Kidd wasn’t out the door more than five minutes when she went after him. Coaxed him back into the garage and said she’d help him get to Bounty. She’d take him herself.
“How?” If not by train, Kidd meant.
She swept her arm around her garage. “Give me half an hour to get one of these running,” she said, indicating three AI horses belonging to customers, in various stages of disassembly. “We’ll go on horseback.” Presented with a viable alternative to the train, Kidd agreed.
Karren had the one good winter jacket. She was small, one and a half meters, fifty-five kilograms. Kidd was small, too, compared to the average, but he had ten centimeters on her, and was broader by a little bit. She had a spare jacket for him that didn’t fit. He would travel with the bartender’s blanket draped over him instead.
They set out, each on a “robot horse,” as the public inevitably called them — Kidd on a “loaner,” her on her own machine. Steady in any terrain, the horses’ feet took the measure of the ground before stepping, and learned just how long a step it needed to be. Legs could lengthen and shorten as necessary to keep the rider steady. There wasn’t much of the bouncing up and down you would have with a live horse. You sat on the fuel tank, at least on Karren’s and the one she had slapped back together for Kidd. You held on to a “mane” that was malleable, soft, and fit your hands. The “head” of the things housed lights for night riding but otherwise just gave the machines the shape of real horses. The machines’ AI brains were forward of the fuel tank, under riders’ hands as they gripped the manes — where a real horse’s heart would be. Keeping the “brains” out of the machine’s extremities was safer — the things’ heads stuck out like a target, same as real horses.
Kidd hadn’t thanked her for the horse — not that it was hers to lend him, technically — but he did ask whose it was. “Customer,” she told him. “A good one. Has what you might call an unofficial fleet. I’ve always got his spares, keeping them up for him.”
“Did you ask if you could borrow it?”
She mumbled, “Wouldn’t bother him with that,” or words to that effect. She told herself, if not Kidd, that German Trotter would be all for her using one of his spare horses to help a fugitive from Justice, particularly Makepeace.
Yeah, right before he had her beaten soundly for “borrowing” his property.
They hadn’t gone far, perhaps fifteen minutes, when it became clear to Karren that something had to be done about Kidd wearing the blanket. They were getting too many curious looks. She couldn’t imagine anyone from the outskirts of her town running to Makepeace and Justice, but it was surely better to be inconspicuous than memorable.
Next town over, Crail, there was a consignment store. Karren had them stop and look for a winter jacket that would fit. They got lucky; there was one for sale, big on Kidd, but manageable. A dull orange, used for hunting, most likely. Karren said if he wanted, which he did, Kidd could ride with the blanket covering his legs.
Karren wasn’t thrilled with how twitchy the owner of the consignment store seemed to be, nor her husband. They seemed anxious to have Karren and Kidd leave. When their transaction was complete, Karren led Kidd outside to the horses. She waited the time it took her to count to thirty, and then she marched back into the store. The owner was on the fone, and looked wide-eyed at Karren. Karren rolled her eyes and left again.
“Store owner called Justice on us,” she said to Kidd. “We’ll have to leave the road.”
She led them up the slope north of Crail, the hard ground crumbling now and then under their hooves, tree cover starting to pick up. The mechanical noises the horses made got higher pitched as they went uphill, Karren imagining it was a protest of some kind. They turned and started east again at the edge of the woods, the borderland between the woods and the prairie the road and track cut through. If they were seen, it was a simple matter of turning left and heading into the forest, where the density of trees would let them get lost.
The woods north of the train tracks were God’s own country. You could smell pine needles instead of dust and asphalt. The soil was more malleable, richer than the blasted moonscape the tracks and towns were built on. Plenty of shade. Plenty of green. Plenty of birds. Plenty — the very trait after which both Surfeit and Bounty were named. Standing in the middle of Crail, it was easy to think the names were ironic.
They rode in spotty tree cover until Karren judged that they’d gone as far as the next station east of Crail. They emerged from the woods and there it was, due south. The slope north of Crail had become gentler, and they weren’t as far above this station as last. This one didn’t have what you would call a town associated with it. There were settlements some ways to the south, which was the idea behind a stop there. Karren held up a fist to stop them, then dug out a pair of binoculars.
Through the glass she saw what she feared — a Justice cop with a slash of scarlet on his uniform. He was in the company of three other cops. They had come upon the train platform. They had dismounted and were no doubt asking the people within the station’s orbit whether they had seen Karren and Kidd, complete with detailed descriptions. The manpower Makepeace was using to get Kidd back staggered her. But she knew enough about him to guess he would consider a fugitive a personal insult.
Karren thought real hard about pointing Kidd in the right direction and telling him to ride to the mountains, cross them through the valley the train track knifed through, and there, you’d be in Bounty. The horse he was riding wasn’t hers, though. How would she get it back, if she didn’t lead it? Should she give him her machine? That wasn’t an option.
And there was more to it than that. She believed Kidd’s story, saw how Kidd struggled to express himself and untrack his mind when he got to thinking of something like taking the train. Leaving him to get caught by Justice wouldn’t be just. The man didn’t need “re-education.” He could make his way just fine in the same world as everyone else, as long as everyone had a little patience with him.
To top it off, leaving him in the hands of Makepeace wouldn’t be just. And it wouldn’t sit with Karren anyhow.
You go ahead and slap that bar one more time, she thought in his direction.
Kidd was rigid in the AI horse’s saddle — didn’t even dismount to stretch his legs. He was single-minded about getting to Bounty. She appealed to him again on the matter.
“I’ll be safe in Bounty,” Kidd said. “I have an address. An address I memorized.” That was the first Karren had heard of it, and her eyebrows arched. He recited the address. “There’s people there who will keep me safe.”
Realization bloomed on Karren in a flush of her cheeks. Kidd wasn’t just trying to escape Surfeit, regardless of whether Bounty’s Justice cops would treat him any better. He had someplace to go, probably someplace they took in folks who needed to be hidden.
Here she was helping him out because he didn’t need “re-education,” and she’d assumed he was single-minded to the point of being a dullard.
She asked about it as they headed eastward, but Kidd was stingy with details. Probably for the best, anyhow, Karren reasoned. She did learn enough to confirm that Kidd’s “address” was where he would find a haven for Spectrums being persecuted by the Government. And more than just Spectrums.
“People stay there?” Karren asked.
“’Til it’s safe, or ’til they can get off world.”
“I’m sure you’ll be fine.”
“They told me there were lots of people like me there, but my friend Jake told me there were lots of criminals, too.”
“Don’t worry about it. If you hide from the Government, they consider you a criminal. Doesn’t mean you’re dangerous, or even bad.”
“My friend Jake said if the Government ever found the address, everybody there would be in even more trouble than when they started.”
“That’s probably true.”
They headed in that direction, toward Kidd’s haven. Eastward through the woods, even though K
arren knew, like anybody who rode in that part of Surfeit knew, it was a dangerous route. She laid a hand on the left side of her ribcage as they rode, feeling the bulge that was her pistol, hidden by her jacket. She hoped her pistol would stay harnessed there.
They passed, far to the north, a station, and they could hear the train idling there. Presently it got underway again, screeching and wailing. As she was listening to that, two men rode up behind them.
Karren heard them at the last second and turned her mount to face them. She called out to Kidd, and he stopped and turned himself. As close behind as the two men were, there was no missing the clicks as they readied their firearms. Nor when they were so close, the whirrs and grinding noises of their own AI horses.
Keeping her motion fluid and slow, Karren switched from holding her horse’s mane with her right to her left hand. With luck, the two men didn’t see it as anything but her balancing herself.
“Afternoon, folks,” the closer man said, gun leveled at Kidd. He had on a wide hat the brown of Karren’s leather bomber jacket. The other man had on a smaller black hat, and was covering Karren.
“We’re not carrying anything valuable,” Karren said, buying time.
“You’re riding on something valuable,” brown hat said.
“They’re not ours.”
“Well, they ain’t ours, either, at the moment,” the man said. “But if you’ll please dismount, slowly, we’ll see about that.”
“Hey!” Black Hat said. “You’re the lady fixes horses.”
The other man turned to look at him. “She’s who?”
“She fixes AI horses.” To Karren he said, “You fixed mine ‘bout five, six months ago.”
“Thank you for your business,” Karren said. She readied herself. This was not a positive development.
“So you’re a customer of hers,” Brown Hat said.
“That I am. She even souped ‘er up a little, and I didn’t even have to ask.”
“That’s always part of German Trotter’s work orders,” she said. “He paid me for it.”
Black Hat wondered aloud at the smallness of the world. Brown Hat agreed, fixing Karren with a glare that at once menaced and seemed apologetic for what he would have to do.
“Look,” Karren hurried to say. “I get a lot of work from Trotter. I identify one of his men to Justice, that dries up.”
“Is it true you have to start chipping these things now?” Brown Hat asked.
Karren ground her teeth. “That’s the new law. I don’t see how they’ll enforce it.” They would enforce it the way they enforced everything else: relentlessly, and as obtrusively as possible. Audits, inspections, even supervision at her garage for a time, if they felt it warranted.
Brown Hat chuckled. “You don’t?”
“We aren’t going to run to Justice to tell about you,” Karren said. “We’re riding out here because we’re wanted by Justice ourselves.”
Brown Hat was obviously unpersuaded. “Why don’t you two dismount, slowly, while we give your argument some thought?”
Kidd looked at Karren. She nodded to him, and he began to climb down off his horse. She turned her horse broadside, and got down so that it was between her and the two men.
Before she had even let go of the mane with her left hand, she had drawn her pistol from her shoulder harness with her right. Black Hat was telling her to move out from behind the horse at the same time she was drawing.
She aimed around the horse’s neck, under its “head,” and fired at Brown Hat. She got him in the arm, the one that held his pistol. He dropped it.
Black Hat fired at her, and struck the horse with a solid, metallic thunk. She shot back, over the horse’s fuel tank, other side of the neck, hitting the man in his shoulder. Blood and flesh splashed out at the impact, and he cried out. Karren made a frustrated noise, not used to missing. Wasn’t even his gun shoulder. Ten years earlier, she would have put one right in the middle of Black Hat’s single eyebrow.
Brown Hat was dismounting, hoping to pick up his pistol with his off hand.
Kidd was hunched down, hands over his head. Karren wished he would move for better cover than his arms.
“Leave it!” Karren shouted to Brown Hat. He held up, putting his good arm over his head. “Kidd, go get that man’s gun!” Kidd wouldn’t move. And the man was making for the pistol again, from a crouch, arm over his head. She was keeping every part of herself she could hidden from Black Hat, behind her horse. She fired at the ground in front of the man trying to retrieve his gun. He held up again.
As inappropriate as it was, she thought about how she had just lost a couple customers.
Black Hat shot, and she heard a ripping — she’d been hit, in the leg. It didn’t hurt yet. He’d grazed her. She counted off the time it should have taken her to pop up and fire back. Once that time had passed, and a good many beats more, she sprung up over the horse’s fuel tank and fired. She hit Black Hat in the head, this time. He spilled off his mount.
“I give up, I ain’t going for my gun!” Brown Hat said.
Karren turned and stalked over to the man’s gun. She unloaded it, then handed it back to him. “We didn’t want any trouble,” she said.
She rounded her horse and looked at where it had taken the shot. The horse would still run, for a while, but it was leaking fluid. She clambered for her binoculars, and trained them south. Two Justice cops were riding their way, the sound of the shots attracting them, Karren supposed.
“Kidd! Get back on your horse. We need to go!” He did as he was told, and the two of them struck out east, a good bit faster than they had been riding before.
Spooked by their almost getting robbed, Karren decided they ought to leave the woods and cross down south of the tracks and road, so they did. There was nothing this far out but the track and road. There were two more stops for the train, then at the foot of the mountains the track would split, part bending north, serving the mining communities near the mountains, part continuing through a mostly-natural valley between two peaks into Bounty.
Makepeace would be watching the valley pass into Bounty. Hell, he’d probably be watching everywhere, but their best option was to turn due south and make for the entrance to a tunnel through the mountains. It would add another fifteen kilometers to their trip, but they were OK on water, and she had enough extra lubricant to make up for the leak for a while. And somewhere even in this near-wasteland there would be a general store with saddlery where she could buy something to stanch her mount’s bleeding.
She was right about the general store, and they saw it from a kilometer away. Despite the burning daylight and their need to get to the tunnel, Karren had them approach cautiously. The biggest moon had risen, from the east, looking full for now, with the sun still a few hands high in the sky. By the time the sun set, the moon would reflect precious little sunlight.
With no sign of either cops or robbers, Karren and Kidd stopped at hitching posts outside the store. Out this far, the place would service as many real horses as AI ones.
The man who owned this store wouldn’t be calling Justice on them, Karren reckoned. Living and working a few kilometers off the beaten path, which path itself was many kilometers from anywhere, and you probably had less regard for the Government than she currently did.
The owner had more lines in his face than the blasted, craggy ground outside his store. It was mostly hidden by a shock of white hair up top and a bushy white-gray beard. His hands were hide-tan, his forehead pasty white: a life working outside, always with a hat on. He looked at her as she picked through stuff, but not with any measurable interest.
Presently Kidd brought her two bottles of water. She brought the water, some jerky and some patch for her mount up to the counter that the owner leaned on. He seemed about to move, or somehow acknowledge her, when somewhere nearby a fone chirped. The old man looked in the direction of the sound and furrowed his brow. Karren gathered the fone didn’t ring much in the store. She nodded to Kidd and they
waited for the man to take his fone call.
“You Karren Considine?” the man said. Karren’s heart sank. She nodded. “It’s for you.”
She glumly slung the fone over her right ear, and right away heard, “Ms. Considine? This is Sergeant Howard Makepeace, Justice.”
“Lieutenant,” Karren said.
Makepeace seemed thrown. “I really am a Sergeant.”
“Then it should come naturally to you to address me as Lieutenant.”
“Oh, yes, your war service,” Makepeace said. “I apologize, Lieutenant Considine. As I’m sure you’re aware, not much of the war made its way to Surfeit, and not many people emigrate here, and I obviously just find myself outside my comfort zone where you’re concerned. Still, that was inexcusable of me.”
“Do you have something to say to me, Sergeant?”
“I do, Lieutenant Considine. I want to urge you to stay there where you are, at Old Man Foster’s store, you and Michael Kidd. We’re no more than ten minutes behind you. I would like to avoid prolonging this pursuit, if I can.”
“What’s in it for me?”
“There’s no reward, if that’s what you mean. But as far as I know, you’ve yet to commit a crime. If you say so, I’m willing to believe you encountered Michael Kidd after we searched for him at that pub, so you haven’t obstructed justice. Even the man you shot to death had his gun on you first, by the account of his wounded partner. At most, at present, you’re guilty of no more than taking a long ride with what I’m sure is a borrowed mechanical horse.”
Shit, Karren thought. I thought I’d been obstructing justice all along. She knew better than to wonder how Makepeace would know about the “borrowed” horse, she just appreciated it for the additional threat it was.
“You haven’t gotten to the part where you tell me what’s in it for me.” She was hurrying and paying for their merchandise as she spoke.
“As I say, you’ve yet to commit a crime. If you leave the store, you will be doing so against what I’d call my urging, to be polite. That, I’m afraid, Lieutenant, would constitute obstruction. What’s in it for you is not being charged with a crime.”
Defiant, She Advanced: Legends of Future Resistance Page 13
