Anywhere but here

by Jerry Oltion

  ANYWHERE BUT HERE

  JERRY OLTION

  For the United States of America

  "Our country, right or wrong.

  When right, to be kept right; when wrong, to be put right."

  —Carl Schurz

  May we never forget the second half of that quote.

  Table of Contents

  Acknowledgments

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks as always to the Eugene Wordos for support and inspiration, especially Ken Brady, Aurora Lemieux, Eric Witchey, Dave Bishoff, and Blake Hutchins, who made sure I sat down and wrote when I said I would by the simple expedient of coming over to my house and doing it with me. Thanks to Elba Solano and Françoise Beniston for help with my Spanish and French. The pails I got right are theirs; any mistakes are my own.

  Thanks to Jack McDevitt for the title, which he found languishing unused in my previous book, The Getaway Special.

  1

  Trent Stinson just wanted to get some cash. It was Friday evening, and he and Donna were headed downtown for their traditional "start the weekend right" dinner out. He had enough cash in his wallet for fast food, but Donna wanted to go to the brew pub tonight, and two burgers and a couple of pints of ferry beer would just about clean him out. A weekend in Rock Springs without money was about the dullest prospect Trent could imagine, so he swung by Southside National on their way downtown and parked across the street from the ATM.

  "Be back in a sec," he told Donna as he stepped out and down to the pavement. It was a long reach. His pickup was standard equipment for a Wyoming native: three feel high at the running boards, with knobby off-road tires too big for the fenders, each wheel individually powered by a General Electric 150 superconducting motor modified with a bank of ultracapacitors for even more torque on startup.

  Trent's had been modified a bit more than most. Besides painting the body panels a deep pearlescent red and chrome-plating practically everything else, he had replaced all the glass with half-inch Lexan, oversized and set inside the frames so no amount of pressure could blow it out, and he had sealed every seam with industrial-strength adhesive. He had added extra latches to the doors to hold them tight against the extra seals he had also installed, and he had reinforced all the body panels with angle-iron to keep them from flexing. He'd welded three chrome roll bars across the outside of the cab for extra support, incidentally giving him a sturdy anchor lor the two army surplus cargo parachutes packed in separate carriers on top. In back, a homemade camper built of diamond plate aluminum looked a little like the top half of the Lunar Module that had taken Aldrin and Armstrong to the Moon half a century before. It was sealed just as tight, and he'd tested the whole works to 30 p.s.i.—two full atmospheres of pressure—before he had trusted his and Donna's lives to it.

  Those modifications had eaten up most of their bank account, but Trent figured he could take out a bit more without risking next month's house payment. If there was a next month's house payment. He didn't want to stiff the loan company, but the way people were jumping off into space lately, you couldn't give away real estate on Earth anymore. When Allen Meisner had dropped the plans for a cheap hyperdrive engine on the world, he probably hadn't considered what it would do to the housing industry, but people were defaulting on their loans right and left, and the banks had yet to foreclose on any of them. They didn't want to get stuck paying the taxes.

  That was just the lip of the iceberg. A hyperdrive engine that cost only a couple hundred dollars in parts had changed a lot more than that. Trent's job, for one thing. He was a construction worker, but the only houses being built these days were on planets orbiting Alpha Centauri and Tau Ceti and places farther out. There was plenty of work to be had if he wanted it, but he'd never been excited about commuting, especially when it involved a multi-light-year jump and a parachute landing. And now commuting was impossible anyway, because the federal government had made it illegal to possess a hyperdrive engine. That didn't slop anyone, of course, but it cut down on casual trips, and it killed the one other source of income that Trent could have done: retrofitting other people's vehicles for space. Even though it wasn't illegal to seal up a truck, at least not yet, most people didn't want to make themselves targets for the police, and the ones who were willing to risk it were also generally capable of doing it themselves.

  The only decent prospect for work was the new civic center, which had been in the planning stages for over a year and was up for a final yea-or-nay vote at the next city council meeting, but with so many people bailing out of town, Trent didn't expect the council to go ahead with it. Donna Still had her job at the Mall, but it was only three days a week, and they couldn't live on just that. They could relocate, but neither one of them were quite ready to let go of their home town. They'd made one trip out to a sun-like star about fifteen light-years away in Cetus, found some friendly aliens, and gone fishing with them, but that was just a weekend lark before the government had cracked down on such things. They'd had no intention of staying. But if Trent couldn't find work on Earth . . . The bank's parking lot was deserted. It would normally be quiet this time of day, but there weren't any cars on the street, either. It seemed like half the people in town had headed for the stars in the five months since Allen had made it possible, and the rest of them weren't getting out much. The economy was in the dumper because nobody with a dead-end job was sticking around to work at it, and even though the Galactic Federation had stopped the world war that had flared up when the lid came off the pressure cooker, everybody was still afraid of terrorist bombs materializing overhead. There had been suicide bombings a couple times a month for as long as Trent could remember, but now they were coming in from overhead, and the laser satellites couldn't stop them. Rock Springs wasn't much of a target, but it still put a damper on people's spirits when world tension was so high. Trent stuck his card in the ATM and keyed in his code. He didn't need to get a balance; he knew there were only a few hundred bucks left. Better just take out sixty or so. Not that saving some for later was all that smart, either, the way inflation was killing the value of the dollar, but Trent figured it was better in the bank than spent.

  He whistled softly while he wailed for the machine to cough up the dough, and wished he'd put on his jacket. It was springtime by the calendar, but the evening air felt downright wintry. A van pulled into the parking lot, its headlights sweeping across Trent and the ATM. The driver didn't go for a parking spot right away, and Trent snatched his cash as soon as it poked out of the slot. He couldn't see inside the van over the glare of the headlights. It could be a little old lady in there, but it could be a half dozen out-of-work trona miners looking for an easy mark. If that was the case, they'd get a rude surprise the moment they tried something—there was a .45 colt revolver in the pickup's glove box and a laser-sighted .270 in the gun rack behind the seat, and Donna was a crack shot with either one—but Trent didn't want that kind of trouble if he could avoid it.

  The van didn't move. Nobody opened a door. T
rent shoved his cash in a front pocket and walked back toward his pickup, and then the van pulled sideways across two parking spots. Not near the ATM, but farther toward the back of the building. Now that its lights weren't blinding him, Trent saw that it was tricked out for space, too. The owner of this rig didn't care for show; he had just welded angle-iron across the wide spans of metal and wound the whole works with steel cable to hold it together against air pressure. It looked like a moving junk pile, but it wasn't the ugliest ship Trent had seen. The driver was a big guy with a round head. Streetlight glow glinted off his bald—no, that wasn't right. He was wearing a bubble helmet, already sealed up and inflated. It looked like he was just about to take off for somewhere, and was stopping off for some last-minute cash first. Trent took a couple steps toward the van, thinking he would ask where the guy was off to, then thought better of it. This wasn't a good lime to be walking up to somebody in a bank parking lot. He might have a wife with a gun, too, and she might not wait to see if Trent was friendly. The van moved ahead a few feet, angling in closer to the building. That was odd; the driver looked like he was trying to get as close to the wall as he could. He drove right up over the curb and crushed one of the juniper bushes in the two-foul dirt strip.

  "Hey!" Trent yelled at him, but if the guy noticed, he didn't let on. Probably couldn't hear a thing inside that spacesuit. But what the hell was he doing?

  Then Trent figured it out. The vault was just on the other side of that wall. Most people drove out into the desert when they jumped into space, because the jump field was spherical and it made a lot more sense to take a bowl of sand with you than a bowl of pavement, but the hyperdrive didn't care. It would take anything that was inside the field, including a bank vault.

  And Trent as well, if he was too close when the driver of that van pushed the "go" button. Calibrating the size of the jump field was more of an art than a science; this guy could take half a block with him if he wasn't careful. And Trent could already see the blue glow from the screen of the laptop computer that controlled the jump. It was up and running, probably set to go with just one keystroke. The van diver could take off any second now.

  Trent ran for his pickup. It wasn't provisioned for a trip. but he and Donna might at least be able to survive long enough to call for help if they couldn't get out of the jump field in time. He got three steps before the bank robber pushed the button. There was a clap of thunder loud enough lo make his ears ring, and a gale of wind snatched off his hat and slapped him backward. It didn't just knock him off his feet, but whisked him like a leaf into the air, blowing him head over heels across the maybe ten feet of parking lot that was left and carrying him right out over the huge crater that had been carved into the ground.

  A blizzard of papers met him from the other side. Pens and pencils pelted him, and he did a little mid-air dance with a desk chair before they both hit the ground and tumbled to the bottom of the crater. The guy in the van had set his jump field pretty light after all: it was only fifteen feet deep or so, and it had only taken that much of a bite out of the bank, too. The part of the building that wasn't halfway lo the Moon by now groaned under the sudden shift in load, but it didn't collapse into the pit, Trent didn't know why not; part of it actually hung out over the hole.

  Water poured in from half a dozen severed lines, and it was cold. Trent rescued his hat before it got soaked and shoved it back on his head, then tried to climb up the side of the crater, but he could only gel a few feet before it grew too steep. The surface was slick as glass, sliced smooth down to the molecular level by the jump field. He could dig his fingers into it, but it just crumbled when he tried to climb. He heard the door of the pickup slam, and footsteps as Donna raced toward him, "Trent!" she shouted. Trent, where are you?"

  "Down here," he hollered back at her. "Get a rope!"

  Donna appeared at the edge of the pavement, her blonde hair lit up by the streetlight behind her like a halo around her head. "Oh, thank God you're still here," she said, "When that van jumped, it looked like you just disappeared with it. Are you all right?"

  "Yeah." he said, not actually sure yet. His right leg hurt something fierce, but not as bad as it would hurt if the damned bank fell in the hole on top of him. "Don't get too close to the edge. It could cave in any second." The smooth surface was already slumping, and dirt sifted down from a loose layer a couple feet under the blacktop.

  "Jesus. Don't go any—I mean—just wait right there. I'll bring the truck up close and tie the rope to it."

  "Not too close!"

  "I know." She ran off, and he dodged the rocks and dirt that kept trickling down into the pit with him while he waited. The puddle of water was growing fast; his cowboy boots were already ankle-deep, and he could feel it seeping in through the stitching around the sole.

  He heard the whine of the wheel motors and the slam of the driver's door, a few seconds of silence after that, then the camper door slammed and he knew she'd gone for the rope in their survival supplies rather than the one he kept behind the seat for towing, but before she could toss it down to him the air filled with the sound of squealing tires and slamming doors. Red and blue light flashed into the open building, and someone shouted "Step away from the pickup and put your hands in the air!"

  "Hey, you idiots," Trent yelled up at them, "She's trying to save my sorry ass! Win don't you give her a hand instead of giving her shit."

  A face poked over the edge of the hole. "Hey, we got us another one down here," said the cop.

  "And I'd rather be up there," Trent said as another shower of debris rained down from the loose soil layer, "Give me a hand out of here."

  "Right." There was some muffled conversation overhead, then at last the rope sailed down and hit him in the face. He grabbed it tight and walked his way up the curved bowl until it was too steep for that, then let his feel drop out from under him and hand-over-handed it up the rest of the way. Two cops met him at the rim and hauled him out to stand on the pavement.

  Donna just about knocked him back into the hole when she crabbed him in a hug and buried her fate against his chest. He was a muddy mess, but she didn't seem to care. He wrapped his arms around her and rested his bearded cheek on the top or her head. "It's all right," he said. "I'm okay." The cops stood behind her, embarrassedly looking away.

  "I thought I'd lost you. Just like that, I thought I'd lost you.

  "It'll take a lot more than some piss-ant bank robber to—wait a minute. I know who that was."

  "Who?" Donna said, just as both lops asked the same thing.

  Trent hesitated. He'd never met the guy, but he knew him by reputation, and he was apparently a pretty good sort, for a thief. But Trent didn't owe him anything, and the guy had damned near gotten him killed. Besides, Trent had already opened his mouth. So he said, "Dale Larkin. The guy who bankrolled Allen Meisner and Judy Gallagher's first spaceship."

  One of the cups. Bill Tanner, was an old high school buddy of Trent's. He said, "The same spaceship you helped 'em build in your garage?"

  "Yeah." Trent grinned sheepishly. He had never been much of a science geek, but he and Donna had been in the right place at the tight time and they had wound up in the middle of things. Bill said. "Well, what goes around comes around, doesn't it?"

  "I didn't have nothing to do with the money," Trent said. "I just hid 'em out when the whole damned country was after 'em for no good reason, and—"

  "No good reason?" the other cop said. "You call handing dangerous technology to every malcontent in the world no good reason? People have died because of that damned hyperdrive." He waved a hand at the diamond-plate camper in the back of Trent's pickup and added, "And by the looks of that thing, I'll bet you've got one of your own right here, don't you? You know you forfeit the entire vehicle if you get caught with one. Too bad; it's a nice looking truck."

  Trent had to consciously force himself not to clench his fists. Nobody was going to take his truck without a fight, but there was nothing to fight about this tim
e. Trent had a hyperdrive, all right, but it was in three pieces back home: the electronics built into an old CD boombox that still played music, the field coils in a spare wheel motor casing in the garage, and the laptop computer that controlled it sitting in plain sight in the living room where Donna used it to write letters and surf the Internet. The cops could even search the computer for a hyperdrive control program, but they wouldn't find one. The program was everywhere on the Internet; Donna would just download a copy when they needed it.

  "Go ahead, search all you want," Trent said, "but you won't find anything. I just like the look." He stared the cop straight in the eye, fully aware of how menacing he looked with a full beard under a black Stetson.

  "I just might do that," the cop said, sticking out his chest and glaring back at him. The blue and red lights from the cruiser glistened off his badge.

  "Oh, give it a rest, Tom," Bill said. "We've got bigger fish to fry tonight." To Trent, he said, "He's been kinda touchy about hyperdrives ever since he his four-wheeler into a launch hole out by Quealy,"

  "Ah." Trent looked into the hole he had just come out of. "I understand how you feel about that. But that don't make it right to ban 'em. We've given up too much freedom in this country already."

  "So says the man at the scene of a bank robbery," said the cop named Tom.

  "People have been robbing banks for years," Trent said. "You're not gonna stop 'en by bannin' shit." Donna let go of him and said, "We got to get you into some dry clothes before you freeze to death."

  "That sounds good to me."

  "Not until we get your statement," Bill said.

  Trent nodded. "Come on up to the house, then. We can kill two birds with one stone."

  "Yeah, right, and leave the bank unguarded with a big hole in the middle of it." Bill went over to the edge of the crater and looked down again. "We better call the utility guys to shut all that off before it turns into a swimming hole. How'd you wind up in the bottom of that, anyway?"

  "I'd just got some cash when he drove up and took off. The backdraft blew me in." Bill whistled softly. "That must've been a moment."

  "Yeah." Trent's leg was still hurling. He looked for blood, but didn't see any. It couldn't have been broken, or he wouldn't have been standing on it. Probably just a hell of a bruise.