“If Customs happens to guess what’s in the package, they’ll confiscate it, because technically it is illegal, but it’s a gray area. If you went to Spain and got the stuff from a doctor there, you could bring it home for your own personal use. What’s the difference if it comes by mail or you carried it home in your pocket? It’s malum prohibitum—bad because it’s illegal—not malum in se— bad in itself.”
“When did you start speaking Latin?”
“Since I asked our lawyers about all this.”
“Watch your shoulder.”
“And then we get to the illegal stuff, which is easier to prosecute, assuming you know what it is and know for sure that it is illegal, which is the problem here. Big purple caps aren’t illegal in themselves.”
“Ipso facto,” she said.
“Talk to me about Latin,” he said. “So, there you have it. It’s really the FDA’s problem, only the boss made it mine. She probably owes somebody over there a favor, and this is it. And the NSA listens to everything on the air or over the wire, so I can understand how they know about it, but I don’t see why it should interest them. Fortunately, I have plenty of time to think about it, things being slow. I wish you were still working there. It would be more interesting. We all miss you at the office. Me most of all.”
“You’re loose enough. Up. Do your djurus. You’ll feel better after you work out.”
He came to his feet. That was true. He almost always did feel better afterward. It was the damned inertia that was so hard to overcome sometimes. Good that he had Toni here to prod him. Among her many other virtues.
7
Malibu, California
Naked, Drayne padded into the kitchen to get the rest of the bottle of champagne from the freezer. He really ought to get a little fridge for the bedroom, save him a walk.
Life was so hard.
Not that the girl would miss him. What was her name? Misty? Bunny? Buffy? Something like that. He’d say, “Honey,” and call it good. She was out, and she ought to sleep pretty hard, too, given the athletic encounters and the first bottle of bubbly they’d just split. She was an actress—all of them around here were actresses—early twenty-something, tight, fit, perky. A natural redhead, he had discovered to his delight, once the itty-bitty black silk bikini undies had come off.
Ah, youth, nothing like it.
He’d picked her up at the gym, which is where he found most of the girls he brought home. Jocks tended to be fitter, had less risk of disease, and were able to play longer before they wore out. He didn’t like his women with too much muscle, so he stayed away from the hardcore lifters, but there was always a Misty-Bunny-Buffy working the aerobic bikes and the light weights, and it never took long for him to make a connection with one. He wasn’t bad-looking, and the twenty-thousand-dollar diamond ring and drop-top Mercedes two-seater usually impressed them. He even had some business cards that said he was an independent movie producer—Bobby Dee Productions—and that would usually be enough to clinch the contact if they were about to walk away. “Oh, sorry we couldn’t get together. Here’s my card. If you are in Malibu, give me a call sometime.”
Sex was always available, and not just to movie guys in this town. And Mama Drayne’s little boy Bobby had more than a little endurance in that area, and without any chemical assistance, either—well, unless you counted good champagne. He didn’t use the drugs he made, never had. Maybe someday when he got old and couldn’t get it up anymore, he’d whip together a batch of some custom-made dick hardener, but frankly, he didn’t think that was ever gonna happen. He’d never once had a failure in that particular arena, thank you very much, and four or five times a night was nooo problem. Then again, he was not thirty-five yet. Maybe when you hit sixty or seventy it was different.
As he turned from the hallway toward the kitchen, he saw Tad standing on the beach, staring at the ocean.
Drayne shook his head. Tad rode the Hammer, crazy fucker that he was. It was gonna kill him someday, no question. He was in such crappy shape, it was a miracle it hadn’t killed him already, should have long since blown a blood vessel in the man’s brain, stroked him blind, crippled, and stupid, not necessarily in that order. A night running with Thor was worth a week’s recovery for somebody in pretty good physical condition, maybe more. Tad ought not to be able to recover at all, and yet he had swung the Hammer more than anybody alive and somehow managed to keep breathing. Of course, Tad had a portable pharmacy he gobbled, snorted, or shot up after he came off a Hammer trip. Probably more drugs than blood circulating in him at any given time. Somehow, he had managed to stay a step ahead of the reaper. Pretty damned amazing.
Drayne opened the freezer, pulled the second bottle of champagne out. He lifted it to his lips, thought better about that, and grabbed one of the chilled glasses on the freezer rack. Drinking it from the bottle was for barbarians. The bubbles didn’t get released.
Had to be civilized about this, didn’t we?
He poured the icy wine into the icy glass, watched the liquid turn to foam and fountain up, then slowly begin to settle down.
Time waiting for champagne bubbles to settle didn’t count.
Out on the beach, near the water line, three hulking big jocks ran past, working on their aerobic fitness. Drayne glanced at Tad, worried. If Tad decided he didn’t like the way the guys looked, he’d go for them, and big and strong as they were, they wouldn’t have a prayer, Tad would twist them up like soft pretzels, if that’s what he felt like.
But the trio jogged past, and if Tad even saw them, Drayne couldn’t tell it from here. Watching Tad when something like this happened was like watching a Roman emperor. Thumb up or thumb down, and nobody knew which it’d be.
He shook his head. Sooner or later, Tad was going to step wrong and draw the law’s attention. It had been a while since he’d done it last, and fortunately, it hadn’t led back to Drayne that time. Plus, the house was clean, that wasn’t a problem, he never kept anything illegal on hand for longer than it took to mix it and get it out again, but he didn’t need the local deputies knocking on his door and asking about the crazy asshole dressed in black who suddenly turned into the Incredible Hulk and laid waste to the beach. Low profile was the way to go. If they didn’t know about you, they wouldn’t be able to bother you.
He finished filling up the glass, topped it off, and put the bottle back into the freezer. He walked to the deck, sipping at the cold champagne. Yeasty, with a hint of apple, good finish, no bitter aftertaste. Not the best, but after five or six glasses, there was no point in wasting the best; you couldn’t taste the really exotic flavors and subtle stuff anyhow. As long as it was good enough not to irritate your stomach, that was all you needed for the second bottle.
There was a guy they called the Wine Nazi, up just north of San Francisco, way out a winding road in Lucas Valley, who made the best champagne on earth. Grand Brut, dry as the Sahara, and he sold futures in it, you bought what you could afford, he would call you when it was damned well ready, and if you didn’t like it, too fucking bad. Worked out to about five hundred bucks a bottle—if you bought a case—and you couldn’t buy more than one case a year. Six thousand bucks a case, and that was the nonvintage stuff. Sometimes it took eighteen months for the last batch to ripen to his satisfaction. The really good stuff ran two grand a bottle, and you had to get on a waiting list for that, too. Drayne’s name hadn’t gotten to the top of that list yet, but next year, he was pretty sure it would.
Drayne had done a tour there once. The winery was tiny, a hole-in-the-wall place, and before he was done, the Wine Nazi had him climbing up on barrels to taste the whites and reds right out of the casks, sucked it out with a long rubber tube and dribbled into a glass. And after a few sips of that, the guy had him helping hand-riddle the champagne bottles. They had to be turned so much every day, so the silt would settle and all.
Drayne was an appreciative audience. The guy was a certified genius when it came to wine, no question, and the champagne was
the best of the lot. Of course, the Wine Nazi wouldn’t let him call it champagne, since technically that meant it had to come from that particular region of France, so he called it sparkling wine. Even though it made the average good vintage of the French stuff taste like stale ginger ale.
That was the stuff you saved for special occasions, definitely first-bottle, and not something you shared with Misty-Bunny-Buffy just to get laid. He had six bottles left, and six months left before he could buy another case. If he was lucky. So he had to ration it, one bottle a month, no more, and even then, he might have to wait. Terrible situation.
He grinned. He sure had a lot to complain about, didn’t he? Living in a big house on the beach in Malibu, good-looking naked woman in his bed, a shitload of money, six bottles of the best champagne anybody in this town had. Hell, it really didn’t get much better than that, did it?
Since it didn’t look like Tad was going to go ballistic and destroy the neighborhood, maybe he should go back to bed and nudge Honey awake. He was sure he could think up something new for them to try.
Yep. That seemed like an excellent idea. He lifted his glass in a toast to his own cleverness. Hi, ho, Bobby. Away!
He headed back toward the bedroom.
Tad felt the power.
It coursed through him like an electric current, filling him with pulsing flashes of juice, set him humming like a dynamo at full spin.
He was a god out here, deciding the fate of all who passed. At his whim, he could strike them down, become Shiva the destroyer, changing the very configuration of the planet with a mere wave of his hand. At his whim, which was how gods operated, far as he could tell.
He took a breath, and the sensation made orgasm seem pale in comparison. The thrills ran through his entire body, he could feel it everywhere at once, in his hands, his body, even his toes. Man. What a rush!
He was a god. Able to do anything he wished.
And what he wished to do right now was ... walk. To stride down the beach, to pass among his people, disguised as a reedy, tubercular man all dressed in black, but beyond comprehension to mere mortals.
As far above them as a man was above an ant.
They couldn’t know. He felt sorry for them, being so weak, so stupid. So pitiful.
He started to walk, feeling the sand like a living thing under his boots, hearing the soft chee-chee-chee squeaks it made with each step. He was aware of the evening breeze touching his skin, the smell of salt and iodine from the sea, the taste of the very air. He was aware of everything, not just on this beach, but radiating out to galaxies a billion light-years from where he walked. It was all his territory, all of it. If he reached up his arms, he could encompass it all in his grasp.
He laughed.
Ahead, somebody finished up a Frisbee game and headed for their towels. A beach volleyball game wound down. Traffic roared past on the highway, the cars and trucks taking on the aspect of dragons: fearsome creatures in their element, but creatures who knew better than to cross his path. He was Tad the Bershaw, and any being with enough sense to see him would know he was to be feared.
He walked through his kingdom, feeling for the moment benevolent in his omnipotence. He would suffer them to live.
For now, anyway.
Jayland/Quantico, Virginia
Jay Gridley had always been a man who enjoyed moving fast. When he slipped into his sensory gear and the net blossomed before him, infinite in its possibilities, he had always chosen speed as his vehicle. If he drove, it was a Viper, a rocket with wheels that smoked everything else on the road. Sometimes he flew—rocket packs, jets, copters, whatever. He created virtual scenarios that he zipped through like rifle rounds, clean, fast, slick as a tub full of grease.
Oh, now and then he would do period. He’d make a Western town and mosey into town on a horse. Or a boat. But getting there in a hurry was his pleasure, and most of his programs reflected that. Getting business done had always been about getting it done, not about the trip.
Not today. Today, Jettin’ Jay was out for a stroll, through an Eastern garden. It wasn’t strictly accurate, his program, it had mixed elements in it: Right where he was at the moment stood a Japanese tea house with a little brook running past it. Just ahead was a Zen garden, three rocks in a bed of raked sand. But over to the left was a Shaolin temple, monks out front doing kung fu, and to the right, a second temple, straight out of Bangkok, with traditional Siamese dancers moving like snakes. The Taj Mahal was past that, and there were even some pyramids off a ways behind him. It was a veritable theme park of Eastern religious thought.
The sun shined brightly, the day was warm with a little breeze, and the smell of jasmine and sandalwood mixed with roses and musk.
Welcome to the land of the happy, nice people, Jay. Your kind of place.
He smiled, walking slowly, not in the least bit of a hurry. What he wanted was here somewhere, but you know what? He would get to it when he got to it.
To be honest, he hadn’t exactly embraced the tenets of Buddhism. The eightfold this, or the four ways of that. But there was an energy about what Saji did and how she related to it that he did find worth thinking about. He’d never considered himself much of anything, other than a computer jock, but this go-with-the-flow stuff—that was Taoism rather than Buddhism, right?—well, here of late, it had a whole bunch of appeal.
Thank Sojan Rinpoche for that, along with her other, more earthy talents.
A bee flew past, buzzing, looking for pollen.
Ah, yes, what could be better than a stroll in the cosmic gardens—
“Hey, Jay, you awake?” came the somewhat dissonant voice, intruding on his scenario.
Jay dropped out of VR, and was at once back in his office at Net Force. Standing in the doorway were two coworkers, Alan and Charlie.
“That door is supposed to be locked,” Jay said, mildly irritated.
“Yep, and if you hadn’t wanted somebody good enough to rascal the sucker, you’d have hired somebody other than us,” Charlie said. He waved his key card. “You ought to change the codes every year or two, Jay.”
“Would that do any good?”
“About as much good as me changing the codes on my bike did,” Alan said.
Jay laughed. He had broken into the comp on Alan’s fuel-cell scooter and programmed it so it wouldn’t go faster than nine miles an hour. Well, that was the old Jay. He was a new man these days. No more sophomoric games.
“C’mon, we’re going to Pud’s for burgers and beer.”
Jay spoke without thinking. “Nah, I’ll pass. I’m giving up eating flesh.”
Both Alan and Charlie stared for maybe two seconds before they cracked up. They laughed. They laughed harder. They fucking howled.
“Flesh? Flesh, you said? Ah, hahahaaa!”
“Gee, Jay, we wouldn’t want you to kill and eat the waitress or anything. Flesh? Oh, yeah, I can hear that: ‘Excuse me, ma’am, could I get a fleshburger on an onion bun, and could you sprinkle it with a little ground-up human skull?’ ”
“I dunno, Charlie, come to think of it, maybe we ought to skip Pud’s and go to that new place, you know, Cannibal Moe’s, instead. I hear they have a real good chicken fried thigh there.”
“Nah, Alan, I think we should go to the new Donner’s Pass Pizza, and pick up a pizza with fingers and nipples. Or maybe the spaghetti and eyeballs.”
“Fuck off and die,” Jay said. “You know what I mean.”
The two men looked at each other and shook their heads in mock sadness.
“Tsk, tsk, tsk,” Alan said. “The man is in love. Next thing you know, he’s gonna be wearing a cowled robe to work and doing Gregorian chants up and down the halls.”
“Yeah, and sprinkling rose petals everywhere and smiling at everybody like a fool.”
“Go away,” Jay said.
They did, cackling down the hall as they went.
Well. That certainly went well, didn’t it? Maybe you might want to be a little bit more low key in
your conversion to vegetarianism, hmm?
Too late now. By tomorrow morning, this would be all over the building. He knew the jokes would be coming, and he had better recode his lock and his access, or his computer would be full of crap, too.
Still, he grinned. He could stand a little ribbing. He was, after all, the new, improved Jay Gridley, much more mellow than the old Jay had been. Much more.
8
Washington, D.C
Toni came up from sleep all of a moment. She looked at the clock on the bedside table. Two A.M., and she was wide awake, not a trace of drowsiness. Well, wasn’t that terrific?
What, she wondered, had awakened her? Another hormone-fueled dream she couldn’t remember?
She glanced at Alex, who slept soundly, tangled in the sheet and a couple of pillows. Sometimes he snored, and that might do it, but while he was breathing deeply, he wasn’t making any noise to speak of.
She listened carefully, but the house was silent. No footsteps skulking down the hall, no creaks of doors being stealthily opened. No feeling of intrusion.
Was it because she needed to go pee?
No, not really, she always needed to go pee these days, and the urge wasn’t particularly strong. She had fallen asleep plenty of times needing to go more than now. Still, as long as she was awake ...