Algis Budrys: Rogue Moon

“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 tease you and dig at you, and then 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 Connington for the first time. “Are you trying to egg me on to something, Connie?” she asked in a mild voice.

Something flickered in Connington’s face. But then he said, “Dr. 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, tend to your business, and I’ll manage mine.” Her look came back to Hawks, catching him off guard. Her eyes held his momentarily. “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 torment 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? And 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? Or is it to provoke Barker?”

For 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.

“I don’t think any of it is bluff. But I don’t know you well enough to be sure,” Hawks answered mildly.

“And I don’t know you well enough yet, either, Ed.”

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.”

Barker had long arms and a flat, hairy stomach, and was wearing knitted navy-blue, European-style 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, wiped his mouth, and sat down. “Now, then!” he exclaimed “What’s all this?”

“Al, this is Dr. 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. “I’ve heard of your reputation. I’m impressed.”

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. Claire 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 scalp lock, painting your face and body with aniline dyes, and performing a naked war dance on the main street of a New England 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 fund 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 Mimbreño boy?” She laughed and hilled 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 Claire 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. Sometimes she does it by throwing herself at them. It doesn’t mean anything.”

“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 courte échelle 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’d 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.”