smart. He wondered how smart the Spooks were, for that matter.
“What’s the hunt all about? Why do they do it?”
“For fun,” Jill said. “Spook fun.”
“Herding thousands of exotic wild animals together and butchering them all at once, so the blood runs deep enough to swim through? That’s their idea of fun?”
“Wait and see,” she said.
***
THEY SAW MORE AND MORE transformation of the landscape: whorls and loops of dazzling fire, great opaque spheres floating just above ground level, silvery blades revolving in the air. Demeris glared and glowered. All that strangeness made him feel vulnerable and out of place, and he spat and murmured bitterly at each intrusive wonder.
“Why are you so angry?” she asked.
“I hate this weird shit that they’ve strewn all over the place. I hate what they did to our country.”
“It was a long time ago. And it wasn’t your country they did it to, it was your great-great-grandfather’s.”
“Even so.”
“Your country is over there. It wasn’t touched at all.”
“Even so,” he said again, and spat.
When it was still well before dark they came to a place where bright yellow outcroppings of sulphur, like foamy stone pillows, marked the site of a spring. Jill gave the command to make her beast kneel and hopped deftly to the ground. Demeris got off more warily, feeling the pain in his thighs and butt from his ride.
“Give me a hand with the tent,” she said.
It wasn’t like any tent he had ever seen. The center-post was nothing more than a little rod that seemed to be made of white wax, but at the touch of a hand it tripled in height and an elaborate strutwork sprang out from it in five directions to provide support for the tent fabric. A Spook tent, he supposed. The tent pegs were made of the same waxy material, and all you had to do was position them where you wanted them around the perimeter of the tent and they burrowed into the ground on their own. Faint pinging sounds came from them as they dug themselves in.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“Security check. The pegs are setting up a defensive zone for a hundred yards around us. Don’t try to go through it in the night.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Demeris said.
The tent was just about big enough for two. He wondered whether she was going to invite him to sleep inside it.
Together they gathered mesquite brush and built a fire, and she produced some packets of powdered vegetables and a slab of dried meat for their dinner. While they waited for things to cook Jill went to the spring, which despite the sulfurous outcroppings gave fresh, pure water, and crouched by it, stripping to the waist to wash herself. Seeing her like that was unsettling. His gaze flicked a quick glance at her as she bathed, but she didn’t seem to care, or even to notice. That was unsettling too. Was she being deliberately provocative? Or did she just not give a damn?
He washed himself also, splashing handfuls of the cold water into his face and over his sweaty shoulders. “Dinner’s ready,” she said a few minutes later.
Darkness descended swiftly. The sky went from deep blue to utter black in minutes. In the clear desert air the stars began quickly to emerge, sharp and bright and unflickering. He looked up at them, trying to guess which of them might be the home star of the Spooks. They had never troubled to reveal that. They had never revealed very much of anything about themselves.
As they ate he asked her whether she made this trip often.
“Often enough,” she said. “I do a lot of courier work for my father, out to Texas, Louisiana, sometimes Oklahoma.” She paused a moment. “I’m Ben Gorton’s daughter,” she said, as though she expected him to recognize the name.
“Sorry. Who?”
“Ben Gorton. The mayor of Spook City, actually.”
“Spook City’s got a human mayor?”
“The human part of it does. The Spooks have their administration and we have ours.”
“Ah,” Demeris said. “I’m honored, then. The boss’s daughter. You should have told me before.”
“It didn’t seem important,” she said.
They were done with their meal. She moved efficiently around the campsite, gathering utensils, burying trash. Demeris was sure now that the village boy had simply been playing with his head. He told himself that if Jill was really a Spook he’d have sensed it somehow by this time.
When the cleanup work was done she lifted the tent flap and stepped halfway inside. He held back, unsure of the right move.
“Well?” she asked. “It’s okay to come in. Or would you rather sleep out there?”
Demeris went in. Though the temperature outside was plunging steeply with the onset of night, it was pleasantly warm inside. There was a single bedroll, just barely big enough for two if they didn’t mind sleeping very close together. He heard the sounds she made as she undressed, and tried in the absolute darkness to guess how much she was taking off. It wasn’t easy to tell. He removed his own shirt and hesitated with his jeans; but then she opened the flap again to call something out to the elephant-camel, which she had tethered just outside, and by starlight he caught a flashing glimpse of bare thigh, bare buttock. He pulled off his trousers and slipped into the bedroll. She joined him a moment later. He lay awkwardly, trying to avoid rubbing up against her. For a time there was a tense expectant silence. Then her hand reached out in the darkness and grazed his shoulder, lightly but clearly not accidentally. Demeris didn’t need a second hint. He had never taken any vows of chastity. He reached for her, found the hollow of her clavicle, trailed his hand downward until he was cupping a small, cool breast, resilient and firm. When he ran his thumb lightly across the nipples she made a little purring sound, and he felt the flesh quickly hardening. As was his. She turned to him. Demeris had some difficulty locating her mouth in the darkness, and she had to guide him, chuckling a little, but when his lips met hers he felt the immediate flicker of her tongue coming forth to greet him.
And then almost as though he was willing his own downfall he found himself perversely wondering if he might be embracing a Spook after all; and a wave of nausea swept through him, making him wobble and soften. But she was pressing tight against him, rubbing her breasts from side to side on him, uttering small eager murmuring sounds, and he got himself quickly back on track, losing himself in her fragrance and warmth and banishing completely from his thoughts anything but the sensations of the moment. After that one attack of doubt everything was easy. He located her long smooth thighs with no problem whatever, and when he glided into her he needed no guidance there either, and though their movements together had the usual first-time clumsiness her hot gusts of breath against his shoulder and her soft sharp outcries told him that all was going well.
He lay awake for a time when it was over, listening to the reassuring pinging of the tent pegs and the occasional far-off cry of some desert creature. He imagined he could hear the heavy snuffling breathing of the elephant-camel too, like a huge recirculating device just outside the tent. Jill had curled up against him as if they were old friends and was lost in sleep.
***
SHE SAID OUT OF THE blue, after they had been riding a long while in silence the following morning, “You ever been married, Nick?”
The incongruity of the question startled him. Until a moment ago she had seemed to be a million miles away. His attempt to make love to her a second time at dawn had been met with indifference and she had been pure business, remote and cool, all during the job of breaking camp and getting on the road.
“No,” he said. “You?”
“Hasn’t been on my program,” she said. “But I thought everybody in Free Country