Sarah turns her head away. And that’s his answer.
Cowboy lets the whiskey touch his tongue again. A chill is settling in his spine and the warmth of the drink dies at its touch. “You figure Michael has a better chance?” he asks.
She shrugs. “He’s got more resources, more contacts. Better able to deal.”
“And in Florida you’ll see your brother.”
“Yes.”
He sits up, crossing his legs and sipping whiskey again. He looks down at Sarah, her broad shoulders, the catlike muscle stretched over the ribs, the breasts that would have seemed large and out of proportion on a woman who wasn’t so tall. He flips to infrared and watches the heat moving through her muscles, the pulsing flood of warmth through her throat.
She looks at him impatiently. “Look at it this way, Cowboy. Once this trip ends, we’re just allies again, and maybe not for long. I get paid off and go home, and after that our troubles are our own.”
“I know it. I’d just like the time to regret it for a decent interval, if that’s okay.”
“Just don’t get sentimental.”
He flips back to normal vision and watches the hardness in her face as she rolls over on her stomach, pillowing her chin on her forearms, her head turned away. “It seems to me,” he says, “that I need a bodyguard out here more than on the hike across the Alley. Someone who can’t shop me to the opposition because they want her as much as they want me.”
“No. There’s Daud.”
“You could bring him out here.”
She looks at him over her shoulder. There are razors in her voice. “Look, Cowboy, from here it’s just business. The sex isn’t a part of the service anymore, and my standard rates are going up as of tomorrow.”
“If I’d known sex was part of the service, I’d have taken advantage of it a little earlier.”
Her face turns to stone for a moment. Then it softens. “Sorry, Cowboy,” she says. She looks at him. “It’s been fun, but I can’t have any attachments to people I do business with, and you know why.”
“I guess.” Cowboy takes another drink, seeing the lantern glow reflecting in the heart of the bottle like a sunrise in the midst of ragged clouds, and for a moment he recalls the sky, the deep blackness and steady stars behind as he brought the delta arrowing across the Line and into the dawn…
Sarah settles back against her pillow, her eyes black as a delta’s cockpit and glowing with the same kind of subtle light. She’s turning hard again, Cowboy thinks, and she has a reason: she’s going back into a place where she has no friends, where there is no one to guard her back but herself. Where she can’t afford to trust anyone, except perhaps this Daud in his hospital bed…
Not unlike himself. He thinks he can trust more people than Sarah can, but the one he trusts most is recovering from bullet wounds in a hidden location.
In the distance coyotes begin to make their weird yelps. Next to him he can feel Sarah stiffen, then relax. At the familiar sound Cowboy caps the whiskey bottle and leans back, his mind flickering. through the long series of plans he’s made while walking across the country.
First thing, he’s got to get himself some wheels.
Cowboy is riding the interface again, the notes of a steel guitar running up and down his spine like a winter storm. It’s only a Packard midsize with a four-wheel option but it’s still the eye-face, still moving down the torn ribbon of asphalt under a free and azure sky, and Cowboy is cherishing it, monitoring the turbine revs, fuel line, engine temperature as if he were coddling his panzer’s Rolls-Royce jets.
Sarah sits in her bucket beside him. They’re heading for the train station and the Butte Bullet that waits to take her, at 200 miles per hour, to New Kansas City. From there she’ll hop a plane to Havana in the Occupied U.S.
She’s armored again, back in her freshly laundered blue jacket with the collar turned up, mirrorshades masking her eyes. Scarred, caustic, hard-faced, sometimes flexing her hands in an unconscious way, as if they were clasping someone’s windpipe. Cowboy can almost watch the streetgirl memories coming back, the reflexes she’d slowly eased out of in the last few days. Survival time, he thinks. Strange to think of a hike across the country as a vacation. But it was, and now’s the time to get serious.
The Bullet terminus is underground, beneath the streets of the city. Cowboy takes the Packard into a deep garage, feeling the echo of the humming tires moving along his nerves. His mind shuttles at the speed of light. It’s the face, and it’s been too long.
Reluctantly, he turns off the turbine. The spinning flywheel hums gently deep in the car’s body as he unfaces and looks at Sarah. She’s already half out the open door. Cowboy follows her example.
She waits while he opens the trunk. Her bag, just bought in Butte, is heavy with gold, but not as heavy as it had once been–– the Heckler & Koch won’t make it through the detectors. Written on a slip of paper is the code that will open the panzer cargo bay so that the Hetman can get his hearts back.
Cowboy holds out the bag, feels her cool fingers taking it, thinks of high-mountain air flavored with aspen, the astringent touch of desert wind in winter, the warm quicksilver touch of her body as they rode the sexual interface, her skin glowing white in his infrared eyes, dusky red-orange breath flowing from her mouth like streamers of sunset cloud.
“I don’t plan on being sentimental,” she says.
“If you need to get hold of me,” Cowboy says, “you can leave a message at the number of Randolph Scott, in Santa Fe. I’ll open the number in just a few days.”
“Randolph Scott. I’ll remember.” The shaded eyes seem to glance skyward for a moment. “You can leave a message for me at a bar called the Blue Silk.” She smiles to herself. “The owner’s a friend.”
“Okay.”
She holds out her hand. “It was good doing business, Cowboy.”
“Maybe we’ll be allies again.” Cowboy figures he can play this game as well as anybody. When he takes her hand, she steps forward and puts her arms around him. He feels the crushed armor against his chest. She kisses his neck and steps back abruptly. Past her dark mirrors he can see her eyes blinking rapidly. She smiles grimly to herself, tugs her armor firmly into place, and turns away.
Cowboy feels a draft on his neck and looks behind him, seeing no one. He closes the trunk of the Packard and steps into the driver’s seat.
Time to head south, he thinks. Montana is getting to be a lonely place.
Chapter Ten
TAMPA’S TOTALS OVERNITE, AS OF 8 THIS MORNING
22 FOUND DEAD IN CITY LIMITS
LUCKY WINNERS PAY OFF AT 3 TO 1
The Pony Express crouches in the big hangar like the ebony carving of a panther frozen at the moment of its spring. The Wurlitzer’s colored spotlights gleam red, yellow, blue across the beams of the ceiling, and the Texas Playboys boom loud in the cavernous space, brass ringing off the metal walls, bass throbbing deep in the concrete. Cowboy feels the familiar scent of the cockpit rising around him as he eases into the couch and adjusts the weight of the Heckler & Koch on his lap. He puts the studs into his head and wakens the delta’s sensors, his expanded vision overlapping like transparencies in his head, seeing only the dead empty hangar and waiting deltas set wing to wing.
He lights the weapons displays, seeing red lights only, missile pods in storage somewhere, no ammunition in the dorsal and belly minigun. Okay, he thinks, that’s no surprise. The Heckler & Koch will have to do.
He hears the whine of a car turbine outside and knows someone has arrived. He zips up the gray armored jacket he bought in Boulder and turns the collar up to protect his neck, then puts the helmet over his studs. The door opens and on his displays he can see a single figure enter the hangar, the sound of his footsteps on the concrete covered by country swing.
Pony Express can see the intruder on infrared and night cameras both, the images overlapping, red and chrome white, a hard-edged shadow silhouetted against the juke’s brilliance.
It’s Warren, Cowboy sees, moving slowly and cautiously with a carbine in his hand. Cowboy had triggered some of his electronics simply by driving here, and Warren’s come to investigate. He’s still alive, Cowboy thinks. Maybe things aren’t so bad.
Cowboy triggers a belly light, and now a red revolving strobe rockets along the walls, keeping time to Smokey Dacus’s drums. Warren pauses while he looks along the row of deltas, then moves toward Pony Express, keeping in the shadow of its wings. Cowboy turns on his Santistevan nerve boosters and leans his head out of the cockpit. “I figured they might be watching your house. ”
Warren looks up from beneath the brim of his cap. “Hi, C’boy.” He lowers the carbine and grins with stumpy teeth. “Some people have been here looking for you.”
“What did they have in mind?”
“They didn’t say. Though in my personal opinion, I think most of them wanted to kill you.” He puts the carbine on the ground and climbs the wheeled ladder to the cockpit. “Arkady came in person. He’s offering twenty-two hundred common shares of Tempel for your body.”
Amusement trickles into Cowboy’s mind. “I wonder how he came by that figure?”
“One of Arkady’s people came by just last week, just to snoop around. Chapel. You know, the lizardbrain. Delivered the warning again, made the offer for the reward again. What you’d expect. I told him I was trying to stay out of it. Maybe it satisfied him.”
Cowboy snaps off the sensors and the belly light. “Chapel,” he says. “Okay. Who else does Arkady have working for him?”
“It’s mostly a battle between thirdmen at the moment. The independent panzerboys are trying to stay clear. As far as the thirdmen go, Pancho and the Sandman have joined Arkady. Georgi and Saavedra got assassinated right at the start. Faceman, Haystack, and Dmitri the Arrow are fighting Arkady right now, but they’re not doing so good. Most of their panzerboys are loyal, at least right now. And the Dodger’s boys are hopping mad.”
Cowboy feels a shiver of tension running along his arms at the mention of the Dodger’s name. He takes a careful breath. “How is he?” he asks.
Warren looks at him. “He’ll be all right. He’s at his mountain place now, with Flash Force guards and electronics. Arkady won’t get near him, not unless he decides to come out.”
Cowboy feels the tension dissipate. “I’ve got to see him.”
“It can be arranged.”
Cowboy pulls off his helmet and reluctantly unfaces from the delta’s systems. Red monitors fade from his mind’s eye.
Warren watches him with a frown. “Not all my visits were from Arkady’s people,” he says. “Jimi Gutierrez came by a couple times. He seemed to think I’d know where to find you, acted like he didn’t believe me when I said I didn’t. He says he wants to join you, and asked me to pass the message on.”
“Okay. It’s passed.”
Warren seems amused. “Jimi’s okay. Pretty crazed, though.”
Cowboy looks at Warren carefully, feeling the touch of anticipation on his neck. “Warren,” he says, “I’ve got to know if you’re willing to help me in this.”
Warren looks at the floor. “I got a family,” he says.
Cowboy feels sadness settling in his spine. He frowns at the bank of instruments in front of him. “That’s okay. I understand.”
Warren glares at him, his eyes glittering on either side of his beaky nose. “I didn’t say I wouldn’t. Just meant it was a consideration.” His mouth tightens to an angry line. “Jutz said you called to say the Orbitals were involved.”
“Tempel is, anyway. Arkady’s fronting for them.”
Warren makes a contemptuous noise at the back of his throat. “So that’s where he got his stock offer. Cheap bastard.”
A laugh rises from Cowboy’s heart. He grins at Warren and raises a fist, bashing the canopy frame in triumph. “You don’t want to miss this,” he says. “We can take care of the family, Warren. Hide them till it’s over.”
Warren’s mouth twists with amusement. “How many years do you figure that’s gonna be, C’boy?”
“Not long. Not with the Orbitals involved. They’ve got too many resources, and they’ll win if the war goes on too long.”
“Yep. That’s how it looks. You got a way to keep it short?”
Cowboy looks up at Warren. “I need a couple things right away. I’ve got to get a crystal jockey to free up some of my funds. Then a talk with the Dodger. And you, Warren.” He watches as the older man rubs his stubble. “I want you to stay out of it for the moment. Let Chapel and Arkady think you’re keeping clear. But I’d like you up here, working on the deltas. Making sure Pony Express is ready to ride.”
Cowboy sees the shock running through Warren’s face. “The deltas?” Warren asks. “Are you going to fly the Line again?”
“Maybe.” Cowboy settles back in his seat, feeling the delta as a matte-black extension of his body, ready to soar. “Arkady likes to supervise his runs from a plane,” he says. “Flying out over Colorado and Wyoming.”
He sees the comprehension grow in Warren’s eyes. It dawns slow and pretty as a sunrise.
WAREHOUSE FIRE IN ORLANDO
SEVERAL LIVES BELIEVED LOST
Police Deny Reports of Firefight
Marc Mahomed whispers from concealed speakers, his voice a subaudible message amid the subtle cries and rhythms of hob. Maurice looks expressionlessly at the photographs on the wall, as absorbed as if they were a vidscreen. His metal eyes turn toward Sarah as she enters, and a slight smile crosses his face. “Rum and lime?” he asks.
Sarah nods, feeling the cool conditioned air of the bar chilling the sweat on her brow.
She smiles gratefully at the Blue Silk, its familiarity easing the tension in her.
She looks around the bar, seeing only a pair of customers she’s seen before, two sad-eyed Russian women who, to judge by the names that punctuate their conversation–– Lenin, Stukalin, Bunin, Trotsky–– are engaged in the usual discussion of where the Soviet Union went wrong in its mission to civilize the rest of the world. The old argument, Sarah knows, being fought by the Russian exiles all over the world. She ignores it and takes a frosted glass from Maurice.
“Have one yourself. On me,” she says.
Maurice nods and reaches for the White Horse with the slow, precise grace of a mime defining an unseen object. “Haven’t seen you lately, miss,” he says.
Sarah sips her drink. “I’ve been out of town. Business. And I’ve been trying to stay away from some people.”
“That Orbital gentleman?”
She gives a shrug that means yes. “Don’t like those people. They don’t seem to know when to let a person alone.”
“They look for you here. That Cunningham fella. I tell him to get the hell out.”
Sarah gives him a grateful smile. “Thank you, Maurice.”
“Every so often I see someone who might work for him, but I can’t be sure.” He shakes his head. “Haven’t seen anyone funny in weeks, Sarah. I think Cunningham’s gone home.”
“I hope so. But I doubt it.”
One of the Russians raises a hand for blue vodka, and Maurice pours it into frosted glasses and delivers it to their table. Sarah feels the rum gently warm her throat. The door opens behind her with a blast of September heat and she casts a swift glance over her shoulder, seeing a wheelchair holding a middle-aged white man with metal eyes, his legs a pair of padded stumps shorn off above the knee. One of Maurice’s old service friends, someone she’s seen before. Sarah thinks his name is James. She stares into her glass, hearing them exchange soft-voiced greetings.
Maurice makes James a drink and puts it on his table, refusing payment over his protests.
Sarah has the impression they’ve been through this before. Marc Mahomed chants a lament for missed chances, the loss of love, of meaning. James maneuvers his wheelchair toward the rest rooms in the back. Maurice returns to the bar, to his endless, unblinking stare at the photos on the wall, his drink untaste
d in his hand. Sarah finishes her White Horse. She signals for another.
“Maurice,” she says, “you live upstairs here, right?”
“That’s correct, miss.”
“Do you have a spare room?”
The featureless Zeiss eyes rise to meet hers. “Why do you ask?”
“I’d like a place in Tampa,” she says. “Where Cunningham and those friends of his won’t be able to find me. I’ll pay you rent, Maurice. In advance.”
Maurice looks at Sarah evenly, while she wonders if she’s pressed his buttons, if the mention of the Orbitals will swing it. “No dealing in my place,” he says. “Nothing against the law, no people I don’t know. Don’t want no trouble. ”
“No trouble, Maurice. I only want a place to sleep.”
He puts her drink on the bar. “Okay, then,” he says. “One week. Then we’ll see.”
Sarah feels relief easing her limbs. She raises the drink and gives Maurice a faint smile. “Thank you, Maurice. You’re a friend.”
The rest-room door opens and James threads his chair between the tables to his place. Maurice looks at him meditatively. “A good man, once, the captain. Crazy for years, ’cause he can’t fly.”
Sarah looks at James over her shoulder, feeling the sadness that is the touch of memory.
“Yeah,” she says. “I know someone like that.”
ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT IN CASPER
MAYOR ANDREIEVICH ESCAPES WITH MINOR INJURIES
Claims, “I have no enemies in the state of Wyoming.”
Police Baffled.
The Dodger’s house occupies a minor mountain on the east face of the Sangre de Cristos, looking down on the eastern plains for a hundred miles, and not coincidentally sitting in a nice military position, with a view of everything that happens below and a near-unassailable ridge behind. Strangers have never been welcome in this part of the world, and any watchers would not go unmarked by the locals.
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