Analog SFF, May 2007

by Dell Magazine Authors

  The car behind had also turned, after a spectacular skid—and after being nearly broadsided by a vehicle in the oncoming lane. Chad smiled grimly. Well, at this point he'd hardly thought it was just coincidence they were taking the same road as he was.

  They were coming up fast, too, as he glimpsed through occasional gaps in the dust. The road was too smooth to slow them down as he'd hoped.

  The intermittent billows of dust behind gave Chad a new idea, though. Not far ahead were the just-built ponds, their surrounding embankments freshly sculpted out of newly bulldozed dirt. Dirt as fine as talcum powder. At the last minute Chad braked and turned onto the embankment. His pursuers missed the turn, skidding into a 360 on the loose gravel, but they managed not to roll their vehicle. And not to land in the ditch alongside the road. They started back toward where he'd turned.

  Well, so much for Plan A. Now for Plan B. Chad gunned his motor, bouncing wildly over the uneven surface atop the new embankment. Dust poured up behind in opaque clouds. Up ahead the embankment bent at right angles as it turned to enclose the pond. Chad waited till the last possible moment, then braked abruptly and steered hard right to follow that bend. Blinded by his dust—and following too closely—his pursuers didn't see the maneuver till too late. In turning they merely managed to get sideways so that they skidded down the embankment. Although they didn't roll, their vehicle was now stuck, its tires sunk so far into the soft dirt that the undercarriage rested directly on the ground. Chad could see new plumes of dust as they revved, spinning the rear wheels uselessly.

  Chad followed the embankment around back to the main graded road at a more sensible pace. Once a prudent distance away, he called the sheriff's office on his cell to report the “accident.” He related how he'd been pursued and therefore did not stop and render aid. And then, before they could order him to come in and file a full report, he clicked off the cell.

  Getting back to US 95 had been anticlimactic. Chad had picked up the main highway again out of Goldfield, and had decided to head back to Vegas that night. No way would he go back to Tonopah, not after what had happened at the hotel. He'd call the sheriff's office back tomorrow and file a full report.

  Chad yawned and shook his head, covering his mouth out of habit while holding the wheel with his other hand. It had been a long day. And a weird day—his free hand hefted that lump in his coat pocket. Jewelry rock, Charlie'd called it—and he could no more remember picking it up—he could no more remember that whole canyon—than he could the Battle of Shiloh. Something didn't fit, though—he sensed an anomaly somewhere that he couldn't make his tired mind bring out in the open. Something about the mine workings...

  At length he noted a car coming up fast behind him. It was a dark late model sedan—Chad checked his speed involuntarily. This far out of town, cars were on manual control even on the Federal highway, and it looked like the sort of car the Highway Patrol would drive. And although the vehicle had no bubblelights, it could be unmarked. He was holding the speed limit, though. The car pulled up, tailgating him, and flashed its headlights.

  Normally Chad wouldn't have given the incident a second thought, figuring it was just another idiot with a death wish on the Tonopah Highway. He was suspicious now, though. He'd been pursued once today, and this seemed a bit too much of a coincidence. And it couldn't be the sheriff—if the sheriff were thateager to talk to him he'd've been driving an official car with bubblelights and a siren. Chad therefore ignored the flashing lights, waiting until a primitive road came in from the right. Then he blinked and pulled over onto the shoulder, slowing down as he did so.

  The dark sedan swept around, nearly sideswiping his car. He tried to look in the passenger compartment as it passed, but despite the lengthening shadows all the windows were darkened. He wasn't really surprised when the vehicle then cut in front of him abruptly and braked, bright lights flaring red in front of him. Already prepared for some such action, he'd continued to decelerate as the sedan had passed. Now he turned hard right onto the little dirt track and gunned the engine as much as he dared. His vehicle jounced wildly as it accelerated up the ruts.

  Chad, glancing in the rearview, saw the sedan stopped completely on the highway. He pushed the accelerator down even more. His vehicle responded with a bounce that would have thrown him into the ceiling had he not been wearing a seat belt. He winced as a rock slammed into the undercarriage with a heavy thunk. Well, that's what skid plates are for. Ahead, the road was barely more than a trail, ill-defined ruts winding among the desert rocks, the occasional Joshua tree looming up like a sentinel. At least he could see ahead. He steered tightly, trying to avoid the worst of the rocks—and to miss the occasional yucca that loomed up, its spines like spears aimed at his tires.

  He glanced at the rearview again. The sedan had backed up, and was now nosing slowly off the highway onto the track. Chad grinned wolfishly to himself. Good luck, guys, with a rig like that!Then he had to slow down to dodge around a rock in the middle of the track.

  Another glance at the rearview showed that the sedan had managed to advance ten meters or so down the track, but now it didn't seem to be moving. Chad hoped it had gotten hung up on the rocks. Even if not, they couldn't possibly catch up to him. He looked to the path in front of him, seeing a stretch relatively clear of rocks. He gunned the motor even more, trying to build up his lead. He again grinned to himself, Always said I'd take on any muscle car if I could choose the track!

  Now the rearview showed both the sedan's front doors open, and two figures in dark clothing had emerged. It appeared, as much as he could tell from the bouncing, that each was carrying something—a handgun?—in one hand. They were guns: he saw one figure lean diagonally across the hood to take a shooting stance, his hands cupped around his weapon, while the other, standing in front of the grill, leaned back on the front of the car, steadying his gun in both hands.

  Chad was suddenly aware of a couple of red dots dancing across the paneling and dashboard. Laser sights! He slewed the steering wheel back and forth, heedless of the alarming clunks from underneath the car. Even for pros, hitting anything with a handgun at this distance would be a matter of luck more than skill. He would do his damnedest to stack that luck in his favor. Still jouncing madly, he then swung around a Joshua tree and up a shallow draw on the right. In this open desert, he could drive most anywhere, as long as he dodged the yucca and Joshua trees, and the occasional big rock.

  The red dots vanished as a low ridge now cut the line of sight back to the sedan. Chad kept going, though. He didn't really think the suits would try to pursue on foot, but putting more distance between them and himself seemed like a good idea nonetheless. Who are these guys?he wondered. They didn't seem like the claim-jumping punks. Those didn't wear suits, for one thing.

  After half an hour or so, he was starting to relax slightly. He'd worked his way back to the original track, and was continuing on generally southerly. When he could, he supposed, he should angle back and pick up US 95 again. Something bright caught the corner of his eye, back to the northeast. He looked back and saw the distant snowy peaks of the Mule Deers catching the last rays of the setting sun. And I was up there earlier today!Some days are too crazy to believe....

  Lights moving lower down, against the shadowed base of the mountains, then attracted his attention. Lights blinking, moving rapidly—it was an aircraft, he saw. A helicopter, to be exact. It was closer than he'd thought at first—in fact, it looked to be somewhere along US 95.

  And furthermore, it seemed to be coming this way.... On a sudden thought he turned off the car. It's surprising how being chased can make you paranoid....

  His vehicle had an autolocator tied into the GPS, of course. That was now a legal requirement for operation on a public street. The autoroads inside major cities used it for the automatic control. But it was common knowledge that it also provided a way to track down a particular vehicle.

  At least in the twilight his vehicle would be very difficult to spot. As long as a
radio beacon wasn't shouting its position out, the car was just another dark lump indistinguishable from a rocky outcrop or a Joshua tree. And the autolocator didn't function when the car was turned off. At least it wasn't one of the new models that didn't even run off the battery, but off a permanent radioisotope generator instead.

  Chad crouched down and watched the chopper pass, its lights flashing, no more than a couple of kilometers away. Perhaps he was being silly—but after all the experiences today, he wasn't going to assume that a chopper just happened by.

  What in the hellwas going on? A chopper certainly was beyond the means of any greedy claim jumpers. That was the government for sure, most likely the military. And it meant that getting to his destination—not to mention the destination itself—was now in serious doubt.

  Chad considered. He could probably get down almost to Vegas on back roads, if he disabled the autolocator. And if he traveled by moonlight. But then, so what? Clearly they (whoever “they” were) would have his house under surveillance. And if he went to a motel instead, they'd track that almost as quickly.

  Where to, then? What he needed was media attention; lotsof media attention, so if he vanished into a news blackout someone might notice. So, who...? He considered. What about that reporter who'd interviewed him last month? Linda. Linda McPherson. She'd done a whole piece on the solar fuels installations. She lived in Pahrump, too. That would be a lot easier to sneak into than Vegas, and Chad thought he probably could find her place again.

  More than that, though—don't just rely on a reporter. Get to a commercial interlink and post the story himself. To as many places as possible. There were resort-casinos with hotspots in Pahrump, too. He would swing by one of them before trying Linda's.

  Now he had a plan. The next step, though, was to disable the autolocator before turning the car on again. He dug out the flashlight he carried in the glove box and clicked it on. Nothing happened. Of course, it was out of fuel. Swearing, he went to look for some. He thought he had a bottle of methanol with his laptop ... yes! Chad filled it, trying not to spill the fuel on himself, and not succeeding. You'd think that's a technology that would be worked out by now! At least now the light worked. He got out and opened the hood, being careful to keep the beam pointed down. It took some doing to find the autolocator, but he finally ran it down by locating the GPS antenna and tracking its lead. Into a solid, hermetically sealed metal box welded to the frame.

  Of course it won't be easy to disable. Too much hazard from people who don't want to be located. Like me, for instance.

  After determining that there was absolutely no way to cut into the electronics without special tools, Chad finally picked up a rock. Grimacing—he hateddoing this to his car, and he knew exactly who was going to end up paying for the damage—he smashed both the GPS antenna and receiver. He put some big scratches into the finish, too.

  Gingerly, he then turned on the vehicle, being sure to leave the lights off. A red light flashed on the dashboard, warning that the autolocator was not functioning.

  At least his car didn't have an interlock that kept the car from running at all.

  * * * *

  Chad pulled into the parking lot at Pahrump Pete's Hotel, Casino, & RV Park, after sneaking into town the back way from Death Valley Junction. Even though it was paved, that road had hardly any traffic in the wee hours, so he'd been able to make time by using it. Whenever he saw headlights, he'd pull way off the road and turn his car off. Otherwise, he traveled without lights as much as he could, using the moonlight instead.

  Chad parked as far away as possible from the garish illumination. Brilliant rippling lights in a pixelated sign two stories high promised both sure winnings and bargains on food (BREAKFAST 24 HOURS!). His stomach rumbled at the thought, but he couldn't risk a meal as well. The sign didn't mention the commercial wireless hotspot, but he knew the hotel had one.

  Chad made sure his notepad was topped off with methanol. He'd stopped for an hour or so out in the wilderness, while waiting for the Moon to rise, to write up his experiences, adding his video as an attachment. Now he didn't want to risk running out of power while uploading.

  All set. He picked up the notepad and the card from the videocam and opened the door, trying not to act surreptitious. He was acutely aware of the heavy lump of gold still reposing in his coat pocket. He walked across the parking lot and went in the back entrance of the casino without incident.

  Even this late—or this early—there were lots of people about: diehard gamblers still fixated in front of the video machines, barflies, obvious hookers, dedicated drinkers, the occasional snowbird tourist checking out the local color ... at least a Nevada casino was still a place where a stranger could drop in at four in the morning without comment or notice. He also hoped that with lots of people about, it would be hard to pick off an individual without making a fuss. If it came to that.

  Chad chose a seat in the hotspot that backed against a wall so he could watch his surroundings better. No one else was linking in right now—he worried about that a bit as he thought it made him more conspicuous, but it couldn't be helped. Trying to control the trembling in his hands, he unfolded the notepad and logged in. It was only a matter of a few minutes to e-mail his tale to a large assortment of friends and acquaintances, and to post it to some newsgroups he followed.

  Done! He turned off the notepad and tried to look around inconspicuously. No one seemed to be paying attention. Standing up, he went out into the main casino area and headed for the door where he'd entered, trying to keep his pace a leisurely walk. He opened the door and with elaborate casualness looked across the lot toward his car....

  And spied a couple of dark figures there. He quickly shut the door again and stepped back, the jolt of adrenalin setting his heart off like a jackhammer. He figured the whole casino could hear it, but nobody seemed to notice. Trying not to break into an outright run, Chad went back across the casino, now toward the front door, threading between the garishly lit slot machines. At the entrance, multiple gaudily decorated double doors opened out onto a wide shallow staircase with faux-gold railings, across which played the shifting colored lights from the giant sign. This was no place to sneak out—it might as well be daylight. But where else could he go? All he could hope was that they hadn't staked out this entrance yet. Out front, a SolarFuels filling station proclaimed “Methanol and biodiesel!” beside a brightly lit canopy over rows of fuel pumps. An RV was parked at a filling island.

  Now what?he thought to himself. Walk to Linda's house, that's what. She lived only a couple of kilometers away. Not a big deal—if he could remember the way. In the dark.

  And if he could get out of here in the first place. He walked confidently down the stairs, trying to act just as though he'd left the RV to go into the casino for a moment. He crossed the tarmac and rounded the rig, putting it between him and anyone who might be watching from the entrance—and then he kept walking, down and across the highway, his skin crawling the whole way, expecting a challenge at any moment. Nothing happened.

  Once across the highway, Chad headed down the little feeder road that came in at right angles. Although Pahrump Pete's still poured kilowatts’ worth of photons into the air behind him, at least there were no streetlights here. He shouldn't stand out in his dark ski parka. And even though many houses had big sodium-vapor lights out front, the road was lined intermittently with tamarisk shrubs, which added welcome cover. A Mideastern import that had found the American West congenial well over a century previously, tamarisk had been repeatedly proclaimed a “noxious weed"—and had thrived nonetheless.

  Chad was grateful it had done so.

  A half hour and several wrong turns later—and after a few panicky dives into tamarisk thickets when headlights had turned down the road he was on—he recognized Linda's place. Bits of tamarisk itched abominably under his shirt—the dry fronds crumbled to powder at the slightest touch, and he hadn't been able to be fastidious about taking cover. And it seemed every crumb
had found its way between his clothing and his skin.

  Linda's little house was completely dark. Not surprising at this hour, Chad thought. At least her car parked outside suggested she was home. Looking around one last time, he walked gingerly up her driveway, past the car, and tapped on her door. Nothing. He knocked again, much more loudly—it seemed to him as though it would wake her neighbors, though that was silly—all the lots around here must have been at least a couple of hectares in size.

  Finally, the porch light directly over his head went on. He blinked in the sudden light. Then the door opened. Linda stood there in a bathrobe, hair disheveled, partly silhouetted in the open doorway. She was holding a short-barreled autoloading shotgun with an extended magazine. It wasn't pointed at him, but it wasn't exactly pointed away, either.

  “Chad! What are you doing here at this hour?” she said, her voice both sleepy and testy.

  For answer he held out the piece of jewelry rock.

  Linda took it uncertainly, left handed, keeping her grip on the shotgun with her right. She almost dropped the rock in surprise at its weight. She held it up, looking at it closely, tilting it slightly to see the reflections dance off it in the light at the doorway. “This is gold!”

  “That's the problem. Or maybe it's just part of the problem,” Chad said. “Linda, I've gotten myself mixed up in something I don't understand. You're a reporter. There's a story in here. Maybe a big story. And I'm going to need someone who has access to the media. The bigmedia.”

  Linda looked at him sharply, but she must have found something convincing in what she saw. Maybe it was his obvious worry, or maybe it was the sincerity in his voice, guileless with exhaustion.

  “Okay, come on in.” She beckoned with the shotgun, still holding the piece of jewelry rock in her left hand. He followed her into the doorway.

  “Have a seat,” Linda said, gesturing to the couch. He sat down gratefully into the cushions.