We weren’t gonna like each other.
I’d been checked out on horses at the Academy; main problem at one-sixth gee’s stayin’ velcroed to the saddle. I walked around to the big gray’s port gunwhale, keepin’ a respectful distance from her iron-shod torpedo-tubes. “What are you doing, Bemie?”
“What’s it look like, Koko? Gettin’ on m’horse.” “Well, there’s really no need to mount from the left. Our animals are brought up ambidextrous!” T’make the point, she hopped up on the right side of her fringe-footed beer-dragger. “See?”
So much for my equestrian expertise. I shoved a reluctant foot into the stirrup. They’d bullied me into a paira gaudy Justin winkle-pickers, after all. Somethin’ gruesome about gettin’ thrown an’ dragged. Just when I was nicely off-balance there was that old familiar tuggin’ at my pants leg. “Bemie, are you quite certain you’re up to this?”
I looked back over my shoulder. “Ambassador, your heartfelt concern’s duly logged, an’ I appreciate y’wadin’
through all this caballo exhaust just t’do my hypochondri-ackin’ for me. But I’m feeiin’ fine—now leggo my leg!” Charm shook his eyestalk, sharing a look of pessimism with the other two Freenies behind him. “You weren’t feeling fine last night, Bernie. There was more to your fainting-spell than simple fatigue or a small volume of alcohol, I’m certain of it.”
Now he mentioned it, I’d thought it was a little strange, myself. One minute I’d been chewin’ the fat with the Feath-erstone-Haughs, an’ the next, a Yamaguchian was rollin’ that Nudie’s bedspread up under my chin.
“I’m teliin’ you, I didn't faint!” I wrapped both hands around the saddle-horn. “I passed out—there’s a difference!”
“Bemie, my fellows and I have been thinking about this and are deeply concerned about your health. Haven’t you noticed yourself how your attention wanders, even lapsing into somnolence, whenever—”
“Charm, you an’ your little buddies better leave the thinkin’ t’me. That’s the whole point t’religion, ain’t it? An’ when’d you ever heara God gettin’ the punies? Now get outa my—unh!”
I heaved a leg over the leather, dingin’ to the pommel for dear life. The Ambassador an’ friends scooted hastily clear of the hoofs. The saddle creaked an’ canted—I dunno, they never seem t’screw ’em on tight enough. Meanwhile, the reins’d gotten outa hand somehow, the ends droppin’ on the ground. I leaned forward, stretchin’ painfully to retrieve ’em as the mare gave me a sardonic look.
“Okay, dog-food. so I don’t know what I’m doin’. Let’s see you drive a time-machine!” I shook my head t’clear out the cobwebs.
She snorted, dropped her nose into a clump of hay at the back of the stall, nearly pullin’ me off over her neck.
Koko pranced her stallion up to tower over this fourlegged practical joker an’ me. “Don’t let her do that, Bernie. Show her who’s boss!”
I jerked up on the reins without effect. “I think she knows!”
By some special dispensation from Mr. Murphy, I finally got the animal moving, backed up, turned around, an’ followed Koko an’ Olongo out into the drizzle, chimpanzees providin’ a rear-guard. As we crunched an’ clopped our way across the graveled yard, three little forlorn Army helmets, incandescent pink, dwindled gradually in the distance, wavin’ their periscopes in sad farewell.
One thing about travelin’ by mare’s-shanks: it’s slow.
Seemed like a quarter past forever before we were across that valley, startin’ up into the trees. One of the chimps galloped around me t’confer with Olongo, then rode on ahead. I was busy unrollin’ the yellow plastic slicker from my saddle cantle, precipitation creepin’ down the backa my neck. I’d refused t’wear one of those ten-gallon pizzas like everybody else. But the Confederacy’d solved another age-old problem: didn’t get hot an’ sweaty under the raincoat; somehow it breathed and kept me reasonably dry at the same time. I looked down at the mare, water sluicin’ over her forelocks, an’ sneered.
Turned out her name was Bella, an’ from the unhappy moment we laid eyes on each other, it was all-out war. Every sprig of vegetation was her cafeteria. Damn near sprained both arms each time she dipped her head t’grab a snack. She sidled just close enough t’trees an’ boulders t’not quite scrape me off an’ took delight in lashin’ me with her rain-soaked rear-end flyswatter.
I’ve known Spacers smarter an’ more cooperative than horses.
I did discover that not everybody who hangs around fourlegged motorcycles is uncritically batty about ’em. The remainin’ dogie-puncher ridin’ behind me advised—between ineptly stifled bouts of snickerin’—not takin’ any nonsense from Bella. Told me t’get downright rough about it, in a manner he surprised me by demonstration’ an’ which I expected any moment was gonna call the wrath of the Confederate SPCA down on my skinny little shoulders.
I was startin’ my fourth cigar when Olongo waved at me t’join him. The mare broke into a trot, just about givin’ me an inertial appendectomy, until I kicked her an’ she shifted gears.
“Tallyho, old anthropoid! We cut ’em off at the pass yet?” Once started, Bella was tough t’stop. I overshot an’ hadda circle back.
“We’ll see directly,” answered the boss ape. He reached down to his saddlehom an’ flipped the top away. “Go ahead, Austin.”
A tiny, tinny voice replied. Olongo gestured; I flipped my own pommel open. Musta been a lotta transistors inside the hollow titanium saddle-tree; a miniature 3D screen was deliverin’ an aerial travelogue.
“—be sure, but there’s somethin’ there. Mebbe eighty, ninety feet, an’ circular. It’s the lower pasture where you shot that five-pointer last fall." Clintwood shifted the viewpoint to himself, pulled out his little bag of makin’s, rolled a coffin-nail one-handed, struck a kitchen match off his upper right canine, an’ lit up. Behind him, the mist-blurred horizon tilted crazily as he kneed the scooter into a long, lazy bank. "I’ll give ya another look!"
Wasn’t too informative. The screen was small; the weather obscured the meadow several hundred feet below. Clintwood wanted t’set down but got vetoed. One well-soaked branch through those kilovolt impellers, fore an’ aft, Olongo cautioned, an’ there’d be fireworks from here to the Da-kotas. Even after sophisticated image-enhancement at both ends, the circularity on the ground was just barely visible, Georgie's size, an’ darker’n her surroundings. I was surprised t’feel my heart flutterin’. Musta been the altitude.
“That’s the girl, Your Prexyship! How soon can we get up there?”
“Austin?”
“Boss, your party’s about three and a half miles due east b’ southeast. I’ll flip back an’ guide you in.” •
“Nonsense. Get back to the house and dry off, old sod. This isn’t decent flying weather. See what damage you can do the case of Kingsley’s that came in this morning—and Austin?”
“Yeah, boss?" The camera soared from meadow, up through foothills an’ ghostly peaks, across an eggshell-col-ored sky an’ down t’landscape at the opposite compass point.
“The Escadrille lost its greatest pilot when you were born too late for the Prussian War. Out.” He snapped his saddle-horn shut. “Well, old fellow, not much longer now.”
“Yep,” I answered, strong an’ silent, checkin’ the chamber of my Colt.
The mare twisted around an’ bit me on the knee.
Wasn’t anything about this meadow to distinguish it from any of the other ten I’d stumbled through my first nights here. Thanks to the constant drizzle, y’couldn’t see from one end to the other. We cleared the pines, navigatin’ foot-by-foot from Clintwood’s coordinates.
I rubbed my injured knee, grudgingly thankful for the nearly-indestructible fabric I was wearin’. Just inside the pasture, we pulled up behind a little copse of aspen theoretically between us an’ the timebuggy.
“What now, O Commander-in-Chief?”
Olongo smiled, a ritual learned from humans. Among his own people, baring the ch
oppers meant serious—an’ terminal—social intercourse. “You know, the last Confederate President to bear that title in earnest was Sequoyah Guess, killed leading American volunteers in the Mexican War.”
“Sounds good t’me. Be a lot fewer dust-ups if the guys’t started ’em hadda go an’ get shot at.”
“Indeed. That was the idea.” He opened his saddle-horn again, made a few surprisingly minute adjustments with those giant hands of his. “Well, my boy, you were well advised burying that damaged timepiece of yours. You see the blip, here? That’s where you’ll find it, and, by extension, your ship as well.”
Standin’ on legs made shaky an’ unreliable by three hours in the saddle, I rooted around in the saddlebags while Bella made things interesting by tryin’ t’step on my foot. The inseams of my jeans felt like they were on fire. Horseper-sonship—you can have it!
Bravely: “I’m ready for all contingencies, Olongo. Think this is enough lead foil? I’d hate t’give up that watch. An’ speakin’ of gettin’ shot at—stand still, Bella!—I wanna point out that this is my flight now. Don’t want any of you nice folks hurt on my account.”
I loosened up my war-Colt in its scabbard.
“Why Bernie!" uttered a scandalized Koko. She swung off her Ciydesdale, shaking the ground. The chimps’d ridden out on the flanks a few yards, triangulatin’ on my violated Nukatron warranty, an’ were cornin’ back now.
“Quite right, my dear. Captain Gruenblum, we would be remiss in the extreme abandoning you at this juncture. There are certain standards in the Confederacy, particularly regarding courtesy to guests.” He dismounted with surprising grace.
Wasn’t anything I could say. Lefty, Olongo’s point-man, kneed his pony up beside me, showing fangs in a manner hardly meant t’convey amusement.
“Ever now an’ agin, Cap’n, we get some grief from Hamiltonians.” He pulled a heavy Dardick-style pistol from his holster, testing both magazine an’ cylinder t’make sure they were fulla ivory-colored triangular plastic cartridges. “Don’t see as it makes no nevermind whether they’re domestic or imported, right, Dex?”
The other chimpanzee, Dexter, reached back to his saddlebags for a telescoping shoulder-stock which he slid into the backstrap of his Mauser automatic, substituting an enormous drum for the smaller box magazine. He pulled the bolt back a fraction of an inch, assuring himself there was a thumb-sized cartridge in the chamber, let it clack forward again, an’ grinned savagely.
“Dex’s daddy fought in Uganda,” supplied Lefty, thinking that explained everything. The other cowboy never said a word, but simply rested that long-barreled pistol-carbine across his leather-clad leg an’ showed his teeth.
“Bernie, you know the tactical situation better than we.” The President carried something called a Webley Electric— .17 caliber, ultrahigh velocity. Inside, a nylon rotor lifted wire projectiles from the hundred-round magazine to the acceleration coils. I’d seen him test it this momin’ on a cottonwood stump. The sawdust’d steamed for twenty minutes afterward.
Koko carried the . 11-caliber version, two-hundred to the clip.
“Right,” I answered, thinkin’ hard. “Far’s I know, I ruined Cromney’s only real weapon, but Georgie's got facilities for fabricatin’ practically anything, an’ some pretty scary talents all her own. Theoretically, no offensive armament, but meteor-defense, force-fields...” I yawned an’ blinked, tired, I figgered, from the trail. “Best we sneak aboard ’fore we get spotted in the open.”
There was a pleasant damp an’ woody smell t’my new vantage-point—nose four inches above the turf. I could see a hundred varieties of tiny wild blossoms, none more’n a quarter inch across, takin’ advantage of the temporarily tropical moisture. Come cactus-weather, things’d be different.
The drizzle’d finally let up, but fog clamped down in its place. Even if I’d stood—targetin’ myself immediately to Georgie's multispectral senses—I couldn’ta seen more’n two meters. Instead, I crawled along through soaking weeds, tryin’ t’keep my rump down, hopin’ the liquid sunshine’d blanket my IR signature.
We’d agreed t’spread out, gorillas an’ chimps circlin’ through the trees so’s to approach the landin’ site from all directions. I’d waited in the aspens for Olongo, Lefty, Koko, an’ Dexter t’get into position.
There’d been a squabble ’bout the kid.
. and you, my girl, may remain and keep our mounts togeth—”
“But Uncle Olongo, that’s not fair!”
“My dear, the universe isn’t fair—it’s simply lawful. Besides, your grandmother would never forgive—”
“Leave her out of this and speak for yourself! I’m three times Dex or Lefty’s size, twice Bernie’s, and a better shot than you in my sleep! And I’ve practically memorized this part of the ranch. Ask Austin!”
He waggled a broad finger at her. “Argument from authority, Koko. Austin isn’t here any more than Goldilocks. And Dex and Lefty are grownups, whereas you’re merely—”
“What’s age got to do with it? It’s a Free System! I’m ;a sapient individual with rights, one of which is helping Bernie, if I want!”
Sheepishly, her uncle admitted he’d held the same position on children’s rights next-t’last time Congress’d met. He gimme a helpless look.
“Leave me outa this! I’m justa guilty by-stander!”
Meantime, the chimps were tyin’ their ponies to a branch—either they were sidin’ with the kid or knew her better’n I did. In the end, they had the situation pegged: she fanned out with the rest of us, an’ providin’ things were runnin’ t’schedule, she’d be pantomimin’ a peanut race this minute, just like me.
Couldn’t be much farther. I watched for Georgie's bulk t’loom up outa the pea-soup, listenin’ t’dew-drops drippin’ offa sagebrush, my own raggedy chicken-hearted breathin’, not much else.
Oughta be somewhere ’round here.
I wondered how old Koko really was.
A standup gunfight’d be a relief. Better’n scrabblin’ around in wet landscapin’. Pistol in hand, I crawled another soggy yard.
A piddlin’ little breeze parted the ground-clutter suddenly, an’ there she was, a big gray metal dome, some Eskimo’s idea of a high-rise, three, mebbe four meters away an’ lookin’ just gorgeous t’me. Cromney an’ his minions musta been plumb loco, gettin’ snuck up on thisaway— less’n they figgered t’drygulch us.
I shook my head—goddamned Louis L’Amour atmosphere was gettin’ to me. Tryin’ t’dig a slit-trench with m’belt buckle, I crept toward the saucer. This was gonna be iffy.
She was sealed up tight. Hafta hope her recog patterns hadn’t been tampered with. Once she saw m’face, she’d let me in. I’d skedaddle to the engine-room, turnin’ the thermonuclear tables: be amusin’ t’see how they liked bein’ threatened with Failsafe Autodestruct.
I could practically feel the big red lever in m’hand.
Georgie ain’t a perfect hemisphere; she slants in underneath a ways. I ducked under, got m’fingers on the rain-slippery lip of her circumference, inchin’ into the view-field of one of her outboard monitors.
SWOOOOOSH!!
Ever been in the middle of a twister? One second I had aholda my ship, the next I was Iyin’ all tangled up in a heapa furry arms an’ legs, gunbelts, chaps, an’ Stetson hats, in the center of the ninety-foot circle where there wasn’t any Georgie anymore.
By some miracle, m’eardrums’d survived the implosion. Barely.
“But Bemie!” complained Koko, extractin’ her left foot outa her uncle’s armpit. “What about that.. .thing you’ve been carrying around in your pocket? I thought that was supposed to—”
“This frammis?” I removed Dexter’s elbow from my eye while he pulled the muzzle of Lefty’s gun outa his ear. I took the object in question, turned it over in my hand, feelin' stupid. Could be the Freenies were right about my mental processes lately.
“Oh, Cromney an’ his crew’re still around, somewhere within a few hundred kl
icks. But y’don’t need a field-density equalizer for the Emergency Escape Drive.”
Sunlight broke through the fog, fillin’ the pasture with rainbows an’ diamonds.
They helped me dig m’wristwatch up, cleanin’ their knives in the wet grass an’ checkin’ ’em afterward against Olongo’s educated saddle-horn. I smoothed down the radiation-proof foil.
Bella wasn’t very glad t’see me. We’d thought we were ridda each other. First time I turned m’back, untanglin’ her reins from the bush I’d tied her to, she bit me on the shoul-der-blade.
All of us were more tired an’ discouraged than our exertions accounted for. My friends sorted out their mounts from the vegetation, climbed into the saddle, an’ we started the long trip back.
All I had t’occupy my consciousness was failure—an’ ilie agony which painted itself along the insides of my legs from knee t’crotch.
Halfway there, Aus Clintwood dropped in from the sky, freshly-polished chrome gleamin’ in the sunshine, to deliver a thermos of coffee an’ a bottle of somethin’ labeled “Kinglsey’s Pennsylvania Whiskey—The Drink That Makes You Drunk!”
Even Koko had a swig, without a noise of complaint from Olongo. She deserved it. I wished it’d been morphine.
We rode on.
It was supposed t’be too cold so far this year. It was supposed t’be a couple thousand feet too high. But somehow, not a half-hour from the bunk-house, Bella managed t’step right in the middle of somethin’ fanged an’ scaly.
The diamondback hissed an’ rattled. Bella screamed an’ reared. Snatching at the saddle-hom too late, I catapulted over her neck, crashing not an arm’s length from the coiled infuriated snake. With no consciousness of drawing it, my .45 was in my hand, sights lined up, just as the reptile struck.
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