by John F. Carr
After some discussion Santander amended her motion to have the town hire both Rod and Jones and to have part-time locals fill out the squad. The motion carried with only one dissenting vote—cast by Perez.
* * *
Sergeant Hadley R. Jones arrived two sleep shifts later. He was older than Rod, gray-haired, quiet where Rod was breezy. After Perez filled him in on the job, he said, “No worse than what I’m doing now. You can’t raise a family on a Marine pension and jobs are hard to get in Castell City. Rod got me hired as a part-time bouncer in a saloon there. You’re offering me the same job with better pay!”
Rod, Jones and eight locals were ready when a nomad tribe showed up a cycle later. Rod’s men were dressed in the light synthetic leather tunic and trousers of the CD Marine battledress. They had highly polished rifles and formed a line across the road to halt the leading riders.
Perez watched as the tribal headman rode up to the men in line, laughed and said something in his own tongue. Rod answered him with a few words. The headman made a longer statement. Rod answered him with a few more words. The headman stood up in his saddle and gave a long and dramatic monologue. Rod gave him an answer as short as before.
The headman pulled out his pistol.
Rod raised his rifle but kept it pointed at the sky.
The headman fired his pistol into the air.
Rod fired a short burst from his rifle, also into the air.
The headman gave a short and angry speech, punctuating it with more pistol shots.
Rod waited until he was finished, fired off the rest of his magazine, and said something in a calm voice.
The headman looked at Rod in astonishment, then laughed. Quickly the nearby riders joined in the laughter. The headman reached into his clothes and counted out some money. Rod took the script and told his men to stand aside.
The headman led the tribe peacefully across the bridge.
Rod walked up to Perez and handed him the money. “What did you tell him?” Perez asked.
“That he had to pay me now, since I’d just used up twenty-five credits of ammunition!”
The next band of nomads were Mongols and proved less amenable, or perhaps had less of a sense of humor. Rod lined up his men and went to talk to the khan. This time Rod did not speak their language, but Jones was able to interpret.
The negotiations did not go smoothly. As Perez watched in horror, Rod and Jones turned their backs on the khan. The khan yelled something that was obviously impolite. Rod gave an order to his men, who raised their rifles. Perez covered his eyes. There was the noise of several rifles firing.
Perez heard what he thought was the sound of wounded men screaming, but which he eventually realized was the bleating of panic-stricken sheep. He opened his eyes to see half a dozen sheep lying on the ground and the rest of the herd milling around, with the nomads trying to control them.
There was the sound of a galloping horse from the direction of the bridge. Perez watched as a nomad horse rode directly into the guardrail. The guardrail gave way and the horse went over the side of the bridge, the rider barely managing to jump out of his saddle in time. There was a loud thump as the horse hit the rocks below, followed by the beasts anguished high-pitched screams. Another Mongol rode over and fired his rifle down over the broken guardrail. The screams abruptly ceased.
The khan looked around at the rest of his men, who were too busy keeping the sheep and their own horses under control to have their rifles ready, and slowly rode over to Rod who graciously accepted the payment.
There was no more firing. The nomads and the surviving sheep slowly crossed the bridge. The khan and Jones held a long conversation over the dead animals.
Rod came over to Perez, saying, “Call a butcher.”
“Why?”
“They have some sheep to sell.”
Perez made a phone call into town and a truck showed up from the market. The driver, with Jones as interpreter, spent a long time haggling with the Mongol khan. Eventually, they came to an agreement. The driver paid up and started loading the carcasses onto the truck.
“Look at that,” Rod told Perez. “This tribe made a healthy profit today, and didn’t have to do their own butchering!”
Jones was less cheerful. “I don’t believe it worked, not with the amateur soldiers we have.”
“I thought they reacted perfectly,” Perez told him.
Jones shook his head. “Hardest thing to do with green troops is to get them to pull their triggers when they’re supposed to. Second hardest is to get them to stop shooting. We’re lucky anyone fired on command. Maybe half of them didn’t.”
“How did you get them to stop after one shot,” Perez asked.
“Easy. Only one round in each rifle.”
* * *
Word must have spread quickly among the nomads, for they gave no more trouble with tolls. A tribe would appear, Rod would line up his men by the entrance to the bridge, the nomads would complain loud and long, and the money would be paid.
Perez told Rod to prolong the complaint sessions, as some of the local merchants would use that time to show up on the fringes of the tribe and peddle their wares. This was a time consuming process, since the nomads insisted on haggling and few merchants knew their languages.
Perez was watching Rod debating a local headman when a familiar voice from behind said, “Why hire someone when you could do the job yourself?”
It was Afaz, a Turk who had once been a nomad in Siberia and now, courtesy of the Bureau of Relocation, was a trader in wood and hides on Haven. He was also one of the bond holders who had financed the bridge. For Perez he had found the survivors of a crew of Kazakhs who had learned underwater construction in Siberia, and had been transported by BuReloc after striking for higher pay.
“Maybe we’ll pay off your bonds,” Perez said “now that MacKim here has convinced your former colleagues to start paying tolls.”
“Tell me, Enrique, why you hired this Sergeant MacKim. You speak as much Turkish as he does.”
“I do!” Perez exclaimed.
“No, not really. But look at him.” Afaz pointed to Rod, who was patiently listening to the nomad headman deliver an oration. “The headman is discussing in very flowery language MacKim’s sexual preferences, specifically of the sheep in the flock MacKim wants to take to bed with him. And MacKim doesn’t realize he’s being insulted. Pity you don’t know more Turkish, Enrique, it’s really a very funny speech.”
Perez decided that Rod MacKim’s limited Turkish made little difference, since the nomads paid the toll peacefully. He did, however, make a point of checking on Rod off-shift.
Contrary to Perez’s prediction, Rod had found a regular poker game in the back of Pepe Botella’s Cantina. Perez still found himself bothered about Rod’s limerick. Would a Marine make a derogatory remark about something as sacred as poker? Or in Rod’s experience were marked decks a common occurrence?
Rod, a town policeman, and a couple of mill hands were playing poker when Perez joined in. He found the atmosphere friendly and low-key. He kept to the one strategy he knew, playing very timidly and slowly losing chips, before pulling a bluff. The other players dropped out quickly but Rod matched him chip for chip before folding on the last raise. Perez cashed in and found he had lost slightly over one credit in the session. Rod appeared to be a winner, with five or ten credits worth of chips stacked in front of him.
Perez had not been impressed with the quality of the other players, but he was certain Rod had known he was bluffing and had deliberately let him win the last pot. Or was it a disguised bribe? A marked deck would have informed Rod about the bluff. However, Rod might well be familiar with the one-big-bluff strategy.
The next day, after a long shift supervising repairs to the bridge approaches, Perez returned to Pepe’s Cantina. He had worked out a more subtle bluffing strategy to try on Rod. This time he came out ahead, while Rod broke even, which seemed suspicious to him.
Was there any way to deter
mine if Rod were cheating at cards? Perez came back several times without finding an answer. However, he discovered that he was looking forward to matching wits with Rod. Soon he had become a regular member of Pepe’s poker game.
* * *
During dimday, two cycles later, there was a change in the routine. Rod called out his men to meet a new tribe of nomads. Perez found Rod’s men in formation with the tribe milling around under the streetlamps and pointedly ignoring them.
Perez recognized the leader of the nomads. It was Tyugan who had led the second free crossing of the bridge, but a more prosperous Tyugan. He had a Kalashnikov slung over his back, its highly polished barrel showing a reflection of Cat’s Eye. All of his men had rifles now, although some also carried bows. The same muskylope wagon that Perez had seen earlier was there, but now it was pulled by a pair of mules in shiny new horse collars. There were two other wagons that were obviously brand new, and a number that had seen considerable service.
When Tyugan rode up, Perez asked, “Are you going to pay the toll this time?”
Tyugan laughed. “Don’t have to. We’re not crossing your bridge. But I must say it’s a marvelous invention. We’re a rich tribe, now that the Bridge let us take all those sheep to market. I brought the women to Millvale so they could spend some of the money. You know women, don’t you, Gospodin Perez? A man like you probably has four or five wives by now.”
He broke out laughing, saving Perez from answering. As he rode off, Perez heard him say, “I learned my lesson and stopped with two.”
One thing bothered him, how had Tyugan manage to return without crossing the bridge?
By gossiping with the Russki-speaking tribesmen, Perez found the answer. Tyugan and Selim had met and decided not to risk Millvale’s anger by returning through the town and across the bridge. Their two parties had combined and, with rifles in plain sight, had crossed the Titan River on the ferry downstream. They had not paid the toll on the ferry, either.
An impromptu trade fair quickly sprang up in the middle of Main Street, as local merchants crossed the bridge with their wares and spread them on the pavement for inspection. At Perez’s orders, Rod had told his men to break ranks and hang around Main Street, making sure the nomads would see them. Some started playing dominos on the sidewalk, while others looked at what was for sale.
Perez watched as Rod completed a deal with one horseman for a carved ram’s horn. “Look, Enrique,” Rod called out. “An authentic shaman’s tool, used to summon spirits.”
“Sorry, Rod,” he replied. “But that horn is used by riders to signal each other. No shaman ever touched it.”
“The shaman might have called riders with it,” Rod said.
Perez pointed to the intricate design carved into the ram’s horn with a drillbit tooth. “Tribesmen who believe in spirits carve pictures of animals, but Muslims never make pictures of living things. Their art is purely geometric. Look at the patterns on this horn. This is definitely Muslim artwork.”
Rod nodded. “Sure, Enrique, you know this, but you live on the edge of the steppes. There aren’t many Muslims in the Shangri-La Valley, thanks to former Governor Bronson. Buyers in Castell City won’t know the difference.”
Perez walked into Pepe’s Cantina near the end of brightday and found the place nearly empty. Pepe was leaning on the bar, casually playing dice with Rod and Perez’s ex-wife, who had recently started working there as a waitress. She invited Perez to join in.
Rob, who had the dice in hand, recited,
“Craps is a game very nice,
You can play at a very low price.
No points but sevens,
Or maybe elevens,
If you’ve properly loaded your dice.”
Rod then rolled and missed his point, thereby losing the dice to Pepe.
Perez watched each roll carefully for a while, trying to determine if the dice were loaded. They did not seem to be. Nor did the players seem to care, as no money was being bet.
Later, when Byers’ Star had set and the drinking crowd had shown up at the Cantina, Rod found a different use for the horn he had purchased. He abandoned the dice and cards, donned a kilt, and put on a floor show of Scottish dancing. Perez’s ex-wife, also wearing a kilt, joined him for a Scottish sword dance, with Mac accompanying him on the bagpipes. Then Rod put the horn on a table and danced around it in what he solemnly informed the audience was a “Scottish hornpipe.”
* * *
Perez walked into Mayor de la Torre’s office and the Mayor greeted him with:
“Dominoes’ dominant trait,
Is the boneyard with tile twenty-eight.
You match up the spots,
Tie your ’ponent in knots,
And he draws and he draws and you wait.”
“Another Rod MacKim Marine import?” Perez asked.
“No, I composed it myself,” the Mayor replied.
“I should have guessed.”
“It’s not that bad, Enrique.”
“It’s not the quality,” Perez said, “but the lack of one of Rod’s immoral morals.”
“Don’t be too hard on Rod,” the Mayor said patiently. “According to Jones, he writes all of his own limericks.”
“Yes, but doesn’t Rod ever think of anything besides money?”
“Of course not. We hired him as a toll collector, not a philosopher.”
“Yes, but it’s how he likes to make money that bothers me. He keeps talking about marked decks and loaded dice and phony shaman’s instruments.”
The Mayor looked thoughtful, and then said, “You know, you may be right. MacKim obviously came here with the thought of muscling in on the Millvale rackets.”
“Except there aren’t any,” Perez replied.
“So he’s sucking up to you because you’re in charge of the bridge, which is the biggest moneymaker in town. He’s hoping you’ll split the rake-off with him.”
Both men laughed. Perez, complaining about the time he was wasting on bookkeeping, had insisted that a bondholders’ committee take over the auditing of the bridge’s finances.
* * *
Every shift, when he inspected the bridge, Perez stopped to chat with Mac, who took great delight in telling him the gossip about Rod and the former Señora Perez. Perez, who was hoping his ex-wife would remarry and drop out of his life, found himself with hopes for Rod’s love life. Mac soon quashed those hopes with the news that she had broken up with Rod and had made a pass at Jones. According to Mac, Jones had told her that cocktail waitresses made lousy lovers: “Here’s five credits if you go sleep with someone else!”
The next shift, as tribesmen bullied a herd of goats into crossing the bridge, Mac chatted about the nomads he had seen. “This group sure is a lot different than the first one that showed up,” Perez said.
“No. Pretty much the same. Anything becomes routine in time,” Mac replied in an Olympian tone.
“Hardly. You almost got pushed off the bridge by that first flock.”
“Yeah, I prefer them this way.”
“And you don’t have to cleanup any wrecked tollbooths.”
“And we collect a fifty credit toll,” Mac said.
“Fifty credits?” Perez asked. “The toll is twenty five.”
“Didn’t you know?” Mac replied. “The Mayor raised the toll to fifty per herd.”
“Mac must have forgotten you’re a Council member,” the Mayor told Perez. “Does he know what he’s talking about?”
“Probably,” Perez said. “Mac gossips with every passerby. Maybe he spoke to some of the nomads as the sheep went by. Or he may have interviewed the sheep.”
“Could he and his son be in on a racket together?”
“Possibly, but why mention it to me?”
“Because he thought you were getting a cut. No, he would have used different wording. Maybe he was feeling you out to see if you wanted a cut. In case you discovered what he and Rod were doing.”
“I doubt it,” Perez said. “Twe
nty-five credits doesn’t go a long way split between me, Mac, Jones and Rod. Is it possible that Rod is cheating the nomads and Mac’s not in on the plot?”
After some trying the Mayor and Perez succeeded in placing a conference call to the Seventy-seventh Regimental Marine Headquarters, personnel office in Castell City.
“I’d heard that MacKim had gotten a job someplace on the steppes,’ the officer said, “but I didn’t know it was at Millvale. Has he been behaving himself?”
“Meaning you don’t expect him to behave?” the Mayor asked.
“Not really. Mackim’s what we call a ‘Sergeant Bilko.’”
“A what?”
“A ‘brain.’ An operator, a fiddler, someone out to make a fast credit. We never court-martialed him, but we forced him to retire as soon as he was eligible for a pension.”
“What kind of Bilko was he?” the Mayor asked.
“Strictly small-time, ten credits here, twenty-five there. Never enough for a formal investigation. Then he got caught stacking the deck at an officer’s club poker game.”
“Wasn’t that worth an investigation?” Perez asked.
“The officers who caught him were drunk. But we bluffed him into signing his retirement papers, since a court-martial might not believe the officers. Also, MacKim was useful, sometimes. We put him in charge of surplus property, with a friendly warning not to get greedy or we’d take that plum away from him. He turned over several thousand credits to the unit fund.”
“As for Jones,” Perez began.
“Jones always had a reputation for being honest. A couple of times he talked MacKim into returning the money he’d bilked someone out of. At least once he kept MacKim out of real trouble with the Castell City authorities. I always thought that’s why MacKim liked to have him around.”
At the Council meeting Santander spoke up, “Do we have any proof?”
“No,” said the Mayor, “just some loose talk from his father. As for Jones, it’s pure guesswork.”
“Then,” Santander continued, “you can’t do anything until you have some hard evidence.”
Perez answered. “We’ll get that evidence. We’ll keep an eye on Rod with a fine-toothed comb.”