Alan E. Nourse - The Fourth Horseman by Alan Edward Nourse

time they'd need to figure out how badly they wanted to make Sundown rich.
    "You don't have to sell them anything, or ask for anything, or substantiate anything," Carey had told him at their hasty meeting in the VIP lounge at Sea-Tac airport a few hours before. "You're just the bright-eyed boy bringing them the information we promised; other than that, you don't know nothin'. Your company just wants to make sure they have this information before they make any important policy decisions on the Yukon Shelf, that's all. And if a single one of them looks crosseyed at you, you get up and walk out. If anybody says one word you don't like, you say 'Thank you, gentlemen,' and leave, right then—and you don't go back. We've got them by the balls this time, Chet. All you've got to do in Savannah is acquaint them with that fact. We'll do the twisting from this end."
    Chet coughed suddenly and explosively, choking on his drink and knocking it onto the floor. When the black stewardess stooped down to clean it up, he leaned very close, pretending to help, suddenly aware of her light fragrance. Might just make a play for this little honey, he thought, if I could get her to go on to Savannah with me. Talk about nice. And I haven 't been laid for a week. He coughed again. When she brought him a new drink he tried to engage her in a little light chitchat, but she didn't seem to rise to the fly. Oh, well, the hell with her. Plenty more where I'm going, and once the meeting's over, there '11 be plenty of time for fun and games. He thought of the condo at Hilton Head, the big pool and the golf course and the lush company suite on the twelfth floor, and that sweet little beauty he'd met in Savannah the last time he'd been there. Maybe he'd give her a jingle after the meeting and see if she had some spare time. They usually had some time for a weekend at that condo, with its high ocean view, and the best goddam food they'd ever eaten, and all the booze and snow they could ever hope for, and a little high-quality entertainment thrown in—he shifted in his seat in anticipation. Matter of fact, maybe he'd call that girl tonight, after he'd gotten a little sleep and before all the suckers started turning up for the meeting. They could just buzz off to the condo for dinner and a few hours to get reacquainted. He coughed again and pulled on his drink, beginning to feel downright feverish.
    In Atlanta, however, Chet's connecting Delta flight to Savannah turned out to be overbooked, and he was bumped onto a flight that left forty minutes later. By oddest coincidence, the tall black stewardess rode in the seat he'd had reserved as she deadheaded home to Savannah. Serve the fat bastard right to have to sit and wait a while, she thought bitterly. He was just one too many white men mentally undressing her in the past forty-eight hours. Let him sit and rub his crotch, she thought. And coughing right in her face, too. The girl shivered. You'd think even a slob like that would try to do something about his breath.
    In Savannah the black stewardess caught the limo to the DeSoto Hilton, then walked south along Bull Street in the hot morning sun, through the three graceful plazas to Forsyth Park. From there she angled west into the maze of scruffy tenements toward home—the sad, noisome, rat-infested home she'd been trying to escape for something like a million years, and had never quite made it.
    16
    The flashbulbs and photofloods hit Carlos full-face the minute he stepped off the plane at Stapleton International Airport in Denver— POW!—and he realized instantly that he should have been prepared for it, and like a damned naked baby, he wasn't. A microphone was shoved into his face, brandished by a wild-looking female. "Dr. Carlos Quintana, CDC?" Yes, yes. "Marge Callum, JTLM-TV News, Denver. Dr. Quintana, what can you tell us about the Black Plague epidemic that's hitting people, down in Rampart Valley?" Epidemic? My God, woman, what epidemic? There isn't any