by E. E. Knight
"If you like, but as strangers we've got to approach unarmed." He unslung his Kalashnikov, held it up over his head, then placed it on the ground. He made a motion toward Bee and she sat next to his gun.
"Feel like showing off your famous charm school repertoire?" Valentine asked Duvalier. Behind them, Ahn-Kha kept a hand on Jimi the mule's halter.
"No. If there's a problem I like to disappear fast without anyone getting a good look at me."
"I shall stay back as well," Ahn-Kha said.
Valentine placed his U-gun on the grassy ground and set the pistol on top of it. He had to jog to catch up with Price.
"Let me do the talking, Val," Price warned as he lit his pipe. "They're tetchy around strangers."
"Any particular reason for it?"
Sweat ran lightly down the greasy dirt on his face. Price's filth was semi-waterproof, as impervious to rain as an oilskin. "Nobody likes them much. Most folks in the civilized world—beg your pardon, but that's how Tennesseans see it, stuck between corn-likker-swilling guerillas west and east—avoid them like they carry a bad fungus.
"Even the churchies keep clear, except a few unreformed Jesus-pushers."
"Why do the Kurians let them be?"
"They get loads over the mountains, one way or another. Between the New York corridor and Chattanooga precious little moves by train; the lines are always getting attacked by guerillas, and you have to pay through the nose per pound. A legworm can haul as much cargo as a railcar. They and their brothers in Virginia are the main east-west smuggling artery for the whole Midwest. Not that they don't do legitimate runs too."
They hopped across two old wormtrails, little more than hummocks of summer-dried weeds, and entered the woods. Evergreens staked out their claims among the tough oaks and smooth-skinned hackberrys.
The two men astride the sixty-foot segmented worm wore black leathers fitted with an assortment of barbs like oversized fishhooks. A third had dismounted and stood near the front of their beast, a burlap sack of potato peelings and pig corn thrown under its nose. All three men wore their hair long, tied down in back and then flared out like a foxtail. All were on the grubby side, but didn't make an art form out of it like their guide.
Valentine had never seen a live legworm at rest. Its "legs" were hundreds of tiny, paired, black clawlike legs, running down the bottom of its fleshy hide like a millipede's. Oversized versions of the claws, growing larger even as the front of the worm grew thinner, pulled up the corn and the earth beneath, stuffing it into a bilateral mouth. Scimitar-like tusks, facing each other like crab claws, stuck out the front
"That's close enough, stranger," said the second man.
"Friendly call, high rider," Price said. "I'm Hoffman Price, friend to the Bulletproof, Worm Wildcats, and the Uttercross."
"We're Bulletproof."
"I know," Price said. "That's why I listed you first."
"Story!" the second man said. "And if it ain't, you know we don't like bums—"
"I know him, Zak," the one with the corncobs said, dropping his sack. He had a little gray in his red-brown hair, and a little more flesh around his middle. "He's no bum. He came and got that Swenson newbie. Maybe four years back. That Colt the Dispatcher carries, he got it from him."
"You wanna vouch for him, Cookie?" the one who'd been called Zak said.
"I'm just saying the Dispatcher knows him, is all."
"Where can I find the Dispatcher?" Price asked. "Is it still Dalian?"
Zak took a drink from a water bottle and passed it back. "Sure is. He's east. Soon as we've eaten we're moving on fast."
"Will you let us ride tail? Three human, two Grog. Mule in tow."
"You might be riding into trouble," Zak said. "One of our pods got jumped. The Dispatcher sent out a call."
"Our guns will secure the Bulletproof, as long as we enjoy the BulletprooPs hospitality," Price said. "You can count us on your side of the worm."
The man behind Zak pointed with a fingerless-gloved hand. "You know the words, but that don't mean much to me."
"He says he wants business with the Dispatcher, that's good enough for me," Zak said. "You can ride tail. Enjoy the music back there."
"Thank you, high rider," Price said. He touched Valentine and they turned.
"What did we just agree to?" Valentine asked.
"When you ride with the Bulletproof—any of the legworm tribes, really—you enjoy their hospitality. But you're expected to stand with them in any kind of a confrontation."
"You mean fight."
"Don't worry. When two tribes get into a feud they each line up on either side of an open field. There's a sporting match like lacrosse only with two contestants; all you have to do is cheer."
"What kind of feud?"
"Could be anything. Usually it's feeding ground. One group allegedly goes in another's area. It's hazy at best. About a third of Kentucky's divided up between the tribes. If they're caught, it's called an arrest but it boils down to being taken hostage. So they hold a contest. If the 'intruder' side wins, the hostages and their worms are released. If the 'intruded' side wins, a ransom and restitution are paid."
"Sounds rather civilized," Valentine said.
"Again, except for yelling, you won't have to do much."
Zac, Gibson—the man behind Zak—and Cookie gave them a quick legworm riding lesson, and issued them each a cargo hook and a climbing goad.
The cargo hook resembled a pirate's replacement hand, hanging from a chain whose links were wide enough for the attachment of lines. They used a pair to attach a long lead to the mule. The goad resembled a mountaineer's pickstaff, with a crowbarlike digger at one end and a long spike at the other. To mount the legworm, you plunged your goad into one of the many thick patches of dead skin—the worm's skin reminded Valentine of fiberglass insulation—and lifted yourself up to a height where a buddy could pull you the rest of the way up. Under no circumstances were you to use one of the longish whisker spikes projecting here and there from newer patches of skin in cracks between the dead material.
"They'll twist good if you grab a whisker," Cookie explained.
"Do they ever roll?" Valentine asked, though he knew the answer.
"Only if they're hurt," Zak said. "You abandon ship quick if that happens."
Bee went first. She plunged her goad hook up high, almost at the top of the worm thanks to her reach, then swung up on pure arm muscle. She accepted the rifles, then helped Price up, who then aided Valentine and Duvalier in their climbs. Ahn-Kha eschewed his goad; he stuck the implement between his teeth and jumped up, grabbing great handfuls of spongy skin, and clambered up with his toes.
"That's how the Grey Ones in the west mount," Ahn-Kha said. He attached his wood-framed pack, plunged the chained cargo hook into the creature's back, then casually gripped the chain with his long toes. Only the Grogs could sit astride the worm's broad back; the humans rode in a leaning sidesaddle fashion.
"Just like you're on a flying carpet," Cookie said. He looked at the strangers' faces. "None of you have heard of a flying carpet? Ignorants!"
"Everybody set?" Zak called back. His head was visible over the cargo netting holding down the trio's supplies.
"All-top and rigged," Price called.
"A lot of us don't say that anymore," Gibson said. "We just say 'yeah.' Try it, tender-thighs."
Zak reached back with a pole capped by something like an oversized legworm goad with a point on the end and stuck the hook down between the legs. That part of the legworm, right under Gibson, gave a little rise and they started ahead.
"You can stop bellyaching that people who aren't one of us aren't one of us anytime, Gib," Zak said, too quietly for anyone but Valentine to hear.
After the initial jerk of motion, the legworm ride made a believer out of Valentine. Whatever the legs were doing below, up top the creature simply glided as though riding on an air cushion. Little changes in the topography came up through the beast with all the discomfort of
a cushioned rocking chair.
The mule was all too happy to follow behind without his pack.
Zak continued, "For all you know the gal's being brought to a tribe wedding, or the scarred guy's the Casablancan Minister of the Great Oval Office and Rosegarden traveling incognitpick. So be a good tribe or be silent."
Normally Valentine would be a little embarrassed at overhearing a dressing-down. Except he didn't like Gibson. But good manners won out and he diverted his hearing elsewhere: to the steady staccatto crunch of the fast-falling legs. He'd forgotten how strange legworms sounded. Marbles poured out of a bag in a steady stream onto a pile of crumpled paper, as Evan Pankow, a veteran Wolf, had described it in his first year of training.
The gentle motion of the legworm relaxed Valentine.
"You guys ever sleep up here?" Valentine asked.
"Only one at a time," Cookie called. "Other two have to keep each other alert."
The beast must have dipped its nose—if nose was the right word for the scowlike front end—and scooped a car-hood-sized divot from the earth with its tusks. Zak employed his legworm crook again and worked one of his three reins.
With the legworm in motion the "music" they'd been told to expect started. Like a massive balloon deflating, the beast dropped a cemetery-plot-sized mass of compost behind.
Valentine cautiously took a whiff. All he could smell was Price, and the other people and Grogs.
"Be thankful for small favors," he said to Duvalier as another colossal fart sounded like the horn of Jericho. The mule gave a start.
"It's always loud at startup," Price said. "Gas gets built up while it stands still. Give it a minute and you'll just hear a plop now and then as it makes a deposit."
Duvalier planted herself on the legworm's spongy back, holding her hook under her chin. "I don't mind at all if it means traveling off my feet."
Valentine wished he could see the reins better. The Grog's he'd encountered in Oklahoma used four, two set to either side. The men of the Bulletproof used three, one on each side and one up top. Valentine made a mental note to ask Zak about its utility.
* * * *
He learned that and a great deal more at the dinner break. This time Zak fed the legworm on bags of peanut shells and ground-up acorn. Price's mule liked the smell of the nuts and joined in, chomping contentedly but rather messily compared to the legworm, who took earth, sod, and shell together in a single gulp.
"If we have to move fast, most of what we carry is food for the mount," Zak said. His face and forearms had dozens of tiny scars.
"How do you make it turn?"
Zak pointed to the rein. A metal loop projected from the beast.
"Yes, but what does that do?"
"Oh, you want the science teacher version? Well, a worm's such a big bastard, there's not much we can do that'll influence it. So we make it think that all its motions are its idea. All those whiskers are wired, so to speak, to an organ under the skin on either side that looks a little like an accordion. When it turns, to keep from rubbing against a tree or whatever, the accordion contracts and it turns. That rein is attached to the accordion, and when we pull it closed the beast turns."
"And keeping the nose up?"
"It's got a balancing organ kind of like your ear in the top of its front end. A little jerk makes it feel like it's out of balance, so it'll stick its head straight forward until the organ feels back in equilibrium. But if they're fed regularly they don't graze all the time. They don't need all that much if it's fair-quality feed. All the dirt they pull up in the wild is a lot of wasted effort."
"How does it breathe?"
"That's something. Here." Zak's leathers creaked as he squatted next to it. "Look underneath. That lighter flesh? We call that the 'membrane' but it's actually a good two feet thick. That thing gets oxygen into its bloodstream. Water don't make much of a difference, but they get sluggish as hell and try to find high ground— though sometimes swamp water will kill them."
"I've never seen one this close."
"Where you from?"
"Iowa. Got out young. My dad worked for, you know—"
Zak nodded. "Me too. Indiana. Practically grew up under a tower. The P worked electricity. Cool stuff, but not if you're reporting to one of those pale-assed jumpers twice a day."
"I left home at eleven," Valentine said. "Ugly scene."
"So what does the flea-ranch over there want with the Bulletproof?"
"I'm just trying to get from point A to point B."
"We'll be at camp a little after sundown. Don't fall off."
Gib drove the legworm a little faster through open country. After a few unheeded yawlps, the mule trotted behind to avoid being dragged. The rolling blue hills left off and they climbed onto the beginning of a plateau, where they gave man, grog, and mule a breather. Valentine saw wooded mountaintops in the distance.
"Keep your guns handy," Zak warned as night fell, looking over the landscape with a monocular. "There are guerillas in those mountains."
They struck a road and followed it to a waypoint town of a dozen empty homes, unless you counted barn owls and mice, a couple of hollow corner bars, and an overgrown gas station and market once dependent on the farm clientele.
Valentine marked fresh legworm furrows everywhere. Some ran right up to the road surface before bouncing off like a ricocheting bullet.
They passed up a rise, and a boy standing guard over the road and his bicycle waved them toward a commanding-looking barn. A pile of weedy rubble that might once have been a house stood close to the road, and a crisscross of torn earth emanated from it. Valentine guessed that from a low-flying plane the landscape would look like an irregular spiderweb. Legworms stood everywhere, pale blue billboards in the moonshine.
"Who's that with you, Zak?" a man afoot called.
"Visitors looking for the Dispatcher. I'm vouching, and I'll bring 'em in. Where is he?"
"Up in the barn."
Zak turned around, an easy operation on the wide back of the leg-worm. "We're here, folks. You'll have to leave your guns, of course."
"Urn, how do we ... ?" Duvalier asked.
"Get a newbie pole, Royd," Cookie called down.
"No, I'll help," Ahn-Kha said, sliding down the tapered tail. He lifted an arm to Duvalier. "Here."
Valentine jumped down, as did Bee and Price.
"Why not just jump?" Valentine asked Duvalier quietly. "I've seen you dive headfirst from two stories."
"Just a helpless lil' ol’ thing without a big man around, Val," Duvalier said. "No harm in having them think that, anyway."
They got out of the lane and made a pile of their weapons and packs.
"Coffee's by the fire pit. Toilet holes are up in the old house," Zak said. "There's a lime barrel, so send down a chaser. Let me know when you're ready to see the Dispatcher."
"Bee—guard!" Price said to his assistant.
"Doesn't she have to use the toilet pits?" Duvalier asked.
"She's not shy," Price said. "And she always buries."
"I would just as soon not scoot my hindquarters on the grass," Ahn-Kha said.
Cookie stretched. "There's plenty of New Universal Church Improved Testaments up there. Help yourself."
Valentine wanted coffee more than anything. Duvalier took her walking stick and headed for the rubbled house.
They'd missed dinner, but a line of stretchers propped up on barrels still held bread and roast squash. Sweating teenage girls washed utensils in boiling water as a gray-haired old couple supervised from behind glowing pipes.
"Coffee?" Valentine asked.
"That pot, stranger," one of the girls said, tucking stray hair into a babushka. Valentine took a tin cup out of the hot wash water, choosing a mild scalding over the used cups tossed on the litters and plywood panels, and shook it dry.
It was real coffee. Not the Jamaican variety he'd grown regrettably used to while with Malia at Jayport, but real beans nonetheless. He liked the Bulletproofs even
better.
The surge of caffeine brought its own requirements. He remembered to chase it down the hole leading to the unimaginable basement chamber with a ladle of lime.
McDonald R. Dalian, Dispatcher for the Bulletproof, was viewing babies he hadn't met yet when the Price-Valentine mission entered his barn.
The barn was a modern, cavernous structure that had survived its half century of inattention in remarkably good shape, thanks to its concrete foundation and aluminum construction. Small chemical lightsticks Valentine had heard called Threedayers in the Trans-Mississippi Combat Corps hung from the rafter network above.
Men, women, and children of the Bulletproof, most in their black leathers or denim, sat atop defunct, stripped farm machinery to watch Dispatcher Dalian hold court.
A half-dozen guitars, two banjos, and a dulcimer provided music from one corner. Another end of the bar had been turned into a food storage area; shelves had been cleared of odds and ends and replaced by sacks of corn and barrels of flour. A laundry also seemed to be in operation, with clothes and diapers drying on lines strung between stripped combines and the wall.
The Dispatcher had indeterminate features—a little Asian, and maybe a dash of Irish or African for curly hair, and a great high prow of a nose. Except for the curly hair, he reminded Valentine of his father, especially around the protruding ears and out-thrust jaw. He cooed over a sleeping baby as the proud mother and father looked on.
"She's grabbing my finger even while she's sleeping," the Dispatcher said. "Don't tell me she won't be a lead high rider some day."
The Dispatcher and the father of the child bumped their fists, knuckle to knuckle.
The flying buttress nose went up and turned. "Air strike! Only one living thing on the planet smells like that." He handed the baby back and turned. "Hoffman Z. Price has returned."
Price had his usual six-foot circle of solitude around him, even in the busy barn. "And grateful for the generosity of the Bulletproof, Dispatcher."
The Dispatcher opened a tin. "Tobacco?"
Price extracted his pipe and the Dispatcher took a pinch. "You picked your moment. We've got the better part of the tribe together."
"Is worm meat still profitable in Lexington?" Price asked.