by Jerry Oltion
Yet only yesterday she was so far away she couldn't even see it. The thought boggled her mind. She had been farther away from Earth than anyone else in the history of the human race, and here she was home again less than twelve hours later, walking on a sidewalk with her hands in her pockets like anyone out for a stroll around the block.
She'd never been to Rock Springs before, but it felt like home. Compared to where she had just been, how could anything on Earth not be home? Astronauts always liked to say that you couldn't see national boundaries from orbit, but when you couldn't even see the planet, the artificial boundaries that people put up between each other seemed even less important. She felt the irrational urge to run up to a total stranger and give him a big hug just to reaffirm her connection with humanity.
"Are you, uh, feeling a little weird right now?" she asked.
Allen cupped his hands together and blew into them. "Cold," he replied. "Otherwise okay. How about you?"
"I think I'm in shock."
"Oh?"
"Everything looks different to me all of a sudden. Not physically different, but sociologically. Like I'm seeing it from a different perspective now."
Allen smiled. "Yeah, I'm getting a little of that. Maybe not as much as you, 'cause I knew what we were going to do up there, but I know what you mean."
"I wonder if this is how the Wright brothers felt," she said. "It's like having a leg in the past and a leg in the future at the same time."
"Maybe. But the Wright brothers didn't really expect— whoa!" Allen's left foot shot out from under him as he stepped on a patch of ice. He windmilled his arms and caught himself before he fell, but his hat flew off and rolled out into the street just as a dark brown General Electric van approached. The driver swerved, but the hat rolled right under the tires. It made a soft flap flap as they squashed it flat, then the driver hit the brakes and the van screeched to a stop.
He opened his door and looked back at Judy and Allen. He looked to be in his forties or so, and he wore a hat almost identical to the one he had just run over. "Sorry," he called out. "I tried to miss it, but it was too quick."
"That's all right," Allen said, stepping out into the street to retrieve the hat. He punched the top out into a dome and bent the sides upward into their potato-chip shape again. "There," he said. "Good as new."
The driver shook his head. "Nice try. Well, you're a darn sight more calm about it than I'd be, that's for—" He suddenly narrowed his eyes and peered at Allen as if he'd just switched to x-ray vision. Judy grabbed Allen's arm and was just about to make a break for it when the driver said, "Uh ... let me give you a little piece of advice. Dent the top in again so you don't look like a Mountie, and pull the brim down low in front until you can get yourself a pair of sunglasses or something to hide those eyes. Your face is all over the papers this morning."
"Uh . . . thanks," Allen said.
"Any time." The driver shut his door and the van started to roll on down the street, then it stopped again and the driver stuck his head out the window. "Hey, was that business on the TV yesterday for real?"
"Yep," Allen said.
The man whistled softly. "I'll be damned. My sister recorded it." He put the van in reverse and backed up until he was even with them. "Hey, you two need a ride somewhere?" Allen looked over at Judy. She glanced into the back of the van. No SWAT team huddled there to grab them. Just an empty baby seat and a bunch of plastic kids' toys in bright primary colors.
"We're looking for a phone," she admitted.
"I can help you with that right here," the driver said. He reached onto the dashboard for his cell phone and held it up, then he nodded his head sideways and said, "Come on around and get in where it's warm."
Allen twirled the hat around in his hands a time or two, then ran his thumb along the top until it once more had the three deep creases it had started out with. "Does everybody in this town help out fugitives, or are we just lucky?" he asked.
The driver shrugged. "It's a pretty friendly town."
"I guess."
Judy and Allen walked around to the passenger side and got in. There were just two big bucket seats in front, so Judy climbed in back and sat behind Allen. From there she could keep an eye on the driver, too.
"Name's Dale," he said, twisting around and holding out his hand toward Judy. "Dale Larkin."
"Judy Gallagher," Judy said. When they shook, his hand felt amazingly warm against her cold fingers.
"Pleased to meet you. And you're Allen Meisner. Wheeoo. Wait'll Lori hears about this! Here, make all the calls you want."
He handed Allen the phone and drove on down the street while Allen switched it on and started dialing, but Judy had a sudden thought.
"Hey, wait! Disable the caller ID before you dial."
Allen nodded. "Good idea. What's the code for that?"
"Star-six-seven," Dale said.
"Does that disable the emergency locator, too?"
"Yep. So they say. Mine doesn't work anyway, so you're okay." Allen punched in the code, then tried calling his fellow mad scientists while Dale drove them down a steep hill into the center of town, but nobody was home at the first two numbers he tried. He tried a third, and a second later he broke into a big grin.
"Gordy! Hey, Allen here. I . . . yeah. No, we're okay. I can't tell you that. I can't tell you that, either. Listen, I need some help here. I'm going to have to buy some stuff, and I can't use my own credit card for obvious reasons. I . . . yes, we're going to . . . no, I really can't tell you that. Somewhere in Colorado, all right?" He frowned. "Wait a minute. You've got federal agents breathing down your neck, don't you? Don't bullshit me, Gordy! They're in the room with you, aren't they?"
"Hang up!" Judy said.
Allen shook his head. "Listen, tell them . . . I don't care about that; tell them it's too late. The word is out, and by this time tomorrow, we will be, too. Out in space, you dumb shit! Yes, I know what the economic—oh, forget it." He growled in the back of his throat and punched the phone's "Off" button.
"Is he all right?" Judy asked.
Allen shrugged. "Sounded like. Sounded like Carl got to him first, though. Why is it," he asked Dale, "half the people who hear about this are terrified that the world is going to fall down around their ears?"
The streets were labeled alphabetically, just "A," "B," "C," and so on. Dale turned right on A Street and headed up a bridge over the railroad tracks. "Maybe they've got too much invested in the status quo," he said.
Judy looked at him a little more closely, surprised to hear the phrase "invested in the status quo" coming from underneath a cowboy hat. "What do you do?" she asked. "For a living, I mean." He grinned. "Rob banks."
"No, really."
"I really rob banks."
14
The guy sounded sincere. There was an uncomfortable silence while Judy tried to think how to respond, but she could only come up with one question: "Why did you tell us that?"
"Because I can," said Dale with a wry smile. "You're probably the only total strangers in the world I can trust with the truth. You're not going to turn me in, 'cause you're on the lam yourselves." Allen turned the phone over in his hand and popped open the peripheral slot cover. "You pulled the GPS receiver," he said.
Judy had heard the phrase "grinning like a thief" before, but she had never realized what it meant until now. Dale was proud of his accomplishments, and happy to have found someone he could brag to about them. "Yep," he said. "I don't know for sure if switching it off actually disables it, so why take the chance?"
He brought the van to a stop at a red light on the far side of the overpass. Judy considered jumping out while they were stopped, but she had no idea how to get back to Trent and Donna's house from here, and she wasn't getting danger vibes off of Dale. She looked at the kids' toys and the baby seat beside her. Did he actually have a kid, or were they just props to remove suspicion from his vehicle?
"Why do you do it?" she asked.
He shrugg
ed. "That's where the money is."
"Yes, but . . ."
"But it's wrong. I know. So's ripping up the ground to get the coal out from underneath it, or cutting down a whole forest for the lumber, or selling tennis shoes made in third-world sweatshops. I decided to cut out the hypocrisy and go straight for the target without screwing anybody along the way."
"Sounds like the banks get a pretty good screwing," Allen pointed out. Dale shook his head. "Actually, not. They're insured, so the individual bank never loses any money. The cost is spread out over thousands of banks, and millions of depositors. And it's not like I knock one over every week. I live modestly. People lose more money under their sofa cushions than what I cost them."
"But . . . you're still stealing from them!" Judy protested.
"So's every industry that uses public land or non-renewable resources. At least I don't steal from the future."
"Yes, but . . ." She stopped. A police car pulled up at the light from the side street to their right. Dale signaled for a right turn, waited for the light to turn green, then waved as he drove past the cop. The cop waved back.
"Always cultivate a friendly relationship with the Federales," Dale said. "But not too friendly. That draws even more suspicion than hostility." He nodded toward the phone that Allen still held in his hand.
"You going to call anybody else?"
It took Allen a few seconds to shift mental gears. "There doesn't seem like much point," he said. "If they got to Gordy, they got to the rest of us."
Dale drove them along a street lined with light industrial businesses: welding shops, a glass shop, several auto repair garages. "What do you need besides money?" he asked.
"A spaceship," Allen replied.
"Well, I can't help you there. But if you need cash, I've got plenty of that."
"You'd just give it to us?" Allen asked.
Dale laughed. "Easy come, easy go. The nice thing about having a realistic attitude toward money is it doesn't rule your life anymore. Besides, you guys just gave the whole world something that's worth a hell of a lot more than what I'm offering you. Maybe I'm feeling generous 'cause of your example." Judy shivered, but it had nothing to do with the cold. They did need money, but she couldn't imagine taking any that came from a bank robbery. It was hard to bring herself to speak, but she made herself say, "I don't think I'd be comfortable with—"
"I didn't figure you would." Dale had lost some of his smile. He bit his lower lip, thinking, then said,
"How about this? Suppose you give me your credit card number, and I give you cash. I've got a dummy corporation I set up for laundering my proceeds; it would be simple to bill a few thousand to your card. Then it's actually your money you're spending."
"I don't know," Judy said. "It seems to me we'd still be spending the bank's money."
"They're not marked bills. And you'd be out a dollar for every dollar you spent, so it's not like you'd be getting something for nothing." Dale turned left at another cross street and drove slowly past more businesses.
Allen said, "You'd be mobbed with FBI agents before you finished typing the number in." Dale smiled again. "You haven't had much experience with this sort of thing. If the Feds ever come knocking, they'll find that you bought a computer by mail order from a company in Virginia. So long as you don't challenge the charges, they can't cancel the payment, and the money trail stops at a numbered Swiss account so they can't trace it to me."
Allen shook his head in reluctant admiration. "Pretty slick, all right." He turned sideways in his seat so he could look at Judy. "What do you think?" he asked.
"Honestly? I don't like it. No offense, Dale."
He shrugged. "No skin off my nose either way. I'm just trying to help the only way I can." Allen wrinkled his forehead, thinking. "I'm trying to see how this would be any worse than taking grant money from a tobacco company or Microsoft or somebody like that, and I have to admit it seems a lot less questionable."
"It's apples and oranges," Judy said.
"It's money," Dale put in. "The whole damned concept is so full of moral trouble, you can burn out your brain doing what you're doing. You need cash, I got cash, and I didn't kill anybody to get it. That should be all you need to worry about."
Judy heard the anger in his voice, but she didn't let it stop her from saying, "No, it's not. I don't think robbing banks is right, and I don't think I want to—"
"Look here, miss high and mighty. You've already done more damage to society than I ever could. The fact that you've given us something in return is a point in your favor, but it doesn't undo the damage. Maybe my offer is an attempt to atone for my sins, I don't know, but I do know that you're on pretty shaky moral ground yourselves to be turnin' up your nose at it."
"Maybe so, but I—"
"Stop!" Allen said. Judy was so startled that she closed her mouth, then she opened it again to blast him for trying to shut her up, but he said "Stop the car!" and she realized he wasn't even talking about her.
"What's the matter?" she asked him as Dale pulled over to the curb.
"Nothing. I think I just found our spaceship." He pointed into a lumber yard across the street. She tried to see what he was looking at, but all she saw were stacks of boards, pallets of concrete blocks, and three big yellow plastic igloos five feet high and half again as long.
"Where?" she asked.
"There. That water tank. It looks like the walls must be half an inch thick. I bet if we seal it up, it'll hold atmospheric pressure."
A water tank? Judy looked at the igloos again. It looked pretty cramped inside. No room to stand up in. No room to store more than the barest of necessities. There weren't any windows, either; just a couple of pipe fittings the size of her thighs sticking out either end. She and Allen might be able to make portholes out of them, but they would also have to cut a hole for a hatch and figure out how to seal that after they were inside, and they would have to drill more holes to mount their controls and their acceleration couches and their equipment lockers. They'd also have to mount steering rockets on the outside, plus a parachute and who knew what else. By the time they were done, the thing would look like a wiffle ball. Either that or they'd have to glue everything down, and she could imagine how well that would work the first time they landed hard. They would have better luck going back for the emergency descent module.
Dale didn't seem to think much better of the idea than Judy did. He was chuckling softly and shaking his head.
"What?" asked Allen.
"What you got there is a pretty specialized kind o' tank," Dale said. "I don't think many people would want to go gallivantin' around the galaxy in one."
"Why not?" Allen said. "A tank is a tank, isn't it?"
"Sure it is," said Dale. "Except when it's a septic tank."
"A septic tank?" Allen tilted his head sideways, as if maybe seeing it from another angle would make it look like something else.
"Yep," said Dale. "Made for stickin' in the ground and fillin' with shit. Not exactly what I'd call spaceship material."
Judy couldn't help laughing, but Allen's earnest expression didn't change.
"Why can't it be?" he asked. "Just because it's designed for one purpose doesn't mean we can't use it for another. I've spent my whole life thinking of things in different terms, and that's why I've gotten where I am today."
Dale snorted. "In a minivan in the back side of nowhere, with no money in your pocket and the Feds hot on your ass. Yessir, that's an accomplishment."
"Look who's at the wheel," Allen said quietly. "You're two for three yourself." That took a little wind out of the bank robber's sails, but not all of it. "I'd debate that with you if it mattered," he said.
"The Feds have no idea where I am, and there's nothing to link me to any of the robberies even if they did. But that's not the point; the point is, they are after you, and you've got no money and no vehicle to make your getaway. I think you're nuts, but if you want to make a spaceship out of a septic tank, my offer still
stands. Cash for credit, or I could just buy the tank for you outright. Your choice." Or they could just get out of the van right now and forget they'd ever met this guy, Judy thought, but she knew they weren't going to do that. For one thing, it was a long, cold walk back to Trent and Donna's house, if they could ever find it from here. For another, they really did need to make a clean getaway, and soon. After the trouble the government had already gone to in suppressing Allen's invention, they weren't going to stop until he and Judy were in custody, or dead. And despite her misgivings about the source, how many people could she reasonably expect to offer them the money they needed? They'd been incredibly lucky so far, but they couldn't count on luck forever.
"All right," she said. "Buy us the tank."
15
They didn't buy it then and there. For one thing, something that large would have to be delivered, and they had no idea what address to give the driver. It would be pushing Trent and Donna's hospitality considerably to ask them to give up their garage for a spaceship assembly building, and Judy and Allen couldn't very well do it in the back yard, either. All it would take would be one curious neighbor—or a cop driving by in the alley—to blow their cover.
They needed a workshop, but Judy wasn't about to ask Dale for help with that, too. She wrote down his cell phone number, then had him drive her and Allen back to the spot where he'd picked them up.
"We'll get in touch when we're ready," she told him.
"Good enough," he said, tipping his hat slightly to her as she climbed out of the van. "Glad to help whenever I can."
The cold air made her cheeks tingle again the moment she stepped down to the street. She shoved her hands in her pockets and hunched her shoulders to pull her collar tight around her neck. As they stood on the sidewalk and watched Dale drive away, Allen said, "Does that guy have a Robin Hood complex, or what?"
