The Girl With the Jade Green Eyes (24 page)

“Oh, that,” she said. “I was only trying to make a point, that there’s not enough difference between men to point an admiring finger at. Our men have better manners on Kanab. With them it’s a survival mechanism. But you would have been cherished on Kanab. I fell in love with you the first morning when you addressed me as ‘ma’am.’ And Crick would have no trouble adjusting to earth. The others would. Some are neuters and function only in relation to me. If you mated with me, Breedlove, you’d have a large family before you even said ‘I do,’ and you’d have to join us on the meadow. Our children would need the controlled environment the spaceship can provide. In fact, it’s only a modified form of the ships we used on Kanab in our migrations.”

“Oh, I could accept those terms,” he said. “The ship’s in commuting distance to my office. But we’d have to do something about Myra.”

“She’s neuter. If I had you around for protection, I could terminate Myra—hypothetically, of course.”

“Then, hypothetically, you can accept my proposal of marriage?”

“This is not hypothetical, Breedlove. If I’m here this summer, you’ll be the first to have my hand in marriage, if it’s my hand you’re after. But the music’s playing.”

Once more they danced, the orchestra playing lilting airs that reinforced his happiness. She had accepted his proposal if only on a contingency basis, but that contingency might materialize. At the finale of the set he whirled her into a pirouette that sent the hem of her skirt flying.

Because it was past eleven, he ordered after-dinner drinks and settled his account. Now they sat holding hands, and he had never known anyone who was so remote and enchanting yet with whom he felt so intimate and open. For the most part they were silent, waiting for the music to begin, when the orchestra returned for their final dance of the night. Finally, only to hear her voice, he said, “The situation may be hypothetical but the devotion is real. To me you’re the equal of Guinevere, Deirdre, Helen, or any legendary beauty. You have of late a luminosity, an effulgence, like a halo of light.”

“The luminosity is nature’s way of making me attractive. As young earth girls are loaded with hormones to make their cheeks glow and eyes sparkle, my hormonal attraction is reinforced by stored sunlight.” She smiled at a fancy that struck her. “You might say my sparkle is amplified by the stimulated emission of radiation… But would you love me after my sunlight has turned inward to nourish other life? Will you love me when I’m pregnant as you love me when I’m lithe?”

“I’d be your most devoted midwife,” he promised.

“If I didn’t believe that,” she said, “I would reject even your hypothetical proposal, but, dear Breedlove, hypothesis is all we have. I shall be leaving the earth by Tuesday.”

“How do you figure that?”

“Ben promised me.”

“Slade’s not God!”

“Ben doesn’t know that,” she said, “and I’m certainly not going to be the one to tell him.”

“You can’t believe everything Slade says,” he protested. “Look at his fable of Huan Chung. Where has that insidious Chinese been all evening?”

“I don’t have complete faith in all Ben says,” she admitted. “But I can extrapolate from past acts and arrange probabilities.”

That she could do, he admitted. The brief appearance of the model at Mason’s, imitating Kyra with a platinum wig and green eye lenses, had given her the idea that permitted them to abscond so easily from the motel. No doubt in her reading she had hit upon some other simple scheme for obtaining enriched uranium. Whatever the plan she had imparted to Slade this morning, it had given him a new lease on life and had, perhaps coincidentally, got rid of him for the evening, thus clearing the way for her escape scheme. Kyra’s plots, he thought, interlocked like the pieces of—well—a Chinese puzzle, and he was sure she would not even consider a plan that did not offer a strong chance of success. By next Tuesday, he admitted to himself, she could indeed be lifting off from earth.

With the admission he felt a sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach, felt his spirits descending toward despair, and he blurted, “Kyra, I don’t want to let you go!”

“It is I who must let you go, my best beloved, and I confess that it will be painful. I am a woman, but I have evolved from processes older than earth. I am a space seeder, the ultimate life bringer. Your race has the potential to join mine when your sun dies, but you are not ready yet. Still, my memories of earth and of you will be held sacred, and when the day comes, as surely it must, when your sons’ sons must flee the wrack of once-beautiful earth, it is my hope that some may encounter in the far reaches of the universe brothers named Breedlove and sisters called Fawn.”

“I’d rather have the woman and forgo the memorials.”

“Don’t press your offers too freely, Breedlove. Being what I am—and where and when—I might accept, and the pain of knowing you would sear my life. Leave earth I must, and if I’m to live in the legends of men I’d rather live as a Helen or an Isolde, not as Medusa.”

Her remark carried nuances that cried for interpretation, but he was beyond nuances. “Could you take me with you? Could I survive?”

His sincerity caused her to smile, although her expression remained grave. “Probably you could endure outside your space-time continuum, but the probability is not for me to arrange. God knows, I’d like to roam the fields of heaven with gentle Breedlove by my side, but you belong to the forests of earth as I belonged to the woodlands of Kanab. The spaceways call me. My destiny is there. We are not sure of ever finding a habitation. We know only that if one awaits us it must be found. Could I exile my beloved into the darkness, the cold, and the vast uncertainty? Never! Yet, I can promise you this: before I leave earth I will let you know in all its intimacy and glory the love that only a Queen of Kanab may grant.”

She intoned the promise with the solemnity of a proclamation, and as soon as the edict was issued the laughing girl had returned. “Now the music’s playing, Breedlove, and I’ve saved the last dance for you.”

As she had lifted a dejected Slade by the poolside, she lifted Breedlove’s sadness with her promise. Leading her again onto the floor, he whirled her into a waltz, and they moved as lightly together as falling leaves. From his joy in her company and the tenderness he felt for her, he knew by any earthly definition he had found his love, and others on earth agreed. When the music ended and he escorted her from the restaurant, strangers smiled at them as they passed.

Outside, the stars seemed more glittering and less remote. Hand in hand they strolled toward the valet station, where Breedlove handed his claim ticket to the dispatcher, who called it over a public address system, and while they waited he and Kyra stood with arms around each other’s waist. To a casual observer they might have been any boy and girl of earth engaging in the immemorial rites of spring, and Breedlove was so thrilled by her nearness he was almost pleased when he saw the valet bringing up the wrong car from the parking lot. As the driver leaped out to open the door, Breedlove turned to the dispatcher to inform him of the error, but the dispatcher had moved closer and was standing behind Breedlove, pressing a hard object into his ribs.

“That’s a piece in your ribs, Breedlove. Don’t reach for your beeper.”

The smiling attendant, wearing a red jacket with a gold P embroidered on each lapel, continued to hold the door open and continued to smile as he said, “Step inside, Kyra, or we splatter your boyfriend’s guts all over your Polinski Creation.”

These men were not Oriental, but they knew that whatever powers Kyra might summon to her defense were immobilized by the threat to Breedlove.

They knew his name and Kyra’s and knew of her affection for the dress, but some things the men did not know. They did not know that Breedlove had a woodsman’s skills and powers of observation. In the split second his attention shifted from Kyra to the man at the car door, he noticed the man held no weapon. Obviously the two considered him the key to Kyra’s capture, a hostage to command her obedience. They did not know that with Kyra threatened any hostage became dispensable. They could not know that Breedlove could strip a tree of dead limbs by guiding a heavy-headed ax with the flick of one wrist, or that the beeper they feared had been left on his bedroom dresser, or that he was ticklish around the ribs and quick to anger at any invasion of his person or privacy. Lastly they did not know the isolated life he led permitted him to see few movies and that he did not know what a “piece” was. If the man had said “pistol,” events might have gone differently, but as it was they moved so fast that witnesses later remembered the events in segments and pieced them together.

In irritation Breedlove’s ax-handling hand chopped down against the wrist of the man who held the “piece.” He heard the man’s wrist snap and saw the pistol fly through the air, land on the pavement, and spin under a car parked ten yards away. He turned to Kyra, but she was gone, darting with the speed of dancing light among the parked cars and well out of harm’s way. Glancing back to the man he had struck, Breedlove saw he was fleeing toward the street exit, holding his injured wrist.

Wheeling to contend with the man still holding the door, Breedlove heard a sound from behind like a stifled cough, and the man’s head snapped back. Brain matter spurted from the back of the man’s head and streaked the roof of the car. He slumped against the vehicle, slid down the side, and crumpled into a sitting position, his knees buckling and spreading apart, his head lolling downward.

Breedlove looked in the direction of the sound and saw Turpin step from behind a pine tree, holding a pistol with an elongated barrel in both hands and sighting it on the figure fleeing down the sidewalk. Again the weapon coughed. Twenty yards away the man stumbled, fell forward to the pavement, and slid a few feet on his face, still holding his wrist. He lay still.

Slade stepped from the shadows, holstered his pistol, and lighted a cigarette, and Turpin turned toward him, calling, “You see that, Ben? Twenty yards, a moving target, and just one shot.”

“Typical of the FBI,” Slade said, “shooting unarmed civilians in the back.”

Then it had been Slade, Breedlove deduced, who had shot the unarmed civilian by the car in the face, and the deduction was borne out by Turpin, who turned to the older man and said, “Ben, I want credit for both of them. You’ve got enough notches on your gun.”

“Then fire your pistol again, Turpin,” Slade said. “You can’t claim two with one shot.”

In an absurd but stately ritual Turpin moved to the edge of the walkway and fired his pistol into the grass of the lawn. Exaltation showed on his face. At the same time Slade sauntered over to look down on the body by the car with a proprietary air. Dead, the man looked very young, Breedlove thought. Seated beside the car, knees spread, his wrists resting on his kneecaps, he seemed to be in deep thought. Had it not been for the hole in the back of his head, he might have looked up to speak to the man who killed him. A dark stain from his voided bladder spread over the crotch of his trousers.

“Who were they?” Breedlove asked.

“Corsicans. A French restaurant’s an ideal cover for them.”

“How did everyone know we were here?”

As if noticing him for the first time, Slade looked over at Breedlove, and the Texan’s voice was edged with contempt. “When Lord Greystoke puts in a reservation at a French restaurant, the waiter gets suspicious. When Lord Greystoke pays the dinner check with a credit card issued to Thomas Breedlove on a coded State Department number, the number and location of the credit card gets to the credit center, fast.”

Even so, Slade had moved quickly, and Breedlove wondered if he should thank the security man, decided any effusive statement of gratitude would be inappropriate in view of Slade’s contempt and the bodies lying about, and started toward the parking lot to look for Kyra, but Slade called him back. “Stay where you are, Breedlove. You’ve done enough damage for one night. We’ll find Kyra.”

“I don’t want her seeing this mess, and I don’t want her here when the police come.”

“She can’t miss seeing the guy on the sidewalk. The police won’t be here. Ten minutes after we’re gone, the stiffs will be on their way to Corsica as a professional courtesy. Give Turpin your car keys. He’ll bring your car… Turpin, snoop around and listen for a thumping in a trunk. They stashed the parking attendants somewhere.”

Turpin had taken the keys and gone when a green sedan pulled up on the inoffensive side of the parked car. Laudermilk was driving and Kyra was slumped in the rear seat. Breedlove got in and she huddled against him, her body trembling. He held her head against his shoulder and shielded her eyes from the form on the sidewalk as they drove by.

On the highway driving homeward, she straightened and leaned toward Slade, seated in front beside Laudermilk, and said, “Ben, I don’t want you firing Fawn. I persuaded her to help us.”

“So Fawn’s the blonde in your bed.” Slade looked back. “Lady, you know it’s academic now whether she’s fired or stays hired. Breedlove’s the one I’d like to terminate—with extreme prejudice.”

“He was just giving me a farewell party,” Kyra said.

Slade fixed Breedlove with a hard, unwavering stare, and Breedlove dropped his eyes. He deserved the hostility. All along he had doubted Slade’s credibility, and now Slade’s fantasies had converged with reality.

Slade’s voice lashed him. “I’ve got some good things and bad things to say about you, mister. First the good things: you’ve got the arms of a gibbon and the caution of a gorilla. Now, the bad things: as a security agent you’ll never win the Allen Dulles Award, and that was the most harebrained caper I’ve ever heard of, although I reckon I should compliment you for not taking Kyra to a Chinese joint. Actually I ought to put you under protective custody, but I won’t, because you’ve got me at a Mexican stand-off. I need your help. Tonight I’m putting in television monitors to cover every inch of that apartment, including the Johns, and you’ll have more bugs in there than a flat in Harlem.”

Slade turned his gaze forward and sat in stony silence as Laudermilk steered onto the freeway. Breedlove was perplexed by Slade’s reference to a Mexican stand-off. He had not consciously maneuvered the Texan into an impasse. And why was the firing or hiring of Fawn now academic?