THE NATURAL STRANGER :: BOOK 1, "THE AEON" :: CHAPTER 11, EPISODE 6

When Junior returned, triumphant, to Salamanca, T. set me to work... not for a trusted and valued client, nor a humanitarian like Adlai Stevenson, but for Tom Wendell!

The ceviche, you see, had ruined the palates of foreigners for Suelan investment. Riots broke out, facilities torched, British and American executives were kidnapped. As the imperial legions of IBM, ITT, Shell and such retreated, tails between their legs, I approached Ernie, (appointed to the Finance Ministry as Junior's inventory-taker) about acquiring some of their leftover assets after, of course, a suitable interregnum of nationalization.

"For Suelan majority investment cartels, through fronts?" Cancinas proposed. "Hard currency?"

Which is why renationalized PetroZul leased Tom's gear and carriers, including the ill-fated KM. Part of the package was that, when Ernie moved over to Defense, Lentex components became a critical element in their choice of military contractors... "by last year, when we were looking at game sites," Mike recalls, "so many compatibles were already in place that the initials looked at Costazul and said go! The Soviets accepted for, political reasons. Everybody happy. Don't know where we'll play next year," Mike admits, "Iraq maybe?. Don't think Tess and his buddies wouldn't like to make the Caspian a Soviet lake!"

"So how much of the planet's survived?" Melanie has an unwholesome attention to details, very 50s, that...

"Wait... I think I wrote it down on a napkin." Mike's always putting stuff in his pockets, then pulling it out... if spies still operated out of dry-cleaning storefronts, as in the Man from Uncle, Kramcodes might as well be broadcast out over television with the weather report. "Got rather like a duckshoot at the end... everything going, half off... like cleaning your plate so children in China don't go hungry."

"What about the children in China?" Melanie pipes up.

"Toast!" Korbel grins. "Both sides hit on them early and hard and keep on pounding. India too. So much for Oppenheimer and his Vedas!"

"So how bad was it?" Melanie lights up another Alas cigarette as if they've just finished having sex; she's smiling but counting with her eyes, the way Libby toted up quiz show prizes.

"Well it doesn't quite jibe with Harry Stone's extermination for all but a lucky dosie dosie thou, easily spikes Revelations' third of the population, though. Two thirds is more like it. Yeah, that fits." Mike lights a cigarette. "Two thirds of we sinners down the drain... of course a few platefuls of grease like this kills too, but that'll take thirty years, maybe forty."

Baggott doesn't trust Kharragh, but that has to do more with his not trusting anything Quadlisch than his being part of anybody's temple. Lou's politics are strange. He did two years as Commerce Undersecretary in the fifties, then made one vain stab at a New York Governor's Democratic primary, finishing third. Maybe, under Stevenson, he'd have achieved full Cabinet status.

"He's a character," I'd said, in Uli's defense.

"He's that," Lou granted, "one of many reasons I distrust Quad so deeply, to the marrow you might say. That creature's from Sartre, Evie, a hungry ghost. Anyway, I wanted you to know from me that I've met with Piscaglia; he has qualities, expresses them competently, but I haven't changed my mind. Off the record, I feel strongly for Vincent. He has maturity... that's out of fashion, these days. But I suppose we have to bend with these modern times. Developments and personalities once considered unthinkable become the norm."

"Such as a woman becoming President of the Lentex board?" One who has more stock than the rest of them combined, I refrain from adding, since Louis stands for me, on record, though he's holding back - I smell it! Half of my teeth might be gone, shot away, and my sinuses stuffed with silicon, but there ain't a damn thing wrong with my nose.

"Not any woman, Evie... you deserve the chance, at least in my own opinion... and on merit, not as a result of stockholdings or any quota. I did want you understanding..." and he'd trailed off, a bewildered HAL whistling 'bout "Daisy" in the rain.

"I respect your opinion and will do what I can to meet your expectations," I say, without gagging on the bullshit; Lou's price is Vince Offit on the Board, though he hadn't quite demanded.

Uncle Sam demanded Carlo. "There were alternatives, you know," Cynthia Martin said, "why didn't he go back to Costazul a while?" What intervened were the old geezers on their porches and round liquor stores who'd been to Europe and Japan... they'd won their ribbons, patted Carlo on the back, saying how good it was someone was standing up against the young locos of La Raza...

Leading him to the altar like a proud, stupid goat.

Even after he'd taken his oath and was shipped to Dix, first, then Dixie, there was wiggle room, but Coh had volunteered for Vietnam. "In Germany they kill the Negro, and I look more like one of those than German," he wrote in the margin of a Stars and Stripes article on racial confrontations in Frankfurt's bierhallen.

After he left, one of Libby Knoop's friends asked if I wanted to audition for "beach movies". Instead I'd continued bagging groceries. Look at me, Evie! Carlo waves through the steam of Goliath Carwash, brandishing his brushes. Mommy... watch! cries Brendan, shaking a plastic skull on a stick... riff ripped off from Screamin' Jay...

Toast!

Baggott has run out of things to say. He sits in his office, blinking that turtle blink that trickles back through black and green cables to some bullet-pockmarked trailer of Aztec hieroglyphs destined for the ratpile, and I excuse myself.

Time to fix supper for T's sisters.