The SF Hall of Fame Volume Two B (17 page)

Hawks said: "Mr. Connington met me personally for the
first time this morning."

Claire Pack laughed with a bright metallic ripple. "Do
people offer you drinks, Ed?"

"I don't think that'll work either, Claire,"
Connington growled.

"Shut up," she said. "Well, Ed?" She
lightly held up the thermos jug, which seemed to be nearly empty. "Scotch
and water?"

"Thank you, yes. Would Mr. Barker feel more comfortable
about getting out of the pool, if I were to turn my back while he was fastening
his leg?"

Connington said: "She's never this blatant after she's
made her first impression. Watch out for her."

She laughed again, throwing her head back. "He'll come
out when he's good and ready. He might even like it if I sold tickets to the
performance. Don't you worry about Al, Ed." She unscrewed the top of the
jug, pulled the cork, and poured a drink into the plastic top. "No spare
glasses or ice out here, Ed. It's pretty cold, anyhow. All right?"

"Perfectly, Claire," Hawks said. He took the cup
and sipped at it. "Very good." He held the cup in his hands and
waited for her to fill her glass.

"How about me?" Connington said. He was watching
the hair stir at the nape of Claire Pack's neck, and his eyes were shadowed.

"Go get a glass from the house," she said. Leaning
forward, she touched the side of her glass to Hawks' cup. "Here's to a well-balanced
life."

Hawks smiled fleetingly and drank. She reached out and put
her hand on his ankle. "Do you live near here, Ed?"

Connington said: "She'll chew you up and spit you out,
Hawks.

Give her half a chance, and she will. She's the biggest
bitch on two continents. But you've got to figure Barker would have somebody
like her around."

Claire turned her head and shoulders and looked squarely at
Con-nington for the first time. "Are you trying to start something,
Connie?" she asked in a mild voice.

Something flickered in Connington's face. But then he said:
"Doctor Hawks is here on business, Claire."

Hawks looked up at Connington curiously over the rim of his
cup. His black eyes were intent for a moment, then shifted to Claire Pack,
brooding.

Claire said to Connington: "Everybody's everywhere on
some kind of business. Everybody who's worth a damn. Everybody has something he
wants. Something more important than anything else. Isn't that right, Connie?
Now, go tend to your business, and 111 manage mine." Her look came back to
Hawks, catching him off guard. Her eyes held his momentarily. Then they widened
and wavered away before she brought them determinedly back. "I'm sure Ed
can take care of his own," she said.

Connington flushed, twisted his mouth to say something,
turned sharply, and marched away across the grass. In a flash of brief
expression, Claire Pack smiled enigmatically to herself.

Hawks sipped his drink. "He's not watching any longer.
You can take your hand away from my ankle."

She smiled sleepily. "Connie? I tease him to oblige
him. He's forever coming up here, since he met Al and myself. The thing is—he
can't come up alone, you understand? Because of the bend in the driveway. He
could do it if he gave up driving those big cars, or he could bring a woman
along to help him make it. But he never brings a woman, and he won't give up
either that car or those boots. He brings a new man almost every time."
She smiled. "He asks for it, don't you see? He wants it."

"These men he brings up," Hawks asked.
"Do
you chew them up and spit them out?"

Claire threw her head back and laughed. "There are all
kinds of men. The only kind that're worth anyone's time are the ones I can't
mangle the first time out."

"But there are other times after the first time? It never
stops? I didn't mean Connington was watching us. I meant Barker. He's pulling
himself out of the pool. Did you deliberately place his artificial leg so he'd
have to strain to reach it? Simply because you knew another new man was coming
and would need to be shown how fierce you were?"

For a moment, the skin around her lips seemed crumpled and
spongy. Then she said: "Are you curious to find out how much of it is
bluff?" She was in complete control of herself again.

Hawks said nothing to this for a moment. "Are you a
long-time friend of Mr. Barker's?" he asked at last.

Claire Pack nodded. She smiled challengingly.

Hawks nodded, checking off the point. "Connington was
right, I think."

Barker had long arms and a flat, hairy stomach, and was
wearing knitted navy blue swimming trunks without an athletic supporter. He was
a spare, wiry man with a tight, clipped voice, saying "How d'you do?"
as he strode briskly across the grass. He snatched up the thermos and drank
from it, throwing his head back and holding the jug upraised. He gasped with
great pleasure, thumped the jug down beside Claire Pack, wiped his mouth, and
sat down. "Now, then!" he exclaimed. "What's all this?"

"Al, this is Doctor Hawks," Claire said evenly.
"Not an M.D. He's from Continental Electronics. He wants to talk to you.
Connie brought him."

"Delighted to meet you," Barker said, heartily
extending a hand. There were burn scars on the mottled flesh. One side of his
face had the subtle evenness of plastic surgery. "Can't say I've ever heard
of your work, I'm afraid."

Hawks took the hand and shook it. "I've never met an
Englishman who'd call himself Al."

Barker laughed in a brittle voice. His face changed subtly.
"Matter of fact, I'm nearly as English as Paddy's pig. Amerind's the
nationality."

"Al's grandparents were Mimbreno Apaches," Claire
said with some sort of special intonation. "His grandfather was the most
dangerous man alive on the North American continent. His father found a silver
lode that assayed as high as any deposit ever known. Does it still hold that
record, darling?" She drawled the question. Without waiting for an answer,
she said: "And Al has an Ivy League education."

Barker's face was tightening, the small, prominent cheekbones
turning pale. He reached abruptly for the thermos. Qaire smiled at Hawks.
"Al's fortunate he isn't on the reservation. It's against Federal law to
sell an Indian liquor."

Hawks waited for a moment. He watched Barker finish the jug.
"I'm curious, Mr. Barker," he said then. "Is that your only
reason for exploiting a resemblance to something you're not?"

Barker stopped with the jug half-lowered. "How would
you
like shaving your head to a Lenape scalplock, painting your face and body
with aniline dyes, and performing a naked wardance on the main street of a New
England college town?"

"I wouldn't join the fraternity."

"That would never occur to Al," Claire said,
leaning back on her elbows. "Because, you see, at the end of the
initiation he was a full-fledged fraternity brother. At the price of a lifelong
remembrance, he gained a certain status during his last three undergraduate
years. And a perpetual flood of begging letters from the fun committee."
She ran one palm up the glossy side of Barker's jaw and let the fingers trail
down his shoulder and arm. "But where is Delta Omicron today? Where are
the snows of yesteryear? Where is the Mimbreno boy?" She laughed and
lolled back against Barker's good thigh.

Barker looked down at her in twisted amusement. He ran the
fingers of one hand into her hair. "You mustn't let Qaire put you off,
Doctor," he said. "It's only her little way." He seemed unaware
that his fingers were clenched around the sun-bleached strands of hair, and
that they were twisting slightly and remorselessly. "Claire likes to test
people."

"Yes," Hawks said. "But I came here to see
you."

Barker seemed not to have heard. He looked at Hawks with a
level deadliness. "It's interesting how Claire and I met. Seven years ago,
I was on a mountain in the Alps. I rounded a sheer face—it had taken a
court
d'echelle
from another man's shoulders, and a piton traverse, to negotiate
it—and she was there." Now his hand was toying tenderly. "She was
sitting with one leg over a spur, staring down into the valley and dreaming to
herself. Like that. I had no warning. It was as if she'd been there since the
mountain was made."

Claire laughed softly, lying back against Barker and looking
up at Hawks. "Actually," she said, "I'd come 'round by an easier
route with a couple of French officers. I wanted to go down the way Al had come
up, but they'd said it was too dangerous, and refused." She shrugged.

"So I went back down the mountain with Al. I'm really
not very complicated, Ed."

"Before she went, I had to knock the Frenchmen about a
little bit," Barker said, and now his meaning was clear. "I believe
one of them had to be taken off by helicopter. And I've never forgotten how one
goes about keeping one's hold on her."

Claire smiled. "I'm a warrior's woman, Ed."
Suddenly she moved her body, and Barker let his hand fall. "Or at least we
like to think so." Her nails ran down Barker's torso. "It's been
seven years, and nobody's taken me away yet." She smiled fondly up at
Barker for an instant, and then her expression became challenging again.
"Why don't you tell Al about this new job, Ed?"

"New job?" Barker smiled in a practiced way.
"You mean Connie actually came up here on business?"

Hawks studied Claire and Barker for a moment. Then he made
up his mind. "All right. I understand you have clearance, Mr.
Barker?"

Barker nodded. "I do." He smiled reminiscently.
"I've worked for the Government off and on before this."

"I'd like to speak to you privately, in that
case."

Claire stood up lazily, smoothing her sunsuit over her hips.
"I'll go stretch out on the diving board for a while. Of course, if I were
an efficient Soviet spy, I'd have microphones buried all over the lawn."

Hawks shook his head. "No. If you were a really
efficient spy, you'd have a directional microphone on the diving board. You
wouldn't need anything better. I'd be glad to show you how to set one up,
sometime, if you're interested."

Claire laughed. "Nobody ever steals a march on Doctor
Hawks. I'll remember that next time." She walked slowly away, her hips
swaying.

Barker turned to follow her with his eyes until she had
reached the far end of the pool and arranged herself on the board. Then he
turned back to Hawks. "She walks in beauty, like the night—even in the
blaze of day, Doctor."

"I assume that's to your taste," Hawks said.

Barker nodded. "Oh, yes, Doctor—I meant what I said
earlier. Don't let anything she does or says let you forget she's mine not
because I have money, or good manners, or charm. I do have money, but she's
mine by right of conquest."

Hawks sighed. "Mr. Barker, I need you to do something
very few men in the world seem to be qualified to do. That is, if there are any
at all besides yourself. I have very little time in which to look for others.
So would you mind just looking at these photographs?"

Hawks reached into his inside breast pocket and brought out
a small manila envelope. He undid the clasp, turned back the flap, and pulled
out a thin sheaf of photographs. He looked at them carefully, on edge so that
only he could see what they showed, selected one, and passed it to Barker.

Barker looked at it curiously, frowned, and, after a moment,
handed it back to Hawks. Hawks put it behind the other pictures. It showed a
landscape that at first seemed to be heaped up of black obsidian blocks and
clouds of silver. In the background there were other clouds of dust, and
looming asymmetric shadows. New complexities continued to catch the eye until
the eye could not follow them all, and had to begin again.

"What is it?" Barker asked. "It's
beautiful."

"It's a place," Hawks answered. "Or perhaps
not. Perhaps it's an artifact—or else a living thing. But it's in a definite
location, readily accessible. As for beauty, please bear in mind that this is a
still photograph, taken at one five-hundredth of a second, and furthermore,
eight days ago." He began handing more photographs to Barker. "I'd
like you to look at these others. These are men who have been there."

Barker was looking oddly at his face. Hawks went on.
"That first one is the first man who went in. At the time, we were taking
no more precautions than any hazardous expedition would require. That is, he
had the best special equipment we could provide."

Barker looked in fascination at the photograph, now. His
fingers jerked, and he almost dropped it. He tightened his grip until the edge
of the paper was bent, and when he handed it back the damp imprint of his
fingers was on it.

Hawks handed Barker the next. "Those are two men,"
he said remorselessly. "We thought that perhaps a team might
survive." He took the picture back and handed over another. "Those
are four." He took it back and paused. "We changed our methods
thereafter. We devised a piece of special equipment, and after that we didn't
lose a man. Here's the most recent one." He passed Barker the remaining
photograph. "That's a man named Rogan." He waited.

Barker looked up from the photograph. "Have you a
suicide guard over this man?"

Hawks shook his head. He watched Barker. "He'd rather
do anything than die again." He gathered up the photographs and put them
back into his pocket. "I'm here to offer you his job."

Barker nodded. "Of course." He frowned. "I
don't know. Or, rather, I don't know enough.
Where
is this place?"

Hawks said nothing, and after a moment Barker shrugged and
said: "How long do I have to reach a decision?"

"As long as you like. But I'll be asking Connington to
put me in touch with any other prospects tomorrow."

"So I have until tomorrow."

Hawks shook his head. "I don't think he'll be able to
deliver. He wants it to be you. I don't know why."