He did. Then he said, “Oh.” And then, “You know, it’s midnight.”
“Edna just gave me the Word.”
“Which is?”
“Agate.”
I nodded.
He finished closing his collar. “What are you thinking about?”
“Cows.”
“Cows?” Hawk asked. “What about them?”
“You ever been on a dairy farm?”
He shook his head.
“To get the most milk, you keep the cows practically in suspended animation. They’re fed intravenously from a big tank that pipes nutrients out and down, branching into smaller and smaller pipes until it gets to all those high yield semi-corpses.”
“I’ve seen pictures.”
“People.”
“… and cows?”
“You’ve given me the Word. And now it begins to funnel down, branching out, with me telling others, and them telling still others, till by midnight tomorrow…”
“I’ll go get the-”
“Hawk?”
He turned back. “What?”
“You say you don’t think I’m going to be the victim of any hanky-panky with the mysterious forces that know more than we— Okay, that’s your opinion. But as soon as I get rid of this stuff, I’m going to make the most distracting exit you’ve ever seen.”
Two little lines bit down Hawk’s forehead. “Are you sure I haven’t seen this one before?”
“As a matter of fact I think you have.” Now I grinned.
“Oh,” Hawk said, then made a sound that had the structure of laughter but was all breath. “I’ll get the Hawk.”
He ducked out between the trees.
I glanced up at the lozenges of moonlight in the leaves.
I looked down at my briefcase.
Up between the rocks, stepping around the long grass, came the Hawk. He wore a gray evening suit; a gray silk turtleneck. Above his craggy face his head was completely shaved.
“Mr. Cadwaliter-Erickson?” He held out his hand.
I shook: small sharp bones in loose skin. “Does one call you Mr… ?”
“Arty.”
“Arty the Hawk.” I tried to look like I wasn’t giving his gray attire the once-over.
He smiled. “Arty the Hawk. Yeah. I picked that name up when I was younger than our friend down there. Alex says you got… well, some things that are not exactly yours. That don’t belong to you.”
I nodded.
“Show them to me.”
“You were told what—”
He brushed away the end of my sentence. “Come on, let me see.”
He extended his hand, smiling affably as a bank clerk. I ran my thumb around the pressure-zip. The cover went tsk. “Tell me,” I said, looking up at his head still lowered to see what I had, “what does one do about Special Services? They seem to be after me.”
The head came up. Surprise changed slowly to a craggy leer. “Why, Mr. Cadwaliter-Erickson!” He gave me the up and down openly. “Keep your income steady. Keep it steady, that’s one thing you can do.”
“If you buy these for anything like what they’re worth, that’s going to be a little difficult.”
“I would imagine. I could always give you less money—”
The cover went tsk again.
“—or, barring that, you could try to use your head and outwit them.”
“You must have outwitted them at one time or another. You may be on an even keel now, but you had to get there from somewhere else.”
Arty the Hawk’s nod was downright sly. “I guess you’ve had a run-in with Maud. Well, I suppose congratulations are in order. And condolences. I always like to do what’s in order.”
“You seem to know how to take care of yourself. I mean I notice you’re not out there mingling with the guests.”
“There are two parties going on here tonight,” Arty said. “Where do you think Alex disappears off to every five minutes?”
I frowned.
“That lumia down in the rocks”—he pointed towards my feet—“is a mandala of shifting hues on our ceiling. Alex,” he chuckled, “goes scuttling off under the rocks where there is a pavilion of Oriental splendor—”
“—and a separate guest list at the door?”
“ Regina is on both. I’m on both. So’s the kid, Edna, Lewis, Ann—”