up a cover activity. Marrow wouldn't mind having him as a helper for a spell; rumor had it that young Quantrill could tell many a fuzznutted yarn if he felt like it.
As Quantrill tucked the drawing away in a shirt pocket, he asked Marrow his estimate of the chances that the Ember of Venus would be found. Poor to middlin', said the older man. If it ever turned up, chances were the finder would try to sell it to a rich Mex. Meanwhile, did Ted Quantrill need that job?
Well, that depended on what the Governor needed. Quantrill was no great shakes on a horse, and said so. Hell, said Marrow, they had enough wranglers in Wild Country already, and Quantrill was built more like a bull-rider anyhow. What the Schreiner spread really needed was someone with special abilities to counter the poachers and other lawless types that made life cheaper than it should be.
Quantrill wondered why they didn't have U. S. Marshals for that.
Jess Marrow wondered, too.
Quantrill took his leave with a handshake from the shrewd Marrow — and with the air of a preoccupied man. It was already midafternoon, and he had a long ride ahead of him.
He arrived at the soddy with most of the kinks shaken — vibrated, actually — from his muscles, and earned himself another long speech from Childe. "Go wash, Sandy's not ready," was the full extent of it.
He twitched her braid and called her ‘sis', washing at the gravity-flow spigot from the big plastic tank that nestled in earth near the soddy's roof. Then he noticed the sweat and caliche stains on his clothes, removed shirt and trousers, applied homemade soap to them in hopes of making himself halfway respectable in Rocksprings. One thing about Goretex clothing: it didn't take long to dry.
He was swinging the trousers to dry them, enduring the chill on his bare shanks, when he heard Sandy's call. Custom was a harsh taskmaster, he thought as he pulled the wet trousers on; Sandy had seen him nearly naked, breathed life into his body — yet custom dictated that he wear those goddam trousers no matter how they chilled his arse.
"Well, — you tried," Sandy giggled as he approached, his wet hair plastered to his forehead. "Surprise."
And she drew a flesh-tinted bundle from behind her. Childe burst from behind the door then, shrilling,
"S'prise, s'prise," like a Comanche, hovering near as he accepted his new shirt.
It was a lovely supple thing of softest deerskin, a pullover with long sleeves that puffed gently near the wrists. Its collar, its breast pocket with scalloped flap, the cut of it across the shoulders, all had the flavor of prairie tailoring but its slender fringes said 'mountain man'. "Didn't have time for the beadwork," she said shyly.
He turned it about, speechless, wondering how she could have magicked such a garment on a day's notice. Then he was wrestling into it, clasping the velcrolok wristlets, running his hands along the velvety sleeves. "And just my size," he marveled when his tongue came unglued.
"When you rub a man down you more or less take his measurements," she said airily. "High time those snooty girls in Rocksprings envied me a little."
Quantrill hugged her, winked at Childe, then hurried back to retrieve the shirt he had left near the soap.
The folded polypaper lay where he had left it. He brought both articles into the soddy, tossing the sketch onto Sandy's wooden table.
Supper was catch-as-catch-can. Quantrill dipped into his toilet articles to shave and assault his unruly hair, talking with Sandy about his job offer at the Schreiner ranch. As though it were of no importance, Sandy asked if the missing necklace had been found.
"Nope. Probably just as well, too." Prodded to say what he meant by that, he addressed his cowlick with his comb and replied, "Too many people would kill for it, Sandy. Rumor.says it's got a memory module with some kind of secrets the Feds want kept — but I have my own ideas about it. Matter of fact, there's a sketch of the thing on your table."
She moved to the table. Her fingers trembled but, peering into her broken mirror, Quantrill did not notice.
She unfolded the polypaper, studied the sketch for a breathless moment, let the chill pass through her body before she asked, "What's your idea?"
"Oh — a crazy one, probably. I met a fellow up North who'd worked on something for the fu — the bloody Feds. According to the Canadians, it was a gadget that could synthesize stuff — rare metals, even gold. This guy was the boss of the lab, and somehow he got friendly with Eve Simpson. And believe me, he wanted out of his job badly enough that he'd agree to anything." He turned around "Will I pass inspection?"
"You're a wow, and don't change the subject. What about this gadget?"
"Oh. Well, it could make you an aspirin out of thin air, or enough gold to buy a Senator. So this guy gives a necklace to Simpson — but apparently she already owned this huge jewel, a kind of opal to end all opals. All he gave her was the setting, you see. And it's supposed to have a solid-state device of some kind in it. Now then: what if the gadget he gave her included plans for that synthesizer?"
Her voice was muted: "You tell me."
"No synthesizers anymore. Blooey. The Feds must have the plans for it, but they'd do anything to keep them secret. So maybe, I thought, that necklace has plans for a synthesizer."
Sandy folded the sketch; set it on a high shelf where Childe would not see it. She remembered the odor of very old eggs which Childe had somehow coaxed from the amulet. Teasingly she said, "I've got a wilder idea than that. What if the necklace had a real synthesizer built into it?"