by John Varley
Still, as the hours rolled by he knew his prospects were getting grim. It was just so damn much territory, and if he was guessing wrong about any of the variables he was screwed. All she had to do to beat him was to sit tight in a well-covered place... and wait to be picked up by the police. He was feeling more depressed than at any time he could remember as the reports kept coming in. Twenty-three similar trailers had been located so far and examined more closely, and they'd come up empty. He had to wait for night.
"So, have you figured out where she's going yet?" she asked.
"Hell, no. It's a big country." Howard took a bite of the fancy sandwich and wished he could
have ordered out for a Big Mac. "Damn right it is, and that means you're just wasting a lot of money and letting them get farther
away, which the police won't appreciate when you are finally forced to call them in."
"Is that what you're saying? Call them in now?"
"No, my dear. I'm saying, let's narrow the search."
"How do you propose to do that?"
"By thinking like Susan. Why did she steal Fuzzy?"
Howard snorted. "Because she objects to him performing like—what was it she said last time
we had it out over this?—'a trained seal.' As if she hasn't spent all her life making wild animals perform—"
"Never mind that. She's obviously had a change of heart."
"Unless she just wants to poke me in the eye," Howard said sullenly.
"No, dear, that's your style, not hers."
Howard said nothing. She was right. He was working on it, but knew he'd never entirely get his thirst for revenge under control. That's what they were doing here in the first place, instead of staying back home tending to things he could really do something about.
"What does she want for Fuzzy?" Andrea went on.
"She wants him to roam free and natural and not be 'exploited.' " He couldn't keep the sneer out
of his voice.
"Where can she find that for him?"
"Nowhere. Not as long as I own him. Damn it, I don't treat that animal badly. He works twice a
day, he is the most pampered animal in the world, he is happy—he seems happy to you, doesn't—"
"Yes, I think he's happy. Susan thinks it'd be better if he were in a wild animal park of some kind. She wants him out in the open air. She wants him to browse his own grass and eat leaves off wild trees." "Impossible. That nut shot at him."
"So what's your point?"
"You think Susan is stupid enough to go through all this merely to move him from one prison to another? With a smaller jail cell when he gets there?"
"You're going to make me ask the question, aren't you? Okay, where is she taking him?"
"Canada."
Howard laughed. Actually it was more of a snort. Andrea didn't mind.
"Right. With her other troubles, she needs to cross an international border."
"The longest undefended international border in the world. Large parts of it, mostly in Washington and Idaho and Montana, are thickly wooded, sparsely inhabited wilderness, not very well patrolled."
Howard was beginning to look thoughtful.
"But when she's there... she's got the same problem. Hide him, or lose him."
"Not necessarily. Circus animal acts are illegal in Canada now. Have been for... how many years?"
"Eight or nine, I guess," Howard said, grumpily. It was a sore point with him. There were no longer circuses in most of Western Europe, and a growing but still minority movement wanted to ban animal acts and rodeos in the United States. He had wanted to take Fuzzy on a triumphant world tour, but it was never going to happen. There were plans for an Asian tour. People were still less fussy over there. The Japanese, with their cultural quirk for cuteness, were wild about Fuzzy; he sold more big-eyed Fuzzy soft toys there than anywhere in the world. In China Big Mama was the star, for some reason. Russia felt a cultural identification with mammoths. The huge majority of the frozen ones had been found in Siberia, and there were places where ancient mammoth bones piled up like driftwood. Russians were gaga about both of Howard's mammoths.
"So what? He still belongs to me."
"Maybe, maybe not. You remember the court decisions awarding him to you were highly controversial. I suspect you greased some wheels." "Me? Bribe a judge?" He grinned.
Howard said nothing.
"Once she got him across the border... what if she turned herself in? What if a team of lawyers was waiting for her when she got there? Do they call them solicitors up there? Anyway... how long do you think they could keep him tied up in court?"
"Years," Howard muttered. He was resting his chin on his clasped hands, frowning. "I don't have a lot of connections in Canada, not like down here."
"I did a little Internet search while I was thinking this over. Canadian public opinion is solidly behind the 'Free Fuzzy' movement. Once he's actually there, I think it would be the rare Canadian who would want to let him go back to the circus."
"But what does Susan gain?"
Andrea ticked off points on her fingers. "Time, first of all. Like you said, maybe years. Two, Fuzzy doesn't have to perform. The Canadian authorities aren't fools; they'll protect him. They could move him far, far north, near where his natural habitat would be, put him in a preserve with no roads leading in while the case is being adjudicated. Every day he stays free, it would be harder for you to get him back."
Howard thought about it for almost a full minute. Then he smiled.
"Darling, I've finally found a woman as smart as me."
"Smarter," Andrea said.
Howard laughed, and picked up the phone. "Captain, we're joining Mr. Warburton at Sea-Tac Airport, as soon as you can get clearance." He punched another button. "Warburton, pull everything you've got out of Oregon and California. Concentrate the search in the Seattle metro area, but most of all along the Canadian border. I want teams at every crossing, and continuous helicopter patrols from Puget Sound to Montana. I'll tell you about it when I get there."
Then he stood up, pulled Andrea from her chair, and kissed her.
THE lady is pretty smart, Warburton admitted to himself after Howard called back to explain Andrea's reasoning. Both of them were. He wouldn't have thought of it; his mind didn't work that way. He wouldn't embark on a project knowing he would get caught... but it seemed the best possible outcome, in Susan's terms. Warburton didn't like Susan, didn't like Andrea even more—she was always getting in his way. Warburton didn't really like anybody very much, not even Howard. He didn't have much of a life outside his job, but the job satisfied him and had made him quite wealthy over the years. He was a born problem solver, that was his thing, and he had very few scruples. Fuck the rules of engagement. He was enough of a realist to know that pointing a gun at two people and shouting Freeze! was worse than pointless unless you were prepared to use it. He would shoot to wound, the leg or the foot, if he could. But if worse came to worst he would do what he had to do. Like any cautious cop, he carried an untraceable piece-of-shit throwdown weapon to put in the hand of an awkward corpse. He had killed men twice before—only when he had to; he was not a maniac. He had suffered no nightmares. He knew he could do it.
The other assistant was the owner and operator of the company, a white man fully as big as Blackstone and bald as an egg, though not by choice, by the name of Crowder. He claimed to be the best at urban environments. Warburton wasn't quite so sure about him. They were looking at a wall-sized electronic map of Washington State and lower British Columbia. Locations and unit numbers of all the aerial and ground search teams currently in operation were displayed. There were a lot of them. A whole lot of them. Maybe even enough to do the job...
The dots and numbers representing searchers moved every few seconds, adjusted by the GPS units each team carried. Most of the air units and many on the ground were now converging on the border.
"Legal crossing points at Blaine, the big one," Blackstone said. He moved a contr
oller and highlighted as he spoke. "Then here at State Road 539, here at Sumas, and not another until way over here, at Lenton Flat. Pretty rough country through there. I wouldn't want to climb it with a mammoth."
"Hannibal crossed the Alps with war elephants. Patrol it anyway."
"Sure. Then there are seven more before you get to Idaho. You figure they'll try to drive across, or follow one of these roads close to the border and walk it?"
"Hard to say. Either way will be tough."
"Here in the west it's fairly flat, farmland, they'd stick out like a sore thumb. Fewer people in the eastern part, a lot of it's pretty arid. Desert. I wouldn't go that route, myself."
"What would you do?"
"Given what you told me? I'd try to drive up to one of the crossings out here in the boonies, go right up to the customs station and turn myself in."
"They've got to cross first. Do we have a team at all of them yet?"
"We will in fifteen more minutes. Stopping them could be awkward, though. U.S. Customs will probably object if you shoot out their tires this side of the line."
"Loud and clear."
"Crowder, you'll continue looking in the Seattle area on the ground, and we'll give you a few helicopters to screen the freeways, but send most of the teams into the country up north. I want somebody in a four-wheel drive within ten minutes of every logging road in that forest, every dirt trail in that desert. I want at least one cross-country motorbike in the back of every vehicle. They have to leave the trailer on a road somewhere if they try to cross on foot. I don't think they'll try to cross at Blaine, I understand there are traffic jams up there."
"They can stretch for miles," Crowder agreed. "We've got three teams there, and we can stop them before they even see the border."
"Good. When it gets dark we'll get the satellites to work, and I'm betting we spot them somewhere out in the wilderness within an hour. We have to be ready to move on them. Anything else?"
"What about ferries?" Crowder said.
"Ferries?"
Crowder touched the keyboard and the map view zoomed in on the waters of the area, from the entrance to the estuary at the Georgia Strait, running between the Olympic Peninsula and Vancouver Island, to Olympia at the south end, and the city of Vancouver to the north. There was a lot of water, and a lot of islands. A spiderweb of lines appeared, running all over the water.
"We've always had good ferries up here."
"Never been on one," Blackstone said with a grin. "I get seasick in the bathtub."
"Last ten years they've been adding more. Federal grants or some shit like that, ease the freeway congestion, not that it did a damn bit of good. There's three times as many ferries now as when I was a kid."
"How many go to Canada?"
Crowder touched the keyboard again, and most of the lines disappeared.
"You got your B.C. ferries, and you got your Washington State ferries. One from Port Angeles, on the peninsula, to Victoria, on Vancouver Island. From here at Anacortes to Sidney and Vancouver. Also from Bellingham to Vancouver, and from Everett to Victoria and Vancouver."
"It'd be a dumb way to go. Sometimes you can wait for hours to get aboard."
"Cover them anyway. It would be a perfect place to catch them quietly."
"Will do."
Warburton leaned back and sighed. He realized he hadn't eaten yet today, and it was almost evening. He asked someone to have a pizza delivered.
We'll catch them tonight. The satellites will find them.
29
MATT left the unit at eight that morning, and saw the rain had stopped and the sky was beginning to clear. Bad luck. He walked to the truck and pulled the trailer around the block and into the storage yard. Susan was waiting to direct him, and they lowered the ramp.
Susan had noticed that most places like this were virtually deserted most of the time. This one had half a dozen rows of buildings with garage doors facing each other. Her two units could not be seen from any road or house in the area. There was always a chance somebody would pick that morning to visit a unit close to theirs, but if that happened they would just have to wait.
Matt walked to the end of the row where he could see the entrance gate. He signaled to Susan, and she opened the garage door and led Fuzzy out and up the ramp, and closed the ramp, then the door. Thirty seconds, total.
Matt hurried back and entered the trailer through the side door. Susan was strapping a leather harness around Fuzzy's middle. She attached it to each side of the trailer with heavy chains.
"He traveled a lot before Fuzzyland opened, you know," she said. "He had his own private train. He's been in the back of trucks, too, going to and from the shows. Pachyderms are pretty good at keeping their balance, a lot better than you'd think. But we always used an arrangement like this as a sort of seat belt. I'd appreciate it if you tried not to stand on the brake, though, okay?"
"I'll keep way back from the cars ahead."
They went back outside and carefully peeled off the red contact paper Susan had applied in a big red swoosh after painting the rig a uniform beige. She grimaced as she touched the long indent where a tree branch had scraped the side.
"I did that last week. A computer recognition program would pick that out pretty quick, even from high up, don't you think? I was going to paint over it but then I thought it might be better to leave it that way until I was through the security gate." "Good thinking. Now they may be looking for it. Did you bring the paint?"
Over the Interstate Bridge traffic eased up, and they headed north. Just south of Tacoma traffic backed up again. They crept along, nervously watching the sky.
THEY missed the ferry they wanted in Tacoma, at Point Defiance, which put them an hour behind where they had hoped to be. It was a short hop to Vashon Island, at Tahlequah.
Vashon Island was pretty, still partly rural. They weren't able to make up any time; in fact they missed another ferry. Every minute sitting still in the parking lot was agony, but eventually they were waved aboard and undercover again.
This was a larger ferry and they were on the lower deck. They stayed close to the trailer in case Fuzzy started to bellow—which he hardly ever did, but he was in strange surroundings and, besides, Susan didn't want to get more than about fifty feet from him. Through a wide opening on the starboard side they could see planes on approach to Sea-Tac Airport from the north, then the city of Seattle itself. These waters were teeming with boats, many of them other ferries crisscrossing Puget Sound. They pulled into the terminal at Kingston, far behind schedule, knowing they would not get to the last departure of the ferry they wanted. When they drove past the terminal, they could not even see the departing ferry. It was long gone.
Susan had a backup plan, but she was discouraged. They pulled into a big RV park where Susan had booked a space a week earlier under another name. Matt found their space, was relieved to see it was a pull-through, and they parked as the sun was going down. There were trees around them, but not the complete cover they would have liked. Neither of them was sure if the satellites could spot them through trees, anyway.
But there was nothing for it. They would have to spend the night, and hope the search was, by now, focused far away to the north and east.
THEY made a meal from cans and ate it in silence. They hadn't bothered to hook up anything, not even the electricity, but the refrigerator and stove used propane. There was no reason not to turn on all the lights and have a party—Susan had stocked some beer. But the instincts of the hunted left them huddling beneath a single light over the kitchen table. Susan sat facing the back, where Fuzzy stood, maybe ten feet behind Matt's back. Every once in a while she got up to pet him or feed him a treat. He seemed tired of this whole bye-bye business by now.
"He's restless," she said as she sat back down opposite Matt. "He missed his daily run. Hell, he's probably even missing doing his show." "He's a creature of habit," Matt said. "He'll get used to new habits. You did the right thing."
"I hope y
ou can stay awake a little longer. There are some things I have to tell you."
She looked up, more alert.
"The rest of your story?"
He smiled.
"Yeah. The good parts... well, the better parts. Anything would have felt good after getting out of that cell. And some things you need to know."
"Why don't we get to that part first? We'll have plenty of time to catch up on the rest, even if we have to do it by mail from our separate prisons."
"I need to build up to it. I'll keep it as short as possible. I'm pretty sleepy, too."
FOR most of the first year after his release, Matt hadn't been able to do much but dodge reporters and continue his researches with his computer on the Internet.
He tried a few times to elude them, managed to shake them off once in a while, got into the habit of withdrawing money from his bank accounts when he had the chance and never using his credit cards, but they always found him again. It wasn't hard to do in this day and age. Few people had the skills to stay hidden for long, and Matt finally admitted it wasn't worth the effort. He decided to wait them out. He had plenty of money, his needs were modest. He stayed at inexpensive hotels and moved every few nights, just to inconvenience the media. Time travel was a very big story, he was one of only two people known to have done it, and the world wanted to know all about it.
At first there were actual satellite trucks that followed him around as he drove from city to city. Those gradually dwindled to a few pool vehicles with cameras recording him every time he got out of his car or left his hotel. One shot or another of him showed up on most newscasts for almost a month. If he sneezed, it would likely get on the air. A stumble was apt to cause a flash newsbreak.
He tried to go to Europe, which was a mistake. A good percentage of his fellow passengers were reporters, and they weren't shy about crowding around and asking questions. When he got off the plane in London he was facing a whole new set of reporters, even more aggressive than the ones at home. You would have thought he was a rock star or the president of the United States. He walked straight to the airline counter and bought a ticket back to America.