“Corruption.”
“Yes. And once they taste the heady wine of absolute power, most are very reluctant to give it up. They think of themselves as gods, looking down on all the little people and thinking, ‘I know what is best for you. You might not like the legislation I’m introducing, but trust me, it’s for your own good.’ It doesn’t take long for the men and women in power to lose touch with the people, the masses, if you will. And it makes no difference what political party is in power. They still think they know what is best for everyone else. Bear this one small example in mind, Stormy: I helped build the first T-model automobiles to roll off the assembly line, the engine and the body. A simple, highly functional mode of transportation. And for years it remained basically the same. Then, some years ago, when the balance of power shifted in Washington the automobile changed ...”
“What the hell are you talking about, Barry?” Stormy asked with a frown.
“Just listen for a moment. The men and women in power, the liberals, instead of demanding that the punishment for stealing a car be made more severe, demanded that the car itself be made more theft-proof. At whose expense? The consumer—the long-suffering taxpayer—who must foot the bill for all the nonsense that comes out of Washington. Remember, Stormy,” Barry’s tone was sarcastic, “don’t let a good boy go bad. Always take the keys out of the ignition. Stormy, good boys don’t steal cars, punks do.”
Stormy looked at him, an exasperated expression on her face. “Barry, you can come up with the damndest analogies I have ever heard.” Then she laughed. “But I see your point. Okay, all right. You don’t have to convince me that big government is out of control. I agree with you. And I know you have a very difficult decision to make. I also know you don’t think much of the press. But in this case, we can help you.”
Pete’s and Repeat’s heads suddenly rose as one, their ears pricked up, eyes looking in the same direction.
Barry sniffed the air. The odor of nervous human sweat filled his olfactory sense.
“What is it?” Stormy asked.
The hybrids growled low in their throats.
Barry threw himself against her and pinned her to the ground just as a bullet whined over their heads, the crack of the rifle a split second behind it.
“I feel like I’m back in Bosnia,” Stormy muttered.
Five
Barry shoved Stormy behind the bank of the creek into a slight depression in the earth. Pete and Repeat were already there, belly down on the ground. “All of you, stay! And don’t move!” he ordered, and then was gone, slipping through the brush and timber.
Stormy looked into the eyes of the big hybrids, their snouts about three inches from her face. “Life with your friend is certainly not lacking in excitement,” she muttered.
Pete licked her on the nose.
Barry ran for about fifty yards, then cut to his left, jumping over the creek and bellying down on the other side. He got his bearings, then began slipping toward where the shot had come from. He rose to his feet and began running just as the rifle banged again, then once more. Barry burst out of the brush and jumped, landing on the man, feet first, both his hiking boots impacting against the man’s chest and knocking him backward, the rifle falling from his hands.
The sniper recovered very quickly and rolled to his feet, coming up with a knife. In the sunlight that managed to filter through the thick timber, dappling the ground with shards of illumination, Barry could see the blade was honed down to a razor sharpness.
Barry could also see that the man was not an experienced knife fighter. He held the weapon all wrong. Instead of moving his free hand to distract his opponent, the man was moving only the blade. Barry did not think he had ever seen the man before.
The man lunged at him, and Barry easily parried the move, sidestepping with the grace of a dancer—a vocation he had worked at in the seventeenth century in Italy.
The man cursed him. Barry’s only response was a smile.
The assailant tried to fake Barry out, and that got him a hard right fist to the mouth that crossed his eyes and brought a bright stain of blood to his lips. Before he could fully recover, Barry whirled and kicked high in a classic savate move, the sole of his boot slamming into the side of the man’s face and knocking him to the ground. The knife slipped from suddenly numbed fingers. Barry moved in quickly and applied a pressure hold to the man’s neck. In a few seconds, the man was asleep and softly snoring.
Barry used the man’s belt and strips of his shirt to truss him up securely; then he ripped down thick vines and tied the man to a tree.
Barry walked back to the creek. “It’s all right,” he announced. “Let’s go find a phone and call the sheriff.”
Stormy rose from the ground and brushed the dirt and twigs from her clothing. “Where is the nearest phone, Barry?”
“Oh, about a mile down the road. Come on. We’ll drive.”
“One of these days, Barry, you’re going to have to accept the fact that you are in the twentieth century.”
“Soon to be the twenty-first.”
“And you might get a phone then?”
“We’ll see.”
* * *
One of Salter’s younger deputies took a misstep and fell off the front porch while staring at Stormy. Salter gave the deputy a look that promised this was not the end of it.
“We’d better go get this guy before you lose all your troops,” Barry remarked innocently.
Salter sighed with a patience that was somehow bestowed to all sheriffs and chiefs of police.
The trussed-up man glared ribbons of silent hate at the sheriff, the deputies who were still able to walk, and at Barry. Stormy had elected to stay in the house, with Pete and Repeat. The signs of his thrashing about, trying to free himself, were evident, but Barry had tied him securely.
“Bag the rifle, the knife, and this guy’s hands for residue testing,” Salter ordered. He looked at the deputy who had fallen off the porch. “You go find the slugs that were fired at Miss Knight and Mr. Cantrell. And don’t come back until you have them in an evidence bag.”
“But that’s liable to take me a week!” the young deputy protested.
“The elementary school at Chestnut and Poplar still needs a crossing guard for this next term,” Salter told him. “Would you like that position?”
The deputy quickly headed into the timber.
“You don’t know this guy?” Don asked Barry.
“Never saw him before, and neither has Stormy. And I don’t know if he was shooting at me or Stormy.”
“Abortionists must die!” shouted the man, who was now on his feet and handcuffed, startling everyone. “Those who support abortion are murderers. Praise be to the Lord. Give me strength to kill that harlot.”
“Now we know,” Barry said. “Stormy did an editorial last month on a woman’s right to choose.”
“Get this nut out of here,” Don ordered. “Book him on two counts of attempted murder.”
“I hope the events of the past couple of days are not any indication of things to come when the Speaker gets here,” Barry remarked.
“Don’t even think it,” Don replied, taking off his cowboy hat and wiping his forehead and face with a handkerchief. The woods were deep and no breeze touched them.
Barry told him about the warning Stormy had received before she left New York City.
The sheriff nodded. “This is probably what the caller meant. Someone in that nut’s group got cold feet and tried to warn her away.”
Barry said nothing, but in the back of his mind, he did not believe the shooter had anything at all to do with the warning Stormy had received. “Don, I talked it over with Stormy. How about you and your wife coming out tomorrow evening for steaks and beer?”
“Sounds good to me. I told Jeanne, and she’s real excited about it.”
“Okay, then. That’s settled. I’d better get back to the house and see about Stormy.”
“We’ll finish up out here and get
out of your hair. See you tomorrow, Barry.”
* * *
“Going to report this, Stormy?” Barry asked, when the outside world was hushed by closed doors and the soft hum of the central air-conditioning.
“You know I have to, Barry.” She smiled. “I’m going to drive into town, find a pay phone, and call it in. But your name won’t be mentioned. I’ll just say, ‘While visiting a friend.’ ”
“I told the sheriff about your warning call. He thinks the call was about the abortion report you did.”
“And you don’t?”
“No. Let me change clothes and I’ll drive you in.” He glanced at a wall clock. “And if we hurry, I can put in a rush order for a telephone. I’ll talk to the sheriff. He can probably expedite the request.”
“Welcome to the twentieth century, Barry.”
“The last one was better.”
* * *
Don Salter certainly did expedite matters. The phone company installation man was knocking on the front door of the house at eight o’clock the next morning. Since the lines were already in place, it took him only moments to get the phone (which Barry had bought at a local Wal-Mart the afternoon before) up and humming. He would be charged a small fee each month to have his number unlisted and unpublished.
Ki had heard Stormy’s phoned-in report on the evening news and had left her parents early. By midmorning she was sitting in Barry’s living room.
“How have you been, Ki?” Barry asked, smiling at the petite woman with the shining black hair.
The award-winning camera-person waggled her right hand in a so-so gesture. “This shoot going to be as exciting as Idaho, gang?”2
“I hope not,” Stormy replied. “But it’s certainly starting off with a bang.”
Ki cut her dark eyes to the newly installed telephone, then to Barry, and grinned. “Progress slowly closing in on you, huh?”
“It seems that way.”
“Don’t like it, though, do you?”
“No. But progress is inevitable. The alternative would be much worse.”
The phone rang and Barry glared at it. “Shit!” he muttered, getting up to answer it while Stormy and Ki laughed at the disgusted expression on his face. “What?” Barry spoke into the phone. “What are you talking about? No, I don’t want to listen. Goodbye.” He hung up and sat down. He pointed to the phone. “I haven’t been with this phone service for two hours and already another company is calling trying to get me to switch. I thought my number was unlisted.”
Stormy laughed at him. “Modern technology, love. Isn’t it grand?”
“That’s one word for it. I can think of a number of others that would be more appropriate.”
“You were right about us hammering away on government excesses against private citizens, Barry,” Ki said. “The other networks have even changed their formats—to some degree—but nothing like we’re doing.”
“They never will, either,” Barry told her. “They don’t have the stomach for it.”
The phone rang.
Barry looked at it and sighed.
“Why not buy an answering machine?” Ki suggested. “That way you can screen each call and let the recorder take the ones you don’t want.”
“Good idea.” Barry rose from the chair and walked across the room and stilled the ringing. He listened for a moment. “No,” he said, then hung up and sat back down. “I had a telephone in 1910,” he said. “It was a very simple device. You lifted one part, stuck it to your ear, and turned the crank. When the operator came on, you spoke into the mouthpiece and gave her the number. I don’t recall anyone ever trying to sell me anything over the telephone.”
Stormy was having a difficult time keeping a straight face. “What was that last call?”
“Some long distance service.” He looked at Ki. “You armed, Ki?”
“Not for this trip, Barry. This is a resort area. I wasn’t anticipating any trouble.”
“That’s when it always comes at you. I have a pistol you can use. It’s an old Chief’s Special.”
The phone rang. Barry gave the instrument a very dark look.
Stormy quickly stood up. “I think we’ll drive around a bit. Get a feel for the area.”
Just as the two women were walking out the front door, Barry grabbed up the phone and started speaking in what sounded to the women very much like Chinese . . . sort of.
“Ma Bell will never be the same,” Stormy muttered.
* * *
Most conservatives and moderates of all political parties loved the news format of the Coyote Network. Liberals hated it. The Coyote news staff never let up on government excesses, be they national, state, county, or local. But it wasn’t just the government who felt the bite of Coyote. The Coyote reporters went after welfare cheats with a vengeance, asking questions that the viewers had never heard a reporter ask before. They went after rich farmers who received massive farm subsidies they didn’t need. They went in depth on every subject they probed, from crime to religion. But more than anything else, Coyote loved to tweak the nose of government . . . and especially loved to bloody the nose of liberals. But conservatives quickly learned that Coyote had no intention of treating them with kid gloves. Coyote went after military waste and all sorts of pork with the tenacity of a pit bulldog. Members of Congress—republican or democrat, liberal or conservative—discovered early on that when they spent taxpayer money, there had better be a damn good reason for doing so.
The Coyote Network had eyes and ears everywhere across the nation. And most citizens wouldn’t take a dime for their efforts: they just wanted to see corruption on all levels ferreted out, placing strong emphasis on getting repeat drunk driving offenders off the road (Coyote publicly humiliated them and the judges who kept turning them loose and the sheriffs and chiefs of police who showed favoritism toward them).
Coyote went after men who battered women, showing their faces to the world in public service announcements. They went after deadbeat dads, punks, gangs.
Coyote grabbed the IRS by the butt and wouldn’t turn loose. Since the Internal Revenue Service was, without question, the most loathed of all federal agencies, the weary-of-taxes public loved the reports. But Coyote didn’t just hammer at the IRS; they reported on the taxes imposed upon the citizens by states and cities and counties, where the money was going and more importantly, why.
Coyote questioned, loud and frequently, why the government had to have certain departments.
Coyote was, in the words of one bureaucratic twit, “A great big pain in the ass!”
But the public loved it and clamored for more.
Coyote didn’t do any reporting on the personal hygiene problems confronting the Glopawho-pamopapoopoo tribe in Lower Boomgawha, or the political problems of the prime minster of England, or the sexual escapades of the prince of Romania, or homosexuals in Denmark, but they sure as hell caused many a sleepless night for elected and appointed officials in the United States in all levels of local, state, and federal government.
Six
After Stormy and Ki left, Barry checked the freezer to see if he had enough steaks for tonight’s cookout. He did. But since he seldom drank, he had no beer in the house. He drove into town and bought several six-packs, then drove to a local bakery that baked some of the finest breads and pastries he had ever tasted, and purchased bread and two freshly baked apple pies. Back at his house, he put the beer in the refrigerator and stowed the rest of his purchases away. He tidied up the house a bit, then looked around for something else to do. The house was neat and orderly and spotless.
“Charcoal,” he muttered. “Do I have enough?” He checked on the back porch and found he had plenty.
Barry was not accustomed to having company. Not since technology had begun taking giant steps. It had been so different in the old days. That brought a smile to his lips. The old days. Which old days in particular are you referring to, Barry? he silently questioned. He shook his head, attempting to clear away those thoughts
. He did not often dwell on the far past, for that usually left him with a feeling of depression.
Possessing the ability to live forever was not all wine and roses, he sourly mused. Barry stepped out on the porch and stood for a moment, recalling a few good and close friends he’d had in the past. Jean Laffite did not deserve the bad reputation that had been hung on him . . . at least that was the impression Barry had gotten during the few years he’d known the man. He was a gentleman pirate. Indeed, just after the battle of New Orleans, General Andrew Jackson had called Jean one of the ablest men he’d ever met. Jean had died a relatively young man, only forty-five years old. However, it was certainly true that Jean had burned Galveston to the ground just a few years before his untimely death. Barry didn’t know what had happened to Jean’s brother, Pierre. The last time he’d seen Pierre, the man was running a blacksmith shop in New Orleans. That was . . . oh, around 1814, as Barry could best recall.
Barry had returned to the western mountains after the Battle of New Orleans, resuming his lonely life as a mountain man and living with a pack of timber wolves in the Rocky Mountains. When he desired human company, he would visit an Indian village. The Indians knew who he was and greatly respected him. Barry knew that even today, Indians still sang songs about him.
He could only stay a few years in any one spot, for since he did not age, suspicions would quickly grow. That was why Barry seldom allowed people to get very close to him, or he to them.
Then Stormy came along and his life had not been the same since.
Standing on the porch, Barry smiled at that last thought. He had to admit that that particular change had been, for the most part, for the better.
A sudden feeling of great danger seized Barry, and he quickly stepped off the porch, moving to his left. He stood by the corner of the house wondering what had caused that moment of alarm. Pete and Repeat were in the living room, behind stone walls, out of harm’s way.
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