“I see,” Reedeth nodded. “Funny-I’d never thought of pythonesses being subject to professional hazards beBut then, I guess I never took them very seriously. After today, though, I assure you I won’t underestimate them again.”
Dan gave a wan smile of appreciation. There was a pause. When it was clear nothing further was going to be said, he gathered up his recorder and addressed Ariadne.
“I take it the fee for-”
“It’ll be forwarded as arranged,” Ariadne snapped.
“Well. Well, then that’s all, I guess. Good after
The moment he had disappeared, Ariadne spun to face Reedeth. “And what’s got into you?” she blazed. “Don’t I have enough problems without you acting like a fool? Flamen just threatened to take his wife away!”
“Why should that bother you? She’s here under pricontract, isn’t she? So we’d make a fat profit on the deal. Besides, any man who genuinely cared about his wife would feel the same way after she’d had a few months of treatment here.”
“Jim!” Horrified, she went white. “Dr. Mogshack may be listening!”
“Not to what we’re saying, he isn’t. I had Harry Madn to repair my desketary this morning, and he’s fixed it up with some interesting new gimmicks. Go on-get it off your chest without worrying. There’s no one to hear you but me.”
She stared at him for long moments, mouth ajar. When he put out his hand to take hers and lead her away, she followed him like a trusting child.
“What in the hell is the good of trying to maintain internal security if Immigration goes and does some as stupid as letting Morton Lenigo into the counAnd when you run across a bunch of half-assed incompetents like I did this afternoon.”
I’m the one who’s out of his skull, Flamen thought as he keyed the controls of the skimmer to the state traffic computers and waited for them to find him a slot in the pattern. What was the penalty tag for breaking the month-to-month contract for Celia’s hospitalization-a quarter-million, wasn’t it?
“As though I didn’t have enough trouble already,” he muttered.
Beside him, shrunk back into the corner of the seat like a frightened bird, Lyla played with the hem of her yash and either failed to hear or ignored him.
When the skimmer lifted clear of the encircling towhowever, she exhaled loudly and relaxed. Flamen glanced at her.
“What made you decide to mention my wife?” he demanded.
“When? Oh, you mean while I was prophesying. Did I?”
Flamen sighed. “I wish I knew what to make of all this! Are you just a clever actress? Is it all a first-rate con job? I knew I’d heard the name Dan Kazer before somewhere, and I placed it as we were coming away. He used to mack for Michaela Baxendale, right?”
“Yes.”
“He parlayed her into a fortune, but she stayed a phoney. Always will. Looks like she didn’t even have the grace to share a slice of her profits with the guy who launched her. Ever met her?”
“No. Dan doesn’t even like talking about her very much.”
“That I’m not surprised at. She purely and simply disgusts me.” For the latest of many times he considered, and dismissed, the idea of doing a piece about her on the show. There was nothing he could reveal about her, no matter how nasty, which didn’t accord with the image the public already had of her.
Anyway, if things went on as they were going at the moment there wouldn’t be a Matthew Flamen show for long. What it would be like trying to deal with Prior tomorrow morning when, on top of today’s quarrel, he discovered that there was material scheduled about which he hadn’t been consulted, and which hadn’t even been comped for acceptability before it was put down, he hardly dared to think.
But he was still determined to use the item. He’d got some excellent tape; it should be worth a good four minutes.
Besides, being offered such publicity might help to mollify Mogshack and his colleagues if they’d been ofby his crack about Celia.
And yet: Celia. He shook his head. It was no good trying to pretend he was heartbroken at their separation, nor even making out that he had been surprised when it proved necessary to commit her. For months she had seemed to come alive only when a fight broke out bethem, and that wasn’t normal on anyone’s scale of values. Nonetheless, it had come as a terrible shock to find that she was as chilly with him, still her husband, as she might have been with a total stranger who was trying to pick her up.