Mills maintained his studious mien, implied a 'natural' preference for his existing Intelligence connections, and steadily built a case for testing optimal control theory on segments of the public. He permitted himself to be persuaded that the best way to test his ideas lay with the feedback techniques already in use by the OPI. Besides, the OPI was fundamentally a service available to both Intelligence and Operations, both of which could profit from Mills's work as media control segued into social control.
By mid-July, Lt. Commander Boren Mills had seen the orders posting him to Sound Stage West. His floppy cassettes, his notes, even old textbooks were accorded special security and Mills made certain that his personal effects were packed in the same containers. In one container lay a souvenir for which he had a less than compelling cover story. It was hardly larger than a breadbox. He hoped he would not have to claim he had found it among the personal effects of Radioman Second Class Kimball Norton.
Chapter Seventy
The revenues of Schleicher County, Texas were not wasted on air-conditioning the Eldorado jail. Quantrill had sweated off two kilos after three days in his shared cell. "Man's got a right to be with his helpmeet," he yelled, shaking the bars, the concrete walls mocking him with echoes.
"If you was a man," chuckled the husky scarred specimen who lay on the lower bunk, "you wouldn't'a let no half pint deputy bust you both."
"God's curse on 'em," Quantrill spat, then railed again at the bars. "God's curse on the gentile bastards!"
"I've had about enough of your noise," said his cellmate. "You and that hightits bitch in the women's wing — what's her name? Delight?"
"Delight," Quantrill yelled, his shoulder-length hair flying as he gripped the bars again. "Pray for deliverance, darlin'!"
From the opposite wing came an answering cry; a pitiable hopeless wail of female anguish. Sanger's voice, maintaining the guise of a young woman easily led.
The open-handed slap drove Quantrill's head against steel bars. "I'll give you deliverance if you don't shut up," said the man, fists on hips, no longer good-humored. "Them gentiles won't care if I beat some true religion into you."
Quantrill, huddling on his knees, hid his face and surreptitiously watched the man's feet. A reasonable amount of abuse, he could handle; but he could not pursue an assignment in the field with broken ribs. Snuffling, wishing he had the knack of weeping real tears on demand: “You sound like my pa."
"Maybe I am your pa," said the man, pleased with himself. "Your ma ever mention a Mitch Beasley?" Beasley eased himself back on his bunk.
"My ma didn't talk about men," said the youth querulously. "She was a good God-fearin' vessel — like my Delight. " He let the silence spread; turned and wiped his nose on his sleeve; let his eyes grow wide and full of ersatz trust. "You really do remind me of my pa," he said. "But pa wasn't no gentile. He was kind of a prophet."
"The hell you say," Beasley murmured.
"We liberated a lot of folks, pa and me," Quantrill insisted. "Andalotofwordly treasure, too. Why, the stuff we buried near Ozona would buy salvation for a dozen sinners."
Beasley, after a long thoughtful pause: "I might just want to meet your pa."
"Gone to his reward," Quantrill said, biting his lip, looking away.
Locusts buzzed in the hackberry tree outside the cell. Beasley's bunk creaked. After an endless thirty seconds: "What if I was to tell you they call me Prophet Beasley?"
Contact. Quantrill had begun to think he'd wasted three more days on another false lead. He made his eyes wide again, came up to a kneeling position, his mouth slightly open. "I didn't think no jail could hold a true prophet," he said.
"Not in the fullness of time," Beasley intoned, studying the muscles of his heavy forearms as he stretched. The deep-chested voice lowered to accommodate the topic: "Maybe it was God's will brought us together, boy. You ever think about that?"
Quantrill gave a tentative nod, then clasped his hands and bowed over them. "Before you decide to leave, will you bless the union of me and my helpmeet?"
"It don't always work that way," Beasley said.
"Maybe — just maybe, God sent me as your earthly salvation."
Time to set the hook. "I'd have to think on it, pray on it. One thing sure, whatever happens me and Delight already said our vows before God."
"You sayin' you're purely stuck on that little hightits I seen joggin' around the exercise yard?"
Quantrill, head bowed: "We said our vows. I can't change that now."
"We'll see," said Beasley, and began to whistle a border tune through the gap in his front teeth. The youth retreated to the far corner of the cell, palms together, speaking in a near-whisper unintelligible from Beasley's bunk.
Quantrill had promised to pray for guidance. In a way he was doing precisely that. "Tau Sector, Tau Sector," he narrowcast, and waited for his critic to reply. Control had set them onto cold trails twice; this one felt warmer by the second.
Sandys jurnal Jul 18 Fri.
Mom says their going to librate profet Beasly soon as profet Jansen and his men get back from trading up north. They make lots ofhooraw about revlashuns but there afraid to say boo without Jansen. Mom says sooner or later theyll come back with a possy on their tails. Dont you wait for nothing me or Child either Sandy, she says, you hitail it. These dam profets wont let us be took alive.
Chapter Seventy-One
Though it had been dark for three hours, Quantrill was still perspiring as he lay on his sodden upper bunk cursing a week of inactivity and Beasley's body odor. An insomniac locust still sizzled outside, endorsing the summer heat. He heard the faint squeal of brakes in the distance, then only night sounds. Presently he heard a murmur beyond the lockup; someone talking with the lone deputy. Quantrill would never know how the deputy had been taken out, but knew from the muffled commotion outside the window that someone outside was not too worried about discovery.
"Gadianton," said a male voice somewhere outside their window. In the front office, an alarm quavered, tripped by perimeter sensors.
Beasley rolled to his feet, chinned himself to the high window ledge. Quantrill noted the man's swift physical power. "Lamanites," Beasley hissed the countersign. "Here; and hurry up, I got acolytes."
A cargo hook grated on the ledge, linked to a steel beam that Beasley laid across inside the bars. Beasley was obviously experienced at demolition. From his upper bunk, Quantrill could see gloved hands arranging a one-cm, glass rope that stretched away into darkness. “We got maybe five minutes," said the man outside; "Jansen's got a reg'lar Saturday-night ruckus goin' in a roadhouse up north. But he didn't say nothin" about nobody else."
"I got reasons he'll understand," Beasley insisted. "Now, haul away!"
"On yore head be it — and you better get under somethin', don't forget that roof collapse in Ros well." Racing footsteps dopplered away.
A diesel coughed to life, steadied, clamored in the dark. At the window was only a keening scrape of protest while the cellmates lay curled beneath thin musty mattresses. Then a screech of metal, a shambling clatter of concrete and a puff of dust into the cell.