by John Bowers
“Just checking in,” the Vegan blonde said. “You didn’t call me last night.”
“You didn’t call me either. What the hell is that about?”
“I had a surprise visitor yesterday.”
“Kristina.”
Her eyes widened in surprise. “How did you know that?”
“Nathan told me.”
“Nathan is with you?”
“Yep. The Camarrell office sent him down to back me up.”
“Well…shit. I thought I was giving you some news.”
“How’s Kristina doing?”
“Oh, she’s wonderful. It’s really great to see her. When you get home we’ll have ourselves a party.”
“I can’t wait.”
“Are you doing okay?”
“I’m doing great.”
“You were on the holonews again yesterday.”
“Really?”
“Yes. The hostage thing in Camarrell.”
“Did they mention my name?”
“No, but I recognized you. Not too many U.F. Marshals dress in western gear.”
They chatted for twenty minutes, mostly inconsequential stuff.
“Looks like you’re in your car. Where you headed now?”
“The Isthmus of Latia.”
“What’s down there?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“Then why are you going there?”
“It’s too complicated to explain. But you don’t need to worry, I have backup this time.”
“I’m glad of that. Just be careful, okay?”
“I will. Love you.”
“Love you too, Nick. Oh, Kristina would like to talk to Nathan.”
Nick glanced to his right where Nathan dozed.
“He’s sleeping right now. I don’t think he’s had any sleep for about thirty hours. Does she still want to talk to him?”
Suzanne was gone for a moment then came back.
“She said never mind. Ask him to call her when it’s convenient.”
“Will do.”
Suzanne signed off and Nick kept driving. He had never visited this part of the planet, not even during the war, but his dashboard map gave him an idea what lay ahead. The Syracuse Sea was off to his left, but as the continent narrowed it came closer and closer. Before long he was able to see it in the distance, a broad body of blue gleaming in the sunlight. The mountains to his right flattened out and gave way to thick forests of ancient pine—or what passed for pine on Alpha 2. He skimmed the trees at fifty feet; the road had ended just a few miles south of the cattle ranches, and for two hours he hadn’t seen any signs of human habitation, reinforcing the impression that civilization did not exist in this region. Without a hovercar, travel would be extremely difficult.
Then, unexpectedly, a clearing opened up beneath him and he saw buildings.
***
Nick passed over the settlement almost before he saw it; he braked and swung back around, hovering, until he spotted a good place to set down. Nathan stirred as the hovercar touched the ground and Nick shut down the turbine. For a moment there was silence, broken only by the ticking sounds of the turbine cooling. Nick consulted his dashboard map, coordinating the GPS with his present position, but nothing was there. According to the map, he was in virgin territory.
Looking out the window, he saw about thirty buildings, mostly homes built of roughly-hewn lumber. The clearing was surrounded by tall evergreens, the setting reminding him of a mountain community back on Terra.
“Where are we?” Nathan asked with a yawn.
“I have no idea. According to the map, this place doesn’t exist.”
Nathan yawned again. “Well, the map can’t be wrong, can it? We must be nowhere.”
Nick laughed and popped his clamshell.
As he stepped out he was overwhelmed with the fresh scent of pine needles and wood smoke. The day was warm but not hot—they were close enough to the ocean that he could smell marine air.
Most of the houses boasted stone chimneys and thin smoke curled from several of them. He settled his hat on his head and adjusted his gunbelt. The ground felt good under his feet and he stretched leisurely, keeping a sharp eye out at the same time. Nathan dismounted the other side of the car.
The houses were arranged in a semi-circle, several dozen yards apart. The design was similar to a cul-de-sac in a housing project, only the homes were more widely spaced. A dirt road, or maybe a street, ran straight up the middle with narrow lanes leading from it to each individual house. There were no lawns as such but the area was covered with grass that had been cut back and was only ankle high.
“Wow,” Nathan said. “What a cool little community.”
“Maybe,” Nick said.
“What do you mean? Why ‘maybe’?”
“It’s only cool if the people are cool. We could have landed in the middle of a pirate’s den. Stay alert.”
Nick had set down beside the dirt street; the nearest house was about thirty yards from his car. So far he hadn’t seen a soul, but with Nathan trailing him, he began walking toward the unpainted wooden house. He was still twenty feet from the front door when it swung open and a man stepped out. Nick stopped.
The man looked to be about sixty, thin and sinewy. His hair was a faded grey and hadn’t been cut in some time, curling untidily down the back of his neck; his hairline receded back from a shiny forehead. He wore a short white beard and was dressed in rumpled work clothing that were neither clean nor especially dirty. As Nick stopped, the stranger’s eyes moved from his face to the guns on his belt, then his expression darkened as he saw the badge on Nick’s shirt.
He was carrying a rifle.
Nick tried on a smile. “Good afternoon.”
“Might be. Depends. You lost?”
“Uh, no, not exactly. I’m just looking for information.”
“You’re prob’ly looking in the wrong place.”
“I might be, but maybe not. Can you tell me the name of this place?”
The man’s eyes narrowed. He eyeballed Nathan and turned back to Nick.
“We call it ‘home’.”
Nick nodded. “How many people live here?”
“I never counted. What you want to know for?”
“Just curious. We just came down from Centauri Springs and this is the first sign of life we’ve seen. Thought we might check it out.”
“Well, I reckon you’ve done that, so you might’s well just keep on moving.”
Nick grinned. “We’ll do that. Maybe you can point us in the right direction.”
“North would be good.”
“We just came from there. I mean, what can we expect to find south of here?”
The man just shrugged. “None of my business. None of yours, neither, I expect.”
Nick sucked a deep breath and looked around. He faced the settler again.
“Do you have a name?”
“Yep. Most people do.”
“Can I ask what it is?”
“You can ask. Might not git an answer, though.”
“How long have you lived here?”
“Long as I wanted to.”
“Do you live here alone?”
“Yep. See all these houses? I live in every one of ‘em.”
Nick gazed at him a moment.
“Why don’t you put the rifle down?”
The man nodded at Nick’s pistols. “You first.”
“I can’t do that. I’m a lawman.”
“I can see that. But we don’t need no lawmen here, so you best just move along.”
“Is everybody here as friendly as you?”
“I dunno. You can ask ‘em, judge for yourself.”
Nick felt his irritation rising—trying to talk to this man was like trying to wrestle with smoke—nothing to hang on to.
“Okay. Thanks for your time.”
“I’ll send you a bill.” The man stepped back into his cabin and closed the door.
Nick turned to Nathan with
an exasperated look. “Isn’t this job just so much fun!”
They walked back to the street and surveyed the surrounding buildings again. From the far end of the street they heard what sounded like someone chopping wood. They walked in that direction. As they drew near, the clear sound of an axe rang across the clearing. After a few minutes they spotted the woodcutter working beside a house, previously hidden from their view. They headed toward him.
The man’s back was turned as he chopped short logs into firewood. Nick cleared his throat as they approached to avoid startling him. He turned to look and suddenly stood straight, resting the axe handle on his shoulder. Nick approached cautiously, Nathan several feet to his right.
Nick decided to try a different approach.
“Howdy!”
“Who are you?” The woodcutter was younger than the first man by thirty years. He was medium height with a full head of dark hair and muscular shoulders that strained his short-sleeved shirt. He faced them with no smile, his eyes wary.
“Nick Walker, United Federation Marshal. What’s your name?”
“What do you want here?”
“Just passing through,” Nick told him. “Maybe you can give me directions.”
“Directions where?”
“I was told there are settlements south of here. What do you know about that?”
“Don’t know much. I’ve only been down that way once, and it was years ago.”
A door opened on the side of the house and a woman stepped out. She looked to be in her mid-twenties, but had lines around her eyes. She stared at Nick and Nathan with an expression that betrayed fear. Although she didn’t look in any way similar, her demeanor reminded him of Grace Cheatum.
“Wally, who are these men? What do they want?”
Wally scowled and turned his face toward her, but didn’t break eye contact with Nick.
“It’s okay,” he said. “They just want directions.”
“Directions to what?”
“Go back inside, okay? I’ll take care of it.”
The woman was reluctant to leave. Nick smiled at her.
“Afternoon, Ma’am. Nice place you got here.”
“What do you want?” she demanded. “Why are you bothering us?”
“Not here to bother you, Ma’am, just need information. We’ll be on our way soon enough.”
“You have no right to be here!”
“Heather, go back inside!” Wally turned on her, exasperation in his voice. “I’m taking care of it!”
She shot him an angry glance and disappeared back inside the house. Wally turned to Nick again.
“What do you want, huh? Just tell me what you need and then leave.”
“Okay, I’ll keep it brief. I’m wondering if you’ve ever seen any strangers around here, someone from Centauri B. People with strange accents.”
“No. We never get strangers here. We keep to ourselves and people leave us alone.”
“Does anyone in your community do business south of here?”
“Maybe a couple of people, once or twice a year. We grow our own food and make our own furniture, but once in a while we need certain supplies we can’t make for ourselves. Like tools and shoes and stuff.”
“Where would I find these people? The ones who go south once a year?”
“They won’t talk to you. Anyhow, they’re not around today.”
“Where are they?”
“Working.”
“Working where?”
Wally waved a hand. “Could be anywhere. They hunt and cut wood, could be anywhere.”
Nick sighed.
“Who’s in charge in this community?”
“In charge? Ain’t nobody in charge. Everybody takes care of their own business.”
“You must have some kind of community leader, some kind of government?”
“Nope. Everybody is equal, and everybody butts out of everyone else’s business.”
“What about down south? Is there any kind of government down there?”
“Prob’ly, but I wouldn’t know. Only been down there once.”
“But you hear people talk, don’t you? Ever hear anyone talk about police or sheriff or any kind of law enforcement?”
“No.” Wally eyed him for a moment, as if debating whether to reveal more. Finally he relented. “I did hear once about someone called Governor, but that’s all.”
“Governor?” Nick’s eyebrows lifted. “What kind of governor?”
“I dunno. Maybe if you go down there you’ll find out.”
Chapter 18
“What the hell was that all about?” Nathan wondered aloud as Nick continued south. “What are those people afraid of?”
“Strangers. Probably most of them are running from something. If you collected all the arrest warrants on Alpha 2 and brought them down here, you could probably serve ninety percent of them.”
“Maybe somebody should do that.”
Nick shrugged. “If anybody has the time. But when I was on Ceres I came to understand that not everybody who commits a crime needs to be in prison. A lot of people make a mistake that warrants jail time, but they only do it once. They learn their lesson and fly straight afterward. As long as they do that, and aren’t a threat to society, they don’t really need to go to prison.”
“Who makes that decision? How do you know when a person will straighten out?”
“You don’t, which is why people get arrested if they don’t run. And usually even if they do run, which gets them extra prison time. Ceres was loaded with people like that, exiles from their own lives, looking over their shoulders all the time.”
“Surely they didn’t all go straight?”
“No, and we arrested those who didn’t.”
Nathan thought it over.
“On Ceres, there was a U.F. Marshal presence. Down here, there doesn’t appear to be. Let’s say Wally back there never breaks the law again, so he’ll be okay. But what if his neighbor is a rapist or killer and continues to prey on people. Without law enforcement, who protects Wally and his wife?”
Nick grimaced. “Most likely that first guy we ran into. The one with the rifle.”
“Frontier justice?”
“Yep. Illegal as hell, but extremely effective.”
Nathan shook his head. “I thought Sirius was bad.”
They skimmed along in silence for a moment.
“Oh, you might want to give Kristina a call. Her mother called earlier while you were asleep and said she wanted to talk to you.”
Nathan placed the call and for the next half hour sat grinning foolishly as he traded intimate words with his wife. Nick tried to tune him out and continued south, scanning the terrain for more settlements or any other sign of civilization. An hour south of their last stop he caught a glimmer of ocean to his right, several miles in the distance. To his left the Syracuse Sea was now very close, and straight ahead lay a long finger of land with irregular coastlines that stretched to the horizon.
The Isthmus of Latia.
Isthmus of Latia, Alpha Centauri 2
They came to a town…of sorts. Obviously Nick didn’t know the name of it, as it didn’t appear on the map, but there it was, dead ahead. It consisted of one long street down the center bisected by side streets, and at least four parallel streets on either side. The town itself didn’t look much like anything Nick had ever seen; there appeared to be no building plan, no civic design. Nothing was zoned. The streets weren’t paved, just covered with oil to keep the dust down. Cars and hovercars were parked haphazardly in no particular pattern; power lines crisscrossed the streets like a Black Widow’s web and the whole thing gave the appearance of being designed by children.
Nick dropped down close to the street, keeping his wheels retracted to avoid the oily surface, and cruised slowly as they took in as much they could possibly see.
“Jesus!” Nathan muttered. “This place makes Kline Corners look modern!”
Nick grinned. “If it wasn’t for the lo
cation, Kline Corners could be a tourist attraction.”
Nathan glanced at him, suspecting a joke. “Are you kidding?”
“Nope. You put it down in North America on Terra and you could sell tickets. ‘Come one, come all, visit Kline Corners, an authentic Ancient West cow town’. You could stage gunfights in the street and hangings on Sundays and you would make millions. Hell, billions.”
“I don’t know about that.”
“I do. The day I first got there I couldn’t believe my eyes. It was like I stepped back five hundred years. To you it was just home, and boring, but to an outsider…”
“Unbelievable.”
Nathan glanced out the window. Centauri A was setting in the west and Centauri B was riding the horizon. The day was getting late.
“We gonna spend the night here?”
“Most likely. You have an extra weapon?”
“I have a laser in my luggage.”
“Good. First chance you get, unpack it.”
Nick goosed his lifters to get over a car that had parked in the middle of the street. He saw people on the sidewalks but no one paid him any attention. At the end of the block, roughly in the middle of town, he found an open spot beside what looked like a café or diner. He set down there and shut down his turbine.
“You hungry?” he asked Nathan.
“I could eat. You think they have a health department here?”
“I wouldn’t put any money on it. You worried about the food?”
“Aren’t you?”
Nick nodded in acknowledgment. “Yeah, but I did live on Ceres for a while, and the food there wasn’t exactly above suspicion.”
Nathan sighed. “Well, Kristina swears that I have a cast-iron stomach, so maybe I’ll put her theory to the test.”
They dismounted from the hovercar and Nick locked it. He walked around to the rear and tore the rental sticker off the back, making it less noticeable. He wished it were an older model, with maybe a few dents in the finish and dirt on the windows. Too late to think about that now.
The air was cool, a light breeze gusting in from the Syracuse, and it felt good after three hours baking under glass. Food smells reached them on the breeze, everything from roasted beef to Asian spices, but they couldn’t tell where it was coming from.
“You in the mood for anything special?”