“More maskirovka,” he answered. “We found out the Lizards like to paste things that are warm. We don’t know how they spot them, but they do. If we give them some they can’t really hurt-”
“They waste munitions.” Ludmila nodded. “Ochen khorosho-very good.”
Even though they were alone in the middle of a field, Tolya looked around and lowered his voice before he spoke again: “Comrade Pilot, you’ve flown over the front south of Sukhinichi? How did it look to you?”
It was coming to pieces, Ludmila thought. But she didn’t want to say that, not to someone she didn’t know or trust: who knew what he might be under his baggy, peasant-style tunic and trousers? Yet she didn’t want to lie to him, either. Carefully, she replied, “Let me put it this way: I’m glad you don’t have much in the way of heavy, permanent installations here.”
“Huh?” Tolya’s brow furrowed. Then he grunted. “Oh. I see. We may have to move in a hurry, is that it?”
Ludmila didn’t answer; she just kept walking toward what was left of the collective farm’s buildings. Beside her, Tolya grunted again and asked no more questions; he’d understood her not-answer exactly as she meant it.
Alone on a bicycle with a pack on his back and a rifle slung over his shoulder: Jens Larssen had spent a lot of time and covered a lot of miles that way. Ever since his Plymouth gave up the ghost back in Ohio, he’d gone to Chicago and then all around Denver on two wheels rather than four.
This, though, was different. For one thing, he’d been on flat ground in the Midwest, not slogging his way up through a gap in the Continental Divide. More important, back then he’d had a goal: he’d been riding toward the Met Lab and toward Barbara. Now he was running away, and he knew it.
“Hanford,” he said under his breath. As far as he could tell, they all just wanted an excuse to get him out of their hair. “You’d think I was a goddamn albatross or something.”
All right, so he’d made it real clear he wasn’t happy about his wife shacking up with this Yeager bum. The way everybody acted, it was his fault, not hers. She’d run out on him, and she got the sympathy when he tried to put some sense into her thick head.
“It just isn’t right,” he muttered. “She bailed out, and I’m the one who’s stuck in the plane wreck.” He knew his work had suffered since the Met Lab crew got to Denver. That was another reason everybody was glad to get him out of town, on a bike if not on a rail. But how was he supposed to keep his eyes on calculations or oscilloscope readings if they were really seeing Barbara naked and laughing, her legs wrapped around that stinking corporal as he bucked above her?
He reached back over his right shoulder with his left hand to touch the hard, upthrust barrel of the Springfield. He’d thought about lying in wait for Yeager, ending those terrible visions for good. But he had enough sense left to realize he’d probably get caught and, even if he didn’t, blowing Yeager’s head off, however delightful that might be, wouldn’t bring Barbara back to him.
“It’s a good thing I’m not stupid,” he told the asphalt of US 40 under his wheels. “I’d be in a whole heap of trouble if I were.”
He looked back over his shoulder. He was thirty miles out of Denver now, and had gained a couple of thousand feet; he could see not only the city, but the plain beyond it that sloped almost imperceptibly downward toward the Mississippi a long way away. Down in the flatlands, the Lizards held sway. If he hadn’t gone away from the city heading west, he might have left heading east.
Looked at rationally, that made as little sense as ambushing Sam Yeager, and Jens knew it. Knowing and caring were two different critters. Instead of just getting his own back from Yeager, selling out the Met Lab project gave him vengeance wholesale rather than retail, paying back all at once everybody who’d done him wrong. The idea had a horrid fascination to it, the way the’ sharp edge of a broken tooth irresistibly lures the tongue. Feel, it seems to say. This isn’t the way it should be, but feel it anyhow.
Pushing the bike along at 7,500 feet took more out of him than making it go through the flat farming country of Indiana. He stopped every so often for a blow, and just to admire the scenery ahead. Now the Rockies loomed in every direction except right behind him. In the clear, thin air, the snowcapped peaks and the deep green cloak of pine forest below them looked close enough to reach out and touch. The sky was a deep, deep blue, with a texture to it he’d never known before.
But for the sound of his own slightly winded breathing and the rustle of bushes in the breeze, everything was quiet: no buzz and wheeze of cars, no growling rumble of trucks. Jens had passed a patient convoy of horse-drawn wagons four or five miles back, and another coming into Denver just as he was leaving, but that was about it. He knew the Lizard-induced dearth of traffic meant the war effort was going to hell, but it sure worked wonders for the tourist business.
“Except there’s no tourist business any more, either,” he said. The habit of talking to himself when he was alone on his bike had come back in a hurry.
He swung his feet back up onto the pedals, got rolling again. In a couple of minutes, he came up to a sign: IDAHO SPRINGS, 2 MILES. That made him lift one hand from the handlebars to scratch his head. “Idaho Springs?” he muttered. “This was still Colorado, last I looked.”
A few hundred yards ahead another sign said, HOT SPRINGS BATHING, 50?. VAPOR CAVES ONLY $1. That explained the springs, but left him still wondering how a chunk of Idaho had shifted south and east.
The town might have had a thousand people before the Lizards came. It straggled along a narrow canyon. A lot of the houses looked deserted, and the doors to several shops hung open. Jens had seen a lot of towns like that. But if people had fled from everyplace, where had they all gone? His reluctant conclusion was that a lot of them were dead.
Not everybody was gone from Idaho Springs. A bald man in black overalls came out of a dry-goods store and waved to Larssen. He waved back, slowed to a stop. “Where you from, mister?” the local asked. “Where you goin’?”
Jens thought about replying that it was none of Nosy Parker’s business, but his eye happened to catch a bit of motion in a second-story window that the breeze couldn’t have caused: a curtain shifted slightly, perhaps from a rifle barrel stirring behind it. The folk of Idaho Springs were ready to take care of themselves.
And so, instead of getting smart, Jens said carefully, “I’m out of Denver, heading west on Army business. I can show you a letter of authorization, if you’d like.” The letter wasn’t signed by Groves; the detested Colonel Hexham’s John Hancock was on it instead. Larssen had been tempted to wipe his backside with it; now he was glad he’d refrained.
Black Overalls shook his head. “Nah, you don’t need to bother. If you was one of them bad guys, don’t reckon you’d be so eager to show it off.” The upstairs curtain twitched again as the not-quite-unseen watcher drew back. The bald guy went on, “Anything we can do for you here?”
Jens’ stomach rumbled. He said, “I wouldn’t turn down some food-or even a drink, if you folks have some hooch you can spare. If you don’t, don’t put yourselves out on account of me,” he added hastily; in these times of scarcity, people got mighty touchy about sharing things like liquor.
But the fellow in black overalls just grinned. “We can spare a bit, I expect. We’d always stock up for the folks who’d come to visit the springs, you know, and there ain’t been many o’ them lately. You just want to ride on up ahead for another long block to the First Street Cafe. Tell Mary there Harvey says it’s okay to get you fed.”
“Thanks, uh Harvey.” Jens started the bicycle rolling again. His back itched as he rode past the window where he’d seen the curtain move, but nothing at all stirred there now. If he’d satisfied Harvey, he must have satisfied the local hired gun, too.
The Idaho Springs city hall was an adobe building with a couple of big millstones in the yard in front of it. A sign identified them as coming from an old Mexican arastra, a mule-powered gadget that ground ore a
s an ordinary mill ground grain. Colorado had more history than Jens had thought about.
The First Street Cafe, by contrast, looked like a bank. It had its name spelled out in gold Old English letters across a plate glass window. Jens stopped in front of it, let down the kickstand on his bike. He didn’t think bike rustlers would be as big a worry here as they were in Denver. All the same, he resolved not to eat with his back to the street.
He opened the door to the cafe. A bell jingled above his head. As his eyes adjusted to the gloom inside, he saw the place was empty. That amazed him, because a wonderful smell filled the air. From the room in back, a woman’s voice called, “That you, Jack?”
“Uh, no,” Jens said. “I’m a stranger here. Harvey was kind enough to say I could beg a meal from you, if you’re Mary.”
Brief silence fell, then, “Yeah, I’m Mary. Just a second, pal; I’ll be right with you.” He heard footsteps back there, then she came out behind the counter and looked him over hands on hips. Voice slightly mocking, she went on, “So Harvey says I’m supposed to feed you, huh? You’re skinny enough you could do with some feeding, that’s for sure. Chicken stew do you? It had better-it’s what I’ve got.”
“Chicken stew would be swell, thank you.” That was what was making the wonderful smell, Jens realized.
“Okay. Comin’ right up. You can sit anywhere; we ain’t what you’d call crowded.” With a laugh, Mary turned and disappeared again.
Jens chose a table that let him keep an eye on his bicycle. Plates clattered and silverware jingled in the back room; Mary softly sang something to herself that, if he recognized the tune, was a scandalous ditty he’d last heard at the Lowry Field BOQ.
From a lot of women, such lyrics would have scandalized him. Somehow they seemed to suit this Mary. On thirty seconds’ acquaintance, she reminded him of Sal, the brassy waitress with whom, among many others, the Lizards had cooped him up in a church in Fiat, Indiana. Her hair was midnight black instead of Sal’s peroxided yellow, and they didn’t look like each other, either, but he thought he saw in Mary a lot of the same take-it-or-leave-it toughness Sal had shown.
He still wished he’d laid Sal-especially considering the way everything else had turned out. It could have happened, but he’d figured Barbara was waiting for him, so he’d stayed good. Shows how much I know, he thought bitterly.
“Here you go, pal.” Mary set knife and fork and a plate in front of him: falling-off-the-bone chicken in thick gravy, with dumplings and carrots. The smell alone was enough to put ten pounds on him.
He tasted. The taste was better than the smell. He hadn’t thought it could be. He made a wordless, full-mouth noise of bliss.
“Glad you like it,” Mary said, sounding amused. A moment later she added, “Listen, it’s about dinnertime, and like I said, we ain’t exactly packed. You mind if I bring out a plate and join you?”
“Please,” he said. “Why should I mind? This is your place and your terrific food-” He thought he was going to say more, but took another bite instead.
“Be right with you, then.” She went back to get some stew of her own. Jens twisted his head to watch the way she walked. Like a woman, he thought: what a surprise. Her long gray wool skirt didn’t show much of her legs, but she had nice ankles. He wondered if she was older or younger than he. Close, either way.
She came back with not only a plate, but two glass beer mugs filled with a deep amber fluid. “You look like you could use one of these,” she said as she sat down across the table from him. “Just homebrew, but it’s not bad. Joe Simpson who makes it, he used to work down at the Coors brewery in Golden, so he knows what he’s doin’.”
Jens gulped at the beer. It wasn’t Coors-he’d drunk that in Denver-but it was a long way from bad. “Oh, Lord,” he said ecstatically. “Will you marry me?”
She paused with a forkful of dumpling halfway to her mouth, gave him a long, appraising stare. He felt himself turning red; he’d just meant it for a joke. But maybe Mary liked what she saw. With a slightly wintry smile, she answered, “I dunno, but I’ll tell you this right now-it’s the best damn offer I had today, and that’s a fact. Hell, if you was to tempt me with a cigarette, who knows what I might up and do?”
“I wish I could,” he said, regretfully for two different reasons. “I haven’t seen one in months.”
“Yeah, me neither.” She let out a long, mournful sigh. “Don’t even know why I bothered to ask. If you had smokes, I’d’ve smelled ’em on you minute you walked in.” She took another bite, then said, “Mind if I ask you what your name is?”
He told her, and discovered in turn, that her last name was Cooley. Black Irish, he thought. That fit; her eyes were very, very blue and her skin even fairer than his, transparent white rather than pink.
She might not have been able to smell tobacco smoke on him, but he was sure she could smell sweat-getting the bike here from Denver had been work, no two ways about it. It didn’t worry him the way it would have a year before. He could smell her, too, and it was amazing how fast you got used to bodies that weren’t as clean as they might have been. If most everybody needed a bath, things evened out.
He finished the stew, scraped up gravy with his fork until the plate was damn near clean again. He didn’t want to up and leave; he felt full and happy and more nearly homey than he had since, he’d found out he didn’t really have a home any more. To give himself an excuse to stay a while longer, he pointed to the mug and said, “Could I have another one of those, please? That one hit the spot, but it didn’t quite fill it up.”
“Sure thing, pal. I’ll get me one, too.” She headed for the back room again. This time, Jens thought she might have noticed him eyeing her as she walked; but if she’ had she didn’t let on. She soon came back with the beer.
“Thanks,” he said as she sat down once more. The scritch of the chair legs on the bricks of the cafe floor was almost the only sound. Jens asked, “How do you keep this place open with no customers?”
“What do you mean, no customers? You’re here, aren’t you?” Her face was full of impudent amusement. “But yeah, it’s pretty quiet at dinnertime. Supper, now, folks come for supper. And I reckon the Army would shoot me if I closed up shop; I feed a lot of their people goin’ in and out of Denver. But then, you said you’re one of them, right?”
“Yeah.” Jens took another pull at his beer. He eyed her over the top of the mug. “Bet you have to keep a shotgun by the till to keep some of the Army guys from getting too friendly.”
Mary laughed. “Spilling something hot on ’em mostly does the trick.” She drank, too. “Course, the other thing is, there’s passes and then there’s passes.”
Was that an invitation? It sure sounded like one. Jens hesitated, not least because the memory of his ignominious failure with that chippie back in Denver still stung. If he couldn’t get it up twice running, what was he supposed to do? Ride his bike off a cliff? He’d have plenty of chances, pedaling along US 40 through the mountains. Sometimes, though, leading with your chin was also a test of manhood. He stretched out his foot under the table. As if by accident, the side of his leg brushed against hers.
If she’d pulled away, he would have risen from the table feeling foolish, paid whatever she asked for the stew and the beer, and headed west. As it was, she stretched, too, slowly and languorously. He wondered if that sinuous motion came naturally or if she’d seen it in the movies and practiced. Either way, it made his heart thump like a drum.
He got up, walked around the table, and went down on one knee beside her. It was a position in which he could have proposed, although he had propositioning more in mind. He got the idea, though, that she didn’t want a lot of talk.
When he leaned forward and kissed her, she grabbed his head and pulled him to her hard enough to mash his lips against her teeth. He broke away for a moment, partly to breathe and partly to let his mouth glide to her earlobe and then down the smooth side of her neck. She arched her back like a cat and sighed dee
p in her throat.
His hand slid under her skirt. Her legs parted for him. He was gently rubbing at the crotch of her cotton panties when he remembered that plate-glass window. Idaho Springs wasn’t much of a town, but anybody walking by could see in. Hell, anybody walking by could walk in. “Is there someplace we can go?” he asked hoarsely.
That seemed to remind her of the big window, too. “Come on back to the kitchen with me,” she said. He didn’t want to take his hand away, but she couldn’t stand up unless he did.
She paused only a moment, to scoop up an old Army blanket from behind the counter on which the cash register sat. The stove in the kitchen, a coal-burner burning wood these days, made the place hot, but Jens didn’t care. He was plenty hot himself.
He unbuttoned the buttons that ran down the back of Mary’s white blouse and unhooked her brassiere. Her breasts filled his hands. He squeezed, not too hard. She shivered in his arms. He fumbled at the button that held her skirt closed, undid it, and yanked down the zipper beneath. The skirt made a puddle on the floor. She stepped out of it, kicked off her shoes, and pulled down her panties. Her pubic hair was startlingly dark against her pale, pale skin.
She spread the blanket on the floor while he tried not to tear his clothes getting out of them in excess haste. Everything would be all right this time-he was sure of it.
Everything was better than all right. She moaned and gasped and called his name and squeezed him with those wonderful contractions of the inner muscles so he exploded in the same instant she did. “Lord!” he said, more an exclamation of sincere respect than a prayer.
She smiled up at him, her face-probably like his-still a little slack with pleasure. “That was good,” she said. “And you’re a gentleman, you know that?”
“How do you mean?” he asked absently, not quite listening: he was hoping he’d rise again.
But she answered: “You keep your weight on your elbows.” That made him not only laugh but also slip and stop being a gentleman, at least by her standards. She squawked and wiggled, and he slid out of her. When he sat back on his knees, she reached for her discarded clothes, so she hadn’t been interested in a second round, anyhow.
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