Free The Terminators by Donald Hamilton Page A

Denison."
    I said, I hoped casually: "Oh, sure, Mr. Kotko's dangerous Mr. Denison. Add him to the list. You didn't tell me how the gas shortage got you here."
    She said, "Actually, I don't know that I'd call myself a victim of the crisis, darling. I may actually be a better girl for it, or at least a less hypocritical one. It made me think for the first time in my life, really think. I mean, there I was pedaling my ecological ten-speed bicycle on my way to save the world and make it beautiful, and shaking my fist dutifully at all those obscene, polluting Chrysler Imperials whizzing past—and suddenly, no more gas. You know, darling, bicycling when you feel like bicycling or want to prove something is one thing. Looking forward to a lifetime of sitting on that hard little seat and pushing those crazy pedals and getting your hairdo ruined and your pants or stockings greasy is something totally different." She shook her head ruefully. "It was . . . a real shock. Matt. Suddenly I realized that all my life I'd been taking my opinions from other people. I'd been thinking just what all my concerned, idealistic friends had been telling me to think. At least I'd been thinking I was thinking it, if you know what I mean."
    "Give me time," I said. "I'm a few thinks behind, but I'll catch up eventually."
    "Suddenly," she said, "I realized that I—me, Diana Lawrence—didn't feel like that at all. I made the dreadful discovery that I really  liked  big, comfortable, air-conditioned cars, and I was going to miss them terribly if they disappeared. And once I started looking, I kept finding more disillusioning things about myself, for instance that I really  liked  warm, soft, lovely fur coats and I wasn't really all that disturbed about the poor little animals who'd lost their lives to make them. Well, leopards and such, okay. They're endangered; and I don't want to be the one to push them over the edge to extinction but I never heard that the mink situation was even mildly critical. I even discovered—this is a terrible confession, and I probably shouldn't tell you—that I was pretty tired of hearing about those darling little seals brutally clubbed to death by those dreadful men on the goddamned Pribilof Islands, wherever they are. Hell, maybe the poor guys were just trying to earn a living, and that was the safe and efficient way to do it, and maybe the herd could spare a few seals now and then. Aren't you shocked?"
    "I'm tough," I said. "I'll recover."
    It's part of the required duties of a secret agent. He's supposed to sit there showing wide-eyed interest, hoping for some useful nuggets of information, but it isn't always easy. I mean, ten-speed bikes and fur seals, for God's sake! I reminded myself that she was a nice kid, or at least an interesting one, and I had, after all, asked for it. I changed position slightly so I could watch the Elfenbeins hitting the herring hard. I decided that tomorrow I'd better try it. I'd done it before, long ago, and survived; and why fly a third of the way around the world just to eat the same old bacon and eggs?
    "But the thing that really got to me," Diana was saying, "when I started  thinking , was the busybodies who, not satisfied with saving the environment and the animals, kept trying to save me. Without even asking my permission! Here I'd been applauding uncritically every time somebody hung a new safety gadget on my car and now I realized suddenly that I was sick of it. I was sick of people who were forever saving everything from everybody, and everybody from everything. I was fed to the teeth with all the screaming seatbelts and wailing ignition locks—now you can't even start the stupid machine without getting yourself all safetied up! What's that junk doing in a  car ? A car's for  driving , isn't it? If you want to be so damned safe you can stay  home , can't you? And anyway,
    if I want to go through a windshield headfirst, that's my own goddamn' business. Isn't it?"
    ''So you