by Chloe Garner
Wright nodded.
“The most important ones, the ones we’re always afraid are going to get themselves killed… they always have more work to do.”
Sarah gave her a grim, mirthless smile, and Wright dipped her head.
“I have more reports to read. Enjoy the view.”
Sarah watched her go, then turned to look at the planet under her feet once more.
The scope of the world.
It had never really been how she saw it.
--------
Mess for the students was in the military wing. For Sarah and Sunny, a crewman brought it to them and they ate in the pod’s common area, sitting on a couch. Sunny was stony, not quite sullen, eating silently.
“Not everything you hoped for?” Sarah asked.
Sunny looked up at her, then went back to eating. Sarah nodded slowly.
“It wasn’t ever going to be a big trip. Just here to ask for a commodity launch, one-off. We’ll be on our way in the morning, one way or the other.”
“And then what?” Sunny asked. “Men come and kill you? We don’t even have the element of surprise, this time.”
Sarah shrugged.
“We’ll get out, one way or the other.”
Sunny shook her head.
“I’ll live. It’s what I do. But you’re going to die, tomorrow.”
“Everyone’s being awful dramatic about it,” Sarah said, and Sunny put her fork down with unnecessary force.
“Who is everyone?” she asked.
“Talked to Captain Wright for a bit today,” Sarah said. “She asked me to hide up here.”
“At least take a different pod down. Go to another city.”
Sarah snorted.
“You want to run away, start a new life?”
“Better than just dying,” Sunny said.
“You might be able to just disappear if you wanted, but I can’t,” Sarah said. “I’m the one who knows how to find absenta. They’re just going to keep coming. I need to get back to Lawrence. It’s our stronghold. Same as it’s always been.”
“You’re Jimmy Lawson’s dog,” Sunny said. Sarah raised an eyebrow and Sunny gave her a dark look.
“I married Rich Lawson and I changed him,” she said. “I didn’t even expect it. Didn’t try. He just did. You married Jimmy Lawson because you can’t stand not being told what to do.”
Sarah returned to her meal. It was wide of the mark, didn’t sting at all, but it did surprise her that Sunny would go there.
She was even more disappointed than she was letting on.
They finished their meal without further conversation, and the crew member knocked on the door to take their dishes back to the mess hall. Sarah went to open the door and frowned when she saw Lieutenant Barker there.
“Sir,” she said.
“It’s my understanding that the woman with you is a legacy,” he said. She paused.
“Yeah,” she said when it became apparent he was waiting on an answer. He nodded.
“I’m here to give her a tour of the military portion of the LaVelle, if she is interested.”
Sarah looked back at Sunny, but the woman was already moving. Sarah smiled, letting Sunny past and watching as she led the way ahead of Barker toward the military-civilian line. Sarah shook her head and closed the door again, going to her bag and going through her notes.
She had missed the civilizations on the other side of the mountains.
Vast grazing grounds, over there. They raised cattle that they had to walk to the Zachary-Oxala rail line, which crossed the mountains and connected to the lines on the other coast. Sarah didn’t think they even had the tentacles of rail lines up to the mountains, the way they did on the Lawrence side. Just people, riding horses, herding cows for mile after mile of green pastureland.
Surely there were towns over there. Cities. People who could use a communication satellite just as much as they could in Lawrence.
Well, not as much.
She added in some notes based on Captain Wright’s reminder, then sat back on the couch, letting her mind roam at random until the students came back. They played cards for about an hour before Sunny came back. The woman went straight for her room, pausing at the entrance to the narrow hallway and looking back at Sarah.
“I can die now,” she said, and Sarah gave her a half smile, then went back to playing cards with the students.
--------
There was a folder on the common table the next morning when Sarah got out there. The students were in class, but they’d left it undisturbed. Paper dispatches weren’t common, but regardless of whether it needed a thumbprint to open, other people’s mail was sacrosanct on the LaVelle. It was likely no one had even touched it.
Sarah sat down on the couch to open, reading over the single sheet of paper without much surprise. They had selected a launch date for the satellite. They would miss it at their own peril. She nodded, tucking the paper away into her pocket and going to wash her face at the sink. She brushed her teeth and put her hair up, going back to read on a screen until Sunny appeared, dressed, with her luggage.
“The next pod transfer should be in about thirty minutes, if I’m not mistaken,” she said, and Sarah nodded.
“You’re right on time for us to get registered.”
Sunny didn’t betray anything and Sarah didn’t press for any more than that.
If they made it that far, it was going to be a long, long trip home, but it was better than someone who compulsively talked about nothing.
They went out of the room, Sarah putting her key card away carefully, feeling the weight of it in her pocket as they walked across the open space to the active wing of the pods, signing in with the steward there who let them go get buckled into the pod that they’d be dropping into Intec.
Three bags: Sarah’s, Sunny’s, and the guns.
The rest of the people going into Intec came and took their seats. Most of them were coming off of other pods, going straight from one city to another, and the LaVelle crew started moving in cargo after another ten minutes, getting it tied down and ready for launch, which happened exactly on time.
Once they detached from the LaVelle, everything was near-weightless until they got close to the planet. There was some wandering around as the operator did the calibration sweeps, then they went on a straight path down toward Intec, accelerating for the first half and decelerating for the second, gravity increasing along with the deceleration to give them an apparent weight of about thirty percent above natural by the time they got close to the ground. When that gave and they went back to feeling like their stomachs weren’t stretching for their shoes, they were within range of the ground and it was only about a minute before the pod touched down.
Perfect landing.
Sarah waited with Sunny as the pod emptied and the ground crew took off the cargo, then they got out and Sarah went to sit in the lobby, waiting for someone to make the time to come open the locked box so she could get her weapons back out and on. Sunny sat, staring out the window, while Sarah re-armed herself, and then they both stood.
“I’m going to stay in the doorway until after you’re dead,” Sunny said. “After that, I’m hoping they won’t recognize that I was with you, and I can just… go.”
Sarah shrugged.
“If that’s what suits you,” she said. “I’m as ready as I’m going to be.”
Sunny shook her head and they went through the front doors.
There was a man leaning against the post at the guard station, smoking.
Jimmy Lawson.
Sarah couldn’t help herself but to grin as she walked across the wide front lawn of the space port, glancing once over her shoulder at Sunny. It took the other woman about half the distance to realize what Sarah had seen and come jogging to catch up.
“It went, then?” Sarah asked as she signed herself off of the port grounds. Jimmy nodded, looking at the cigarette between his fingers, then offering it to her. There was a phantom of a pull at
the corner of his mouth, as giddy as he ever got in public.
“It went,” he answered. “You look fantastic.”
“City clothes,” she said darkly, taking the cigarette and taking a drag on it. She didn’t even think about smoking on the LaVelle.
“What are you doing?” Sunny hissed as she got close, signing out past the guard and leaning her head in to Jimmy.
“I came to pick you ladies up and escort you back to Lawrence,” he said. Sunny’s eyes were hard, going from him to Sarah and back.
“What do you know that you didn’t tell us?” she asked. Sarah smiled, starting down the sidewalk ahead of Jimmy and Sunny.
“How did you do?” Jimmy asked as she took another draw on the cigarette.
“Got our launch date,” she said, taking out the paper and holding it up over her shoulder for him to take it. She heard him unfold it.
“Paper,” he commented.
“Is that a commentary on Lawrence?” Sunny asked darkly.
“It’s a tribute to me,” Sarah answered, head up.
She wasn’t going to die today.
Not unless a car swerved up onto the sidewalk on accident and took her out.
“I’m still waiting for an explanation,” Sunny said.
“I prefer to use paper,” Sarah said, intentionally obtuse.
She was actually cheerful.
She looked back at Jimmy and grinned again, bringing a slight smile to his lips. She was happy to see him. They were winning. They were in Intec, pulling the strings of the whole world, the two of them. Nobody but the two of them.
“Oh, good grief,” Sunny said and stopped walking. Jimmy turned to look at her, not stopping until he got to Sarah. Sunny shook her head.
“I’m not going back with you. I’ll find my own way.”
“It’s still too dangerous for that,” Jimmy said. “I still have enemies everywhere.”
“More now,” Sarah said. “Not fewer.”
“True,” he observed. “You need to come with us.”
“I’ll be on the train to Lawrence one ahead of you or one behind,” Sunny said, “but I’m betting you’ve got that damned private car waiting in Preston…”
“It’s here in Intec,” Jimmy said dispassionately, and Sarah grinned wider.
“… and the two of you are going to screw like addicts all the way back,” Sunny went on without even acknowledging that Jimmy had spoken.
Jimmy only hesitated for a moment.
“You have money?” he asked.
“Plenty,” Sunny said darkly.
“We’ll see you in Lawrence. Come straight.”
He turned and Sarah turned with him, like a pair of doors, walking down the sidewalk away from Sunny.
“Sure that’s wisest?” Sarah asked. “She isn’t armed.”
“Sunny is a survivor,” he said quietly, eyes forward. “The real question is whether she turns up in Lawrence or takes the window to disappear, off on her own.”
“You’d let her go?” Sarah asked. He glanced over at her, one eyebrow up a fraction.
“I don’t own her, Sarah.”
She nodded.
“Good.”
He pressed his lips and nodded back, looking forward once more.
“Tell me,” she said, and he nodded.
She held out the cigarette in front of her and he took it, the backs of his fingers brushing against hers.
“Just like we thought,” he said. “His attention was on you the moment you showed up in Magnum. He laid his trap and I got to him right on schedule.”
Sarah had wanted to add another day to the trip from Tyrew, but he’d insisted that they get to Intec quickly, fearing that Pythagoras would get bored or suspicious, waiting for her to turn up at the space port and that he’d ambush her on the way, where she didn’t have a willing refuge waiting for her in the LaVelle. It left a much smaller window for him, especially considering how weak he’d still been when she’d left, but he’d gone straight through from Lawrence to Oxala, where Pythagoras’ elaborate home was, and her winding trip had left him just enough time.
It seemed.
She shook her head.
“I could have bought you more time.”
“I didn’t need it,” he said evenly. “Did all of you come back?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Sarah said.
He looked at her out of the corner of his eye, taking a draw on the cigarette, then tossing it away.
“The last time you went up there, only part of you came back. It took a long time to find the rest.”
She glanced over.
How did he know that?
She’d been in Oxala, after that, for another two years, and he’d been in Lawrence. He hadn’t come to see her again: the next she’d seen him was when she got home.
He licked his lips.
“Your letters, Sarah,” he said. “You let more of yourself into them than you know.”
She shook her head, trying to remember them. They’d mostly been a log of what she’d been up to, classes, work, ideas. She’d always found them dry to write, and she’d expected that he’d never read them, though it organized her thoughts to put them all into words like that.
She looked over, and his eye flicked to its corner again, looking at her without turning away from the sidewalk.
“Tell me about the deal with Pythagoras,” she said. He ticked his head, once down, once up, the right question.
“You were happy to see me,” he said. There was a shudder of awareness, the lack of heavy, leather barrier between herself and the rest of the world. She was in soft, black fabric, not so much as a hat.
“You weren’t dead,” she said. “I’m allowed to be glad he didn’t kill you.”
“I haven’t seen you smile like that in months.”
She couldn’t remember smiling like that ever. It had just… happened.
“Tell me about the deal,” she said.
“Is it from being up there?” he asked, craning his head back. “Is that what does it? I think maybe I’d like to go, someday.”
“It ain’t for tourists,” Sarah said. “Tell me.”
“You come back… lighter,” he said.
“Jimmy, so help me,” she said, feeling that, even if she was in Intec clothing, she was wearing a Lawrence-quality arsenal.
He laughed quietly, looking down at the sidewalk again and moving his feet in an odd, jaunty motion for a moment, emphasizing the way his shoulders bounced with his hands in his pockets.
“I like it,” he said. “All right. All right. He took the meeting. He thought he had me pinned, that I was there to negotiate for my life.”
“And?” Sarah asked.
“You were right about the explosives,” he said. “They didn’t expect them.”
She smiled.
“You’re the mad dog,” she said. “You may as well play the card every once in a while.”
“It impressed him,” Jimmy said. “And Pythagoras isn’t an easy man to impress.”
They turned a corner and Sarah looked back as a shadow went overhead, the pod returning to the LaVelle. Jimmy watched it in silence, then they turned once more and continued forward.
“Terms?” Sarah asked.
“I’ve figured out how we’re going to get the absenta out of Lawrence,” he said.
“That wasn’t… wait, how?” Sarah asked. He nodded.
“We’re going to open a bank.”
It was at once tantalizing and obtuse.
“What the hell, Jimmy. What’s that got to do with shipping absenta?”
“We’ll have accounts with the big miners. The investors, specifically, though we can expand it if we want to.”
“Expand it to who?” Sarah asked.
“Don’t worry about that, yet,” Jimmy said. “We would go up into the mountains and buy absenta ore on consignment from the main claims. Cash to the operators based on an assumption of purity, to be rebalanced directly with the investors once t
he final purity comes in.”
A bank.
The Lawsons were going to go into banking.
The mind boggled. Sarah glanced at Jimmy, waiting for him to go on. He nodded.
“We take possession of the absenta. Whether or not it’s still at the mine, it goes in my absenta boxes and it’s mine. You steal it, you’re stealing from me. We bring it down at leisure…”
“At which point everyone blows a bunch ‘a holes in us,” Sarah filled in and he shook his head.
“No. You’re missing the point. No one brings absenta out of the mountains but us. You can’t get cash for it in town, and you can’t ship it out, because it hasn’t gone through certification. No one is allowed to buy it. There’s no point to stealing it. As soon as it isn’t in a Lawson chest, it turns into a bunch of worthless rocks.”
“Black market would beg to differ,” Sarah said, and he nodded.
“It’ll pop up, no doubt, but you have to build something like that. Find people willing to buy uncertified absenta, the fences to handle it, figure out how to get it out under our noses… The quantities will never be industrial. And that’s where the real money is. The mule trains a hundred mules long.”
“No,” Sarah said. “The money to keep a homestead alive for a year is less than a box.”
“But does a homestead know how to fence the stuff?” Jimmy asked. “Or a bandit? It’s going to take a more sophisticated brand of criminal to turn absenta into cash, once we control the flow starting at the mines themselves. The kind of criminal who doesn’t just run up into the mountains with a pair of six-shooters and hope for the best.”
She nodded, finding no flaw to that argument.
“And adding new miners?” she asked.
“It’s going to happen, Sarah,” he said. “Someday.”
“Maxim asked why not keep opening claims, just keep printing money,” Sarah said. “It’s too big for us, as it is.”
“You’re thinking too short-term,” he said. “We’re going to expand.”
“Your Ma have more boys I don’t know about?” Sarah asked. “Or is this next-generation thinking, and you’re expecting the Lawson wives to start popping puppies?”
He blew air through his lips.
“Don’t tell me I can’t get somewhere just because the infrastructure doesn’t exist, yet. I’ll built it myself, if I have to.”