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"I want you to have dinner with me tonight. We'll get you cleaned up and into some decent clothes. When you're out mixing with the other ranks, your cover story is that you're an emissary from Catalina, learning how to handle Big Mouths. You know anything about Catalina?"
"Not really. Island off the California coast is about all".
"Don't worry, no one here's ever been there. Our only contact with them is for oil transactions, and the Energy Staff isn't scheduled to renegotiate for eighteen more months. Just pretend you're wealthy. Oh, and say 'awhoha' now and again".
* * *
Valentine rode back to the city in Silas' limousine with his secretary. The trunk of the vehicle had been heavily modified to accommodate Silvers in his own semicupola complete with the first Grog gun Valentine had seen since leaving St. Louis. This one was a piece of craftsmanship, twin barrels each with its own two-thick magazine sloping down at an angle, with a built-in firing shield. Silvers strapped himself into the gun and the seat like the deep-sea fishermen Valentine had seen in the Caribbean.
"That's quite a hogleg your bodyguard totes", Valentine said, looking through the tiny back window at Silver's hair whipping in the wind.
"That little apparatus came off an armored personnel carrier, initially. I think they're ... ummm".
"Twenty-five millimeter, Thunder City Rangeworks", the secretary supplied.
"Anyway, they cost a lot. Oh, I'm sorry, David Valentine, Luty Loosh. She usually goes by Miss L. Top-quality English import, and almost as hard to get as a Rolls".
"I'll save you some time: Lubey Bush, Lusty Tush, Loosey Flush, Thirsty Lush, and combinations thereof", she said. Valentine detected a little bit of an accent now, and she tended to hit the first syllable of her words hard and sharp, like a determined pianist. Valentine felt like
a drawling backcountry scrub compared with these elegant-sounding creatures.
"She was ill-bred enough to make herself so useful I had to keep her around - even after we got tired of each other", Silas said.
They took an off-ramp into the city, passed through a gate in a concrete wall, and pulled up beneath a well-lit turnaround, sheltered by a gold-fringed awning protecting a carpeted path to shining brass-and-glass doors.
"This is my pied-a-terre in the city. Let's get you changed for the better and then talk more over dinner".
"Whatever Silas says", Valentine said.
"I've heard that one before too", Miss L. said.
They rode up in an elevator that made the one in Fran Paoli's building in Xanadu seem like a freight. A little screen in the elevator showed the time, date, and outside temperature as it ticked off names and what Valentine guessed were locations every few seconds:
Vinson, B. COLTRANE MIL
Apporimatox, N. TACOMA 18
Rutig, A. (in transit 5)
Neither of the others paid any attention to the screen, so Valentine ignored it as well.
The elevator opened into what Valentine guessed to be Silas' apartment. It was airy and open, a Prairie-school foyer/living room combination filling two floors. Stairs passed up on either side to doors that Valentine guessed to be bedrooms, and glass filled the wall facing the bay. A patio filled with plants had a second floor to the left side.
"I like a drink after that many circuits in the Needle", Silas said. "You like Scotch, Valentine?"
"You're a brave man, Silas", Valentine said. ' "Why's that?"
"You left your bodyguard downstairs. I'm a desperate insurgent. Suppose I went for your throat?"
Miss L. removed her jacket. Valentine saw a soft leather holster strapped under her arm, the shining butt of an automatic inside. "It's loaded with hollow-points", she said.
"Have to admire a woman who brings her own protection".
"I believe in redundancy", Silas said. "Speaking of which, Luty, see if you can find friend Valentine one of my suits from when I'm better about exercising and down ten pounds".
She led Valentine up the carpeted stairs and to a bedroom that had been converted into an oversized closet, complete with three-way mirror. Her heels clacked on the hardwood floors as she walked down the line of jackets.
"I'd like to see you in gray flannel", Miss L. said. "You're too serious for double-breasted. Hmmm, a vest will make you look like a pimp with that hair. We'll stick to a simple cotton shirt. Where are you from, again?"
