Ill Wind
Page 50
Spencer and Heather, Gilbert Hertoya, Juan Romero, Bobby Carron, and Rita Fellenstein watched him as he departed. He waved back at them, saying nothing special to Heather, then turned and guided the gelding westward, once again riding off in the direction of the sunset….
Over the following weeks, he rode across New Mexico and Arizona, stopping again at the ranch of the dead diabetic man. Todd took an extra few hours straightening up the house. He got a good night’s sleep, replenished his supplies, then set off again.
He had nothing to do but think as he sat astride the horse throughout the heat of the day and into the cooling evening.
Part of him wished he had never left Iris, but he also knew that wouldn’t have made him happy. If he had not gone to deliver the smallsats to White Sands, if he had not made some sort of tangible difference, Todd would never have been able to settle down for the rest of his life. Iris had reached a point where she wanted to put down roots, but Todd hadn’t been ready for that; he’d spurned her offer to share her bed. He couldn’t calmly accept the fate of the world without trying to make his mark. And he had succeeded.
But Todd didn’t need to keep seeking bigger dragons to slay, wilder gooses to chase. He’d had enough.
Would Iris have him back? He had left her without saying goodbye. She had no reason even to think he might return, despite the message he had transmitted from JPL. Had she waited for him? She was so intelligent, and so beautiful… someone else had probably claimed Iris the moment his bootprints faded from the dry grass in the Altamont hills.
Then Todd forced a bittersweet grin. Iris Shikozu did not allow herself to be claimed! She might have changed her mind, gone with somebody else because of her own decision—but she would not have been wooed away by a sweet talker. No way!
He passed into California and headed north, following abandoned highways and the line of the mountains. He came upon a former dude ranch in the Sierra Nevada where a tall man named Carlos Bettario had established thriving, comfortable quarters.
Bettario’s group of workers had managed to keep themselves supplied with cut firewood, fresh fish and game, as well as meat from a herd of beef cattle. They powered their equipment and lights with electricity generated by water wheels turning in a hydroelectric plant on a nearby dam. One of Bettario’s men, a grizzled old man named Dick Morgret, showed Todd the wild horses up in the mountains and how they had already begun to barter with people living not too far away.
Todd stayed there for a day, helping to repair a long fence to pay for his room and board, then set off again.
He pondered trying to find someplace where he could send a short-wave signal, to let Iris know he was coming. But he was afraid to. He didn’t want to know if she was with somebody else.
Crossing the Sierra Nevada well before the first snows, Todd rode up the flat Central Valley, living off the generosity of farmers who shared their produce with him. In exchange, he told them all the news he knew, entertaining them with stories about the battle for the solar-power farm, Casey Jones and his train, and crumbling Los Angeles.
As he reached Tracy, moving westward to the grassy Altamont Range, he caught his first glimpse again of the white windmill towers lining the hill crests. He pulled Bayclock’s black horse to a halt and stared up at them with a pang. Anxiety shuddered through him, and he seriously considered turning around and heading back to White Sands, or making the long journey off to his parents’ ranch in Wyoming.
But he couldn’t do that. Todd could never live with himself if he gave up now. He had braved armies and murderers and mobs—he could not let a five-foot three-inch woman make him turn tail!
As he approached the Altamont commune, he saw that it had tripled in size in the months since he had been gone. Most of the windmills whirled in the breeze. Looking around the settlement, Todd didn’t recognize most of the people, but they somehow looked less… weird.
Daphne Harris came out to meet him. Her skin was dark and glistening with perspiration as she worked in the garden; her colorful tie-dye blouse looked as startling as a gunshot. She strode up to him with a grin. “Hey, look what the cat dragged in!”
Todd dismounted and tied up the gelding as other people came to see who had arrived. Jackson Harris appeared, his hands grimy from working on wind-turbine rotors, but he clapped Todd on the back. “We already heard what happened! Over the short-wave, Dr. Lockwood made sure we all knew what a hero you were down at the solar-power farm. Even Tibbett at Sandia got excited telling the story, if you can believe that.”
“We were wondering when you would finally haul your butt back here,” Daphne said.
Todd couldn’t restrain himself any longer. “What about Iris? Is she still in the same old place?”
Daphne and Jackson flashed a knowing glance at each other that made Todd uneasy. “Go see her for yourself, Todd,” Daphne said.
On weak knees—which he told himself was just from too many hours on horseback—Todd clumped up to their old trailer. His cowboy boots crunched on the dry grass. He spotted Ren and Stimpy off to the side, munching on dry grass.
The battered white aluminum siding of the trailer looked the same, with water spots and algae in the crevices; the rusty wheel rims still sat on concrete blocks. The metal screen on the door had been fixed; Todd wondered if Iris had done it herself.
He stared for a moment, terrified, then he finally rapped on the door frame.
Deep inside, Todd knew another man was going to answer. And what could he say to that? It was his own fault he had left. He made up his mind just to shake hands and leave.
But Iris opened the door herself, blinking up at him in the bright late-morning sunlight. Her almond eyes widened. She flashed an instinctive, shocked grin, but then she recovered. She cocked her head and looked wryly up at him. “So you came back.”
“I promised, didn’t I?” He took off his hat, wringing the brim in his big hands. “I’m ready to take you up on that offer—if you still want me. But you’ll have to marry me,” he said doggedly.
She was silent for a long moment, then made a tsking sound. “And you still didn’t remember to bring flowers.”
Iris laughed, then she hugged him.
Dramatis Personae
San Francisco
Connor Brooks—Seaman
Miles Uma—Captain, Oilstar Zoroaster
Ed Dailey—Second Mate
Dr. Alex Kramer—Oilstar Microbiogist
Maureen Kramer—his wife
Jay Kramer—his son
Erin Kramer—his daughter
Dr. Mitchell Stone—Alex’s assistant
Jackson Harris—Environmental activist
Daphne Harris—Environmental activist, Jackson’s wife
Todd Severyn—Petroleum Engineer
Dr. Iris Shikozu—Stanford University
William Plerry—Environmental Policy Office
Emma Branson—CEO Oilstar
Walter Cochran—Oilstar executive
Moira Tibbett—Sandia, Livermore researcher
Dave Hensch—Stanford student
Officer Orenio—security guard
Jake Torgens—Environmentalist, radical activist
Reverend Timothy Rudge—Pastor, Holy Grace Baptist Church
White Sands, New Mexico
Dr. Spencer Lockwood—Physicist, Solar Satellite project head
Rita Fellenstein—Chief technician
Dr. Lance Nedermyer—Department of Energy program manager
Dr. Gilbert Hertoya—Director, Electromagnetic Launch Facility
Juan Romero—technician
Dr Arnold Norton—Sandia scientist
Albuquerque, NM
Brig General Bayclock—Commander, Kirtland Air Force Base
David Reinski—Mayor of Albuquerque
Sgt Catilyn Morris—Helicopter mechanic
Colonel David—Commander, Phillips Laboratory
Colonel Nichimya—Commander, Base Personnel
Washington DC
&n
bsp; Henry Holback—President of the US
Harald Wolani—Vice President of the US
The Honorable Jeffrey Mayeaux—Speaker of the House
Rita Mayeaux—his wife
Franklin Weathersee—Mayeaux’s Chief of Staff
General Wacon—Chairman, JCS
Other locations
Heather Dixon—Insurance adjuster (Flagstaff, AZ)
Al Sysco—Manager, Surety Insurance (Flagstaff, AZ)
Dick Morgret—Gas station owner (Death Valley, CA)
Carlos Bettario—Rancher (Death Valley, CA)
Lt Bobby Carron—F/A-18 pilot, USN (China Lake, CA)
Lt Ralph “Barfman” Petronfi—Bobby’s wingman (China Lake, CA)
Copyright
© 1996 by WordFire, Inc. and Doug Beason
Originally published by Tor Books
Published at Smashwords by WordFire, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Look for these and other digital works by Kevin J. Anderson:
RESURRECTION, INC.
In the future, the dead walk the streets—Resurrection, Inc. found a profitable way to do it. A microprocessor brain, synthetic heart, artificial blood, and a fresh corpse can return as a Servant for anyone with the price. Trained to obey any command, Servants have no minds of their own, no memories of their past lives.
Supposedly.
Then came Danal. He was murdered, a sacrifice from the ever-growing cult of neo-Satanists who sought heaven in the depths of hell. But as a Servant, Danal began to remember. He learned who had killed him, who he was, and what Resurrection, Inc. had in mind for the human race.
CLIMBING OLYMPUS
They were prisoners, exiles, pawns of a corrupt government. Now they are Dr. Rachel Dycek’s adin, surgically transformed beings who can survive new lives on the surface of Mars. But they are still exiles, unable ever again to breathe Earth’s air. And they are still pawns.
For the adin exist to terraform Mars for human colonists, not for themselves. Creating a new Earth, they will destroy their world, killed by their own success. Desperate, adin leader Boris Tiban launches a suicide campaign to sabotage the Mars Project, knowing his people will perish in a glorious, doomed campaign of mayhem—unless embattled, bitter Rachel Dycek can find a miracle to save both the Mars Project and the race she created.
BLINDFOLD
Atlas is a struggling colony on an untamable world, a fragile society held together by the Truthsayers. Parentless, trained from birth as the sole users of Veritas, a telepathy virus that lets them read the souls of the guilty. Truthsayers are Justice—infallible, beyond appeal.
But sometimes they are wrong.
Falsely accused of murder, Troy Boren trusts the young Truthsayer Kalliana… until, impossibly, she convicts him. Still shaken from a previous reading, Kalliana doesn’t realize her power is fading. But soon the evidence becomes impossible to ignore. The Truthsayers’ Veritas has been diluted and someone in the colony is selling smuggled telepathy. Justice isn’t blind—it’s been blinded.
From an immortal’s orbital prison to the buried secrets of a regal fortress, Kalliana and Troy seek the conspiracy that threatens to destroy their world from within. For without truth and justice, Atlas will certainly fall…
GAMEARTH
Book 1 of the Gamearth Trilogy
By Kevin J. Anderson
It was supposed to be just another Sunday night fantasy role-playing game for David, Tyrone, Scott, and Melanie. But after years of playing, the game had become so real that all their creations—humans, sorcerers, dragons, ogres, panther-folk, cyclops—now had existences of their own. And when the four outside players decide to end their game, the characters inside the world of Gamearth—warriors, scholars, and the few remaining wielders of magic—band together to keep their land from vanishing. Now they must embark on a desperate quest for their own magic—magic that can twist the Rules enough to save them all from the evil that the players created to destroy their entire world.
GAME’S END
Book 3 of the Gamearth Trilogy
By Kevin J. Anderson
The finale to the Gamearth Trilogy. It’s all-out war between the players and characters in a role-playing game that has taken on a life of its own. The fighter Delrael, the sorcerer Bryl, as well as famed scientists Verne and Frankenstein, use every trick in the Book of Rules to keep the world of Gamearth intact while the outside group of players does everything possible to destroy it.
CAPTAIN NEMO
The Fantastic History of a Dark Genius
By Kevin J. Anderson
The life story of the enigmatic dark hero most readers know from Jules Verne’s novels 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and The Mysterious Island. A boyhood friend of Verne’s, Nemo goes off to explore the world, adventuring aboard sailing ships, crossing Africa in a balloon, exploring deep caverns that lead to the center of the Earth, and eventually building the Nautilus, the terrible submarine in which he wages war against war.
Short stories:
“Drumbeats”
A chilling story cowritten with Rush drummer and lyricist Neil Peart. A rock drummer bicycling through the African wilderness encounters a village that makes very special drums. This one will make your heart skip a beat.
“Frog Kiss”
A humorous fantasy tale. An evil wizard has turned the entire royal family into frogs and set them loose in the marshes, and only a kiss can restore them to their natural forms… but there are so many frogs, and so much swamp, who is willing to kiss them all?
“Fondest of Memories”
Everyone tends to edit their memories of lost loved ones, emphasizing the admirable qualities and good times, downplaying the unpleasant aspects. For a man given the chance to have his dead wife cloned, he can rebuild and restore her memories… with a few slight modifications.
“Redmond’s Private Screening”
A hard-edged horror tale. For a shady filmmaker in the early days of Hollywood, it seems like a great opportunity when a disgraced samurai offers to commit seppuku before the cameras. But the cameras are rolling.
“Job Qualifications”
The expectations we place on our politicians seem impossible for any person to achieve. A candidate needs to be all things, know all walks of life, understand every segment of his constituency. How could one person achieve so much… without a little help from a handful of clones.
“Prisons”
Co-written with Doug Beason. On a harsh prison planet, the warden and the staff are as much prisoners as the convicts, but a risky prison break might free them all.
“Collaborators”
Co-written with Rebecca Moesta. A collaboration is a close synergy between two creative artists, where one idea is a catalyst for another, and another. But when two people join their minds to create virtual universes, the artwork is so vast they begin to lose their own identities.
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