Christ Almighty, the Strategic Air Command! If the goons on the Court gave even partial credence to the appeal—and it was an appeal to conscience as well as legality—whole segments, if not all of SAC, would be the property of some minuscule, indigent Indian tribe with the half-assed name of Wopotami! The law was specific: All subsequent structures and materials found on usurped or stolen real estate belonged to the injured party or parties. Holy shit!
Rest—maybe even sleep, if he could manage it. Aaron had been right when he and Mac had returned around midnight and Sam had bombarded Hawkins with what he had to admit were relatively hysterical questions and accusations.
«Finish it, my boy, then get some sleep and we’ll talk tomorrow. Nothing’s accomplished when the strings are too taut to find the proper notes; and to be perfectly honest with you, gentlemen, I face a discordant coda for the evening when I see my darling Shirley… Why, oh why, Sam, did you ever mention that infernal art show to me?»
«I figured you’d be mad at me when you found out I didn’t go to it with one of our richest clients because his wife keeps trying to feel me up. Also, I didn’t tell Shirley.»
«I know, I know,» Aaron had said in defeat. «Would you believe I told her because I thought it was amusing, and pointed up an honorable aspect of your character? A minimum of five hundred attorneys I know would be in intimate contact with the lady at the slightest provocation.»
«Sam’s better than that, Commander Pinkus,» MacKenzie Hawkins had insisted. «The lad’s got principles, although they’re not always so apparent.»
«General, may I suggest once again that you remove yourself from Samuel’s presence for the reasons we discussed at dinner? You’ll find the guest bedroom most accommodating.»
«Has it got television? I like to find those war movies, that’s what it’s all about, you know.»
«You don’t even have to get out of bed. Just aim the remote and shoot from a comfortable foxhole.»
Jesus, he was exhausted! thought Devereaux, as he got out of the chair and ambled his way into the master bedroom, only vaguely aware that Aaron had had the courtesy to turn on the bedside lamp. He closed the door—firmly—and concentrated on his shoes—which should he take off first, and how? The conundrum was solved when he reached the bed and fell down on it, his shoes intact, his eyes closed. Sleep was immediate.
Then, from distant halls of complete vacuum, a jarring, incessant alarm reached him, growing in volume until his personal galaxy was shocked into successive explosions. He reached for the telephone, noting that the crystal bedside clock read eight-forty. «Yes?» he mumbled.
«This is Scratch Your Assets, you lucky, lucky person you!» shrieked the voice over the line. «This morning we’re calling hotels picked at random from our revolving bowl by a member of our great audience, and then a room number from the second bowl picked by the most recent grandmother from our great, great audience, and you’re it, you lucky person! All you have to do is tell me what tall, bearded President gave the Gettysburg Address and you win a Watashitti clothes dryer from the Mitashovitzu Company, who just happens to own this great station! What’s your answer, you terrific person?»
«Fuck off,» replied Sam, blinking at the sunlight that streaked through the windows.
«Cut the tape! Somebody get the juggling dwarfs and go out to the audience—»
Devereaux replaced the phone and groaned; he had to get up and read his notes, and the prospect was not appealing. Nothing at all was appealing in his foreseeable future, which was filled with black holes that would swallow him up and endlessly deep crevices through which he would fall, spinning in agony for an eternity. Goddamn Hawkins! Why did the maniac military son of a bitch have to come back in his life?… Where was Hawkins? It was not like the drill-happy war-horse to greet the morning with less than a full-throated battle cry. Maybe he had died in his sleep—no, some things were too good to be hoped for realistically. Mac would go on forever, terrifying succeeding generations of peaceful innocents. Still, silence and MacKenzie Hawkins were a dangerous combination; nothing good ever came from a quiet predator. Sam rose from the bed, surprised but hardly astonished that his shoes were still on his feet, and walked unsteadily to the door. Cautiously he opened it, only to see Von Maniac seated behind Aaron’s desk in a bathrobe, looking for all the world like a kindly old grandfather, peering through metal-framed glasses at that ill-begotten, nefarious brief.
«Your morning reading material, Mac?» asked Devereaux sarcastically, walking into the suite’s sitting room.
«Well, hello there, Sam,» said the Hawk warmly, removing his glasses as though he were a retired elderly academic of gentle disposition. «Have a good sleep? I didn’t hear you get up.»
«Don’t give me that little old winemaker routine, you conniving python. Outside of the telephone, you probably heard every breath I took, and if there were trees in here and it was dark, I’d have a garrote around my throat.»
«Now, son, you really do misjudge me, and let me tell you it pains me sorely.»
«Only a megalomaniac could make such an appeal referring to himself three times in one sentence.»
«We all change, boy.»
«The leopard has spots when he’s born and he has spots when he dies. You are a leopard.»
«I guess it’s better than a python, eh?… There’s juice and coffee over on the table, also a couple of Danish. Have some; it keeps the morning blood sugar up—damned important, you know.»
«Are you into geriatric medicine now?» asked Devereaux, going to the room-service table and pouring himself black coffee. «Selling tonic to natives?»
«I’m not getting any younger, Sam,» answered Hawkins, a note of sadness in his voice.
«I was just thinking about that in a roundabout way, and you know what I decided? I decided that you were going to live forever, an eternal threat to the planet.»
«That’s an impressive evaluation, son. There are good threats and bad threats, and I thank you for the status you afford me.»
«Christ, you’re impossible!» mumbled Devereaux, carrying his coffee to the chair in front of the desk and sitting down. «Mac, where did you get all that stuff? How did you get it? Who put it together?»