by Chloe Garner
They turned the way he indicated and walked along a corridor. The walls here were cut from whole stone and were green, and the opulent art just went on and on to either side.
The man with the gloves stopped at a door, indicating, and as Sarah and Jimmy walked toward it, the door opened away from them, into a wood-paneled office that wasn’t entirely dissimilar from Jimmy’s office back in Lawrence.
A man with a build that Sarah found familiar stood from behind his desk and came around, shaking hands with Jimmy and then putting his hands on his hips to look at Sarah.
He was built like Ajax or Thor, one of the big mining men. Strong, powerful, but with the leanness that was so common in the civilized cities.
“Ms. Todd,” he said. “Is this your first visit to Intec?”
She shook her head.
“We used to come down here from Oxala on long weekends,” she answered.
“Yes,” he said. “Economics, is that right?”
“Numbers,” she answered, and he nodded, returning to his desk.
“Your theories on finding absenta were interesting to me,” he said. “A lifelong resident of one of the mining towns should know better than be able to predict where anything is, once you’ve started looking underground for it, which is why I took Mr. Lawson’s claims so seriously.”
“You bought the one that already had absenta coming out of the ground,” Sarah said.
“I bought three claims,” he said, sitting back in his chair. “Through a combination of agents.”
Sarah looked at Jimmy, whose mouth twitched. He was surprised, but he wasn’t immediately concerned.
“I’m interested in the model that Mr. Lawson is pursuing. Regardless of whether the claims turn a profit, I’m going to be keeping an eye on the two of you.”
“The proven mine is producing well,” Jimmy said. “I have the reports from Ajax and Thor for you.”
Jimmy produced a stack of papers and Descartes put them on his desk and rested a hand on them.
“I heard your wedding was an event,” he said. Sarah frowned.
“Is that supposed to be a threat?” she asked. He laughed.
“I’m glad you saw it, too. I was concerned that, especially you, with your long background wrangling with those… scavengers, would miss it for how routine it must be for you.”
“Someone trying to bury a slug into you doesn’t ever get exactly routine,” Sarah said, and he smiled.
“No, I imagine it doesn’t.”
“What do you know, Descartes?” Jimmy asked.
“I know many things,” Descartes said. “I know that you have optioned off the biggest suggestion of wealth so far this year, and I know that when you do something like that, people tend to take notice. And that no one is ever completely happy about it.”
“That’s not an answer.”
Descartes held up a hand.
“We’ll discuss it when it is time. Tell me about the mine.”
“They’re doing well,” Jimmy said. “The quality of absenta coming out of the ground is staying even, and I don’t think they’re going to have any problems making their payments.”
Descartes nodded.
“Good for everyone. And the other mines? I’ve been hearing rumors that your investors are discontented with progress there.”
“They thought that they were buying mining enterprises, not the right to build one,” Jimmy said. “They’ll learn what it takes.”
Descartes’ severe eyes turned to Sarah. The blue collar hanging out just below her right eye felt like a shield. She was unconcerned with him or his opinions.
“You’re going to help them, though?”
“I’m going to put them in contact with men who know enough to get them started.”
He folded his hands over the desk.
“Why not encourage them to bring in outside experts? I understand that you are… underequipped with true mining expertise, at the moment.”
“Rather deal with local boys than bring in other people’s problems,” Sarah said. “Only miner who walks away from his mine is one who doesn’t know what he’s doing or who has already failed.”
Descartes nodded.
“Tell me about your plans for Lawrence. I think that perhaps part of the reason you lack for expertise is that no amount of money will buy you a decent quality of living, there, if you’ll forgive the bluntness of the observation.”
“Oh, it’s true enough,” Sarah murmured.
“We have new housing,” Jimmy said. “And we’re really just weeks away from having some of the first amenities available…”
“You have nothing like the volume of housing necessary to support the boom you’ve budgeted,” Descartes interrupted. Jimmy swallowed, and Sarah locked a smile off of her face.
“No, we know that. I have more material coming in every day, and we have the tavern shut down until the owners build a general population housing for the laboring men…”
“What happened to the existing housing?” Descartes asked, looking at Sarah. “At its peak, Lawrence was a city of fifteen thousand, eight hundred people.”
“Lawrence happened,” Sarah said flatly. “Nothing survives the wind and the flooding that many years in a row without serious maintenance, and a lot of the miners were just up in the hills all the time, anyway.”
“Flooding,” Descartes said. “I’ve heard that it’s worse there than elsewhere because of the geography. Are you planning on doing anything about it?”
He turned to Jimmy now.
“I have plans,” Jimmy said. “But it’s a major event. We don’t have the ability to simply prevent it.”
Descartes’ eyebrows twitched.
“With the money you have coming into the city, you can’t afford not to,” he told Jimmy, then looked at Sarah again. “What would you do?”
She shook her head.
“You don’t mess with the floods,” she said. “They take out everything. It doesn’t matter how well-built it is.”
“Why not move the entire city up into the mountains?”
“Logistics,” she said. “Moving enough material up into the mountains to support everyone is expensive and no one’s proven that it’s possible. Water, among other things, is hard to get until you hit the rain line, and then you’re talking about a day’s mule ride just to get everything to you.”
Descartes nodded.
“There are a dozen little cities, out there on the end of their rail lines, all just like Lawrence. I assume there are good reasons they stop where they are. That said, Lawrence has the worst of all of the weather phenomena. Perhaps that would be the ideal place to consider alternate solutions.”
Sarah looked at Jimmy.
Screw it.
“The Lawson house is up in the hills, above the highest flood line by a good thirty feet, but they drive a huge burden on the town, supplying water and other essentials, being where they are. We have water, but we have to dig for it, and we have to maintain the wells daily, just to keep our access to it. If you ask me, that’s the thing that’s going to kill everyone, is one of the greenhorns coming out and messing up the wells so we can’t fix ‘em in time.”
“I see,” Descartes said, looking back at Jimmy. “So we have a dreamer and a realist sharing a bed. This suits me well.”
He lifted his head slightly and the man in the white suit came in, bending at the waist to speak quietly directly to Descartes. Descartes nodded and the man left.
“I know many things,” Descartes said, “but I do not know who you have upset. They are well-funded, creative, and far-reaching.”
“Then tell me what you do know,” Jimmy said.
“I know that three minutes ago, men came to your house in Intec and entered it by force and are currently going through it. I know that they are aware of our meeting and that they plan on waylaying you on your way out of here today. This is why I advanced our meeting today. If you leave now, you should be past your own home before they leave to come h
ere. You might have… ten minutes’ head start.”
Sarah wasn’t armed.
She turned her head to look at Jimmy, who was very still.
“Do you know what they want?” Jimmy finally asked.
Descartes shook his head.
“I have some vested interest in your survival, but not so much that I would allow myself to be drawn into this conflict directly. My people retrieved your personal belongs that you left behind at your house, and they are waiting for you by the door.”
Jimmy stood, leaning across the desk to shake hands with Descartes, then the man came around the desk and offered Sarah his hand. She shook a farewell with him, then followed Jimmy to the door, where the man in the white suit was waiting for them. They left Descartes in his office, following the white suited man back to the front door, where there was, indeed, a soft purple case standing ready. Jimmy picked it up and they went back down the stairs to the car.
“I’m not fighting in this monstrosity,” Sarah said.
“You’re not fighting at all,” Jimmy muttered, starting the engine.
“I believe you’re mistaken,” Sarah said.
“We’re splitting up,” he said. “I can hide, but my friends here aren’t going to trust me if I turn up with a stranger.”
“Why would you hide?” Sarah demanded.
“Because they’re here. There are people in Intec who know things, and I’m going to find out what those things are.”
“You don’t hide,” Sarah said. “I know you. You stand your ground and you fight.”
He looked at her.
“Against a man with a gun?” he asked. “Every day. Against a man with unlimited resources and an army of mercenaries? No. I find out who he is and I kill him in his sleep.”
His eyes were cool. There was no negotiation there at all.
“I’m not going to leave you on your own.”
“Sarah, they aren’t mad at you,” he said. She looked at the road again.
He didn’t need to say any more than that.
They were hunting Jimmy, trying to hurt him, hurt Lawrence, hurt his investments.
Sarah was his wife.
They’d sent men to rob Granger, potentially kill the bespectacled little man, because of how much of a bedrock he was to Lawrence. They understood Lawrence, and they understood Jimmy.
If they caught hold of Sarah…
Well, they’d have more than they’d counted on, regardless of how well they had the lay of things, but they wouldn’t hesitate to use her against him.
The most tactical thing she could do was be somewhere that they wouldn’t find her.
“I’m not hiding out until it’s done,” she said. He shook his head.
“Just until I know who we’re up against. I need you to help me make a plan, after that.”
She looked over at him.
“Swear it, Jimmy. That you won’t leave me cut off from everything because you think you’re making both of us safer.”
“You’re the one who was so damned set on getting out of here, with or without me,” he said without shifting his eyes off of the road.
“Jimmy Lawson,” she said. “You and I may have our problems, but where anyone else is concerned, it’s you and me. You got that? I’m not your pretty at-home Lawson wife. It’s you and me.”
He nodded, looking at her out of the corner of his eye and then looking at the road again. They’d turned onto the main road, and he was accelerating hard, quickly reaching an uncomfortable speed.
“Okay. I give you my word. No longer than it takes, just for the next step.”
She nodded.
“And don’t get dead.”
He snorted mirthlessly.
The car shifted under her, and her shoulder hit the side around the next curve. They flew past the Lawson house and on down the hillside.
“Where am I going?” she asked.
“You take the money and everything else, and you get on the train,” he said.
“Back to Lawrence by train?” she asked.
He shook his head.
“No, you’re going to Elsewhere.”
She raised her eyebrows, and he sneaked a quick glance at her.
“Due west,” he said. “It’s where Rhoda’s from.”
--------
Jimmy stood with her on the platform.
The Intec train station was slightly more advanced than the Preston one, but a train station was a train station, no matter what extra-durable material they used to caulk the boards or shade the platform.
The train would be another ten minutes, by the schedule. At this point along the way, they had a train leaving four times a day on weekends and six on week days. They were lucky that they were this close, and it was a good thing Jimmy had driven as fast as he had, but there would be another train along before too long.
Jimmy held her hand, staring down at the tracks with the muscle in his jaw working.
“What will you do?” Sarah asked, checking her bags. Three of them. She’d never traveled with so much stuff. Upside, at least, was that her guns were all in there. She could change into her Lawrence clothes and get them out, once she was on the train.
No one there to impress.
“I told you,” he answered after a moment. His voice was tight. Angry.
“You told me what you were going to do, but not how.”
He swallowed, nodding.
“I have lots of friends,” he said. “Some of them are foolish enough to side with me against any unknown adversary, and most of them won’t know what’s going on until it’s too late to be opportunistic.”
She looked at the rails.
“You don’t trust them.”
“Only ones I trust are idiots and family.”
“Big overlap there.”
He snorted.
“Still think we should go take the guys raiding the house and just make them talk to us.”
“We wouldn’t win, and they wouldn’t talk,” he said. “Not the type of people you can hire in Intec.”
There was a bravado coming from somewhere just above her stomach that made Sarah think she could make them talk, but the truth was that she was unaccustomed to inflicting pain for its own sake, and it wasn’t a skill that - objectively - she had an interest in developing. People came in two types: alive and dead. If someone didn’t suit her in the alive group, she just made them dead. Messing around with the process required a different constitution.
“So how will you do it?”
“Money in the right hands,” he said.
“Do you need cash?” she asked. He shook his head.
“Don’t give anyone the idea that there’s money in there,” he said. “You have a long enough trip ahead of you.”
“Tell me about Rhoda’s family.”
“You’ll know her daddy, Marv Orb, when you see him,” Jimmy said. “She’s his spitting image, only he’s built to wrangle cattle.”
Sarah nodded.
“They able to take care of themselves, in case this follows me?”
“Count on them.”
She nodded again.
“You’ll just get the information and then you’ll come find me?”
She looked at him.
“I’m not going to come get you until I have a path forward,” he said. “But I… I know what you want. I’ll do what I can.”
She could tell it was going to be as much as she got.
“Don’t like you being alone.”
“Easier to slip through that way,” he said, and she nodded. He let her hand drop, and they stood, silent, as the train pulled in. She glanced at him, and he touched his eyebrow, then turned and started away, leaning against a wall nearby as she boarded.
She got on, expecting a very long delay, but it wasn’t more than about another ten minutes before the train started to make noise like it was getting ready to go.
“Doesn’t take you long to get set,” she observed to the conductor as he took her ticket.
“No, ma’am,” he answered, noting her dress. “We detach the cars rather than unloading them.”
“What’s the next city down the line?” she asked him.
He told her.
“And how long will we be stopping there?”
“At least an hour,” he said. “We only keep the spare cars here.”
She nodded, and he moved on. She looked out the window as the train began to roll, noting that Jimmy’s posture had gone stiff. He was still there, leaning against the wall, but he wasn’t moving right, as he smoked his cigarette.
Had she given him a cigarette?
There was a commotion at the end of the platform, and Sarah had to sit up on her knees to see back as the train picked up speed. Jimmy’s eyes flashed up at her as he threw the cigarette away and drew his gun. His wasn’t the first to fire, but Sarah was already out of sight.
--------
Sarah changed her clothes on the train.
She only got off once, at the first stop, to buy a new duster and hat.
--------
The train pulled into Elsewhere with the same resigned sense of finality that it always had in Lawrence. The land outside of the window was familiar, but hardly identical to Lawrence. Here and there, scrub grass grew up through a ground that was only reddish compared to Lawrence’s red-baked expanses. She saw cattle dotting the horizon, grazing on what they could find, and there were buildings not far from the train station. Sarah remembered, in an unfamiliar sort of way, back when town had extended all the way out to Lawrence’s train station, but it felt like a drawing someone else was showing her, rather than her own memory.
She got off, toting only two bags. She had a sense that there wasn’t any sense in throwing away a bag that Descartes had given her - just the way those type of men were - but there weren’t any reason to carry all three, so she crammed all of the money into her shared bag with Jimmy and left the cash bag on the train, come what would for it.
The boards at the platform were dusty and worn under her boots, and she made just the right noise on ‘em, goin’ down the stairs at the end of the way, looking to either side to get the feel of the place as she wandered away from the train.
She felt more out of place than a flyin’ fish, there with the purple case, and weren’t nothin’ she wanted more than a safe place to stash it and a shadow over her head.