"Sure thing. Just show me some credits."
The old bum shuffled his filthy boots, studying them for a time. "Truth is, I'm a little short."
"Already? Or didn't you have anything to begin with?"
"Hey," objected the bum, "I had me some silver."
"But you drank it up."
At that, Fibs might have blushed. Yet under his filthy skin, who could tell? He simply stood quiet.
"Yeah," complained the barkeep. "Like always. Just once, I'd like to see you start at this end of town while you still had some money."
The old beggar shuffled again. Sweeping his eyes among the few other patrons, he saw no invitations and finally conceded defeat.
"No hard feelings," offered the barkeep to his back. "Maybe later some of the guys'll start feeling generous."
Fibs paused and turned. His voice livened.
"Hey, wait. I do got somethin' to trade. Well, not all of it. But a little piece."
The barman conceded. "Dammit, Fibs! Okay! One shot, that's all! Then you gotta move on, understand?"
The picker nodded vigorously and hopped aboard an ancient bar stool.
"Uh-huh. Oh yeah, sure."
Measuring out the drink, the barman pushed it over, careful to stay beyond his patron's noxious bouquet. He watched Fibs sip the sour mash graciously. Then, bobbing his head, wanted to get the usual aftermath over quickly.
"So okay, Fibs. What is it this time? You see space aliens out there again? Ghosts in some graveyard? Maybe L.A. rising up from the sea?"
Fibs settled back in a regal motion, which instantly transformed his threadbare stool into a throne. From it he grinned in kingly amusement at the barkeep's pitiful lack of insight.
"Heck no, bro. None of that junk. You could never guess."
He paused to regard the glass.
"But, gimme another of these and I just might share a little something special with you."
Like what?"
"Well, like an airplane, flying around with a big hole in its belly."
"Uh-huh."
"Not only that, this one can stop, go to the side, and back up, even."
"Yeah."
"I tell you!" The bum defended, thumping his chest. "I seen it, myself."
"Oh, well, that makes it true for sure."
A couple of nearby customers chuckled pathetically, bringing on a flash of rare anger in the usually docile bum.
"I did!" he charged aloud. "I seen it; more'n once!"
"Right, Fibs. You've seen lots of things."
Fibs frowned in heavy concentration, working to draw some reasonable analogy. He glanced about and fidgeted, as if he were betraying some great trust.
"Just about sunup, it'd come round every few days and do the same thing every time. Like, like it was lookin' to set down an' nest. Only, only, it'd act like it changed its mind and come back next time, a little farther on down and do the same thing again, just maybe a tiny bit lower in the sky."
"Right. And where's all this been happening?"
Fibs leaned across his drink with a tone of grave confidentiality.
"North and west, all the time. North and west. Seen it do the same thing for the last two solid weeks comin' here."
"And that's where you've been? Northwest? When everyone knows the treasure fields are all south and east?"
The barkeep leaned back expectantly.
"Next thing you'll say is you were in the Wilds and met up with a nice bunch of crazies, who made you their king. And I'd believe that first. You probably didn't have any trade goods at all when you came to town this time, did you?"
The barkeep swept a dismissing thumb toward the door.
"On your way, Fibs. You suckered me for the last time."
His welcome used up, the derelict's throne turned back into a commoner's stool. But from deeper inside the saloon a charitable hand intervened.
"Go ahead, dude. He's worked hard. Give him one, on me."
The barkeep looked over in admonition.
"Top, you know this guy. Start now and you'll not get rid of him. And neither will I."
Top shrugged off his generosity. Buying a half pint of bootleg whisky, he led Fibs out the door and to a sidewalk bench. In a few minutes he sat as the private audience to an impossible tale of a beat up airplane that repeated its appearance and maneuvers every few mornings.
Rendezvous. Town streets swelled with tradesmen, rough necks, and gunslingers. Like any other frontier town through the ages, vendors and outfitters hawked trinkets and hard goods from quick-set sidewalk stalls. Further down, kitchens, repair shops, and brothels offered their own brand of service from more stationary locales.
In between hovered the league of returned pickers. Gunny sacks of excavated electronic booty and bric-a-brac hoisted securely atop their shoulders, they milled about in vast herds, considering which traders might give the best deal.
This place called Freeville was the post-quake metropolis of the modern West Coast, the hub of major commerce, which all other new-shore towns longed to be.
Christened for the notion of openness it wished to portray, the Ville drew its life blood from an economic system regulated by its warrior landlords. Since the Soviets were its primary benefactors, it had surrendered its identity to one assumed more pleasing to them. Cooking and dress hinted at a Slavic flair and East European phrases found growing acceptance in the local tongue.
The effort, however, did little to appease Major Josef Dobruja, one of the transplanted Soviet officers living here. This morning he crossed the crowded street on his usual prenoon policing round. A dour tech sergeant walked at his side.
Josef raked powerful, tanned fingers through his still-damp hair and reset his limp duty cap. A freshwater shower aboard the cargo sub was one of few real luxuries offered military personnel in this pitiable locale. Yet, just the short walk here from the dock had made both men nearly as sweaty as the pathetic vagabonds pressing about them.
Dobruja was a fighting man grown long bored with this caretaker's assignment. He'd come across twenty-two months earlier from Saint Petersburg. There, an admiral-uncle had kept him sequestered as a tactics instructor, safely stashed away from the filthy North American Flu epidemic.
But once the disease was stemmed, Josef wanted out. He volunteered for the most exotic post he could manage and accordingly found himself on the California frontier.
The post-quake shore states had taken on a separatist mentality that encouraged foreign legion occupation. Inhabitants willingly traded outpost space for the supplies that their own country could not afford to give—not that any occupying force had much to spare, either. But the combined benefit reaped from billeted East European, South American, and limited Asian militaries actually allowed a better standard of living here than was granted most of the States' urban countrymen.
Josef's nation was the only one determined enough to invest seriously, and he resented the high price imposed on those left back home for whatever obscure futures might exist here. Expensive petrol, hard goods, and food reserves were diverted halfway around the world to bribe frontier officials and fuel the efforts of treasure hunters who combed the old Silicon Valley ruins for high-tech odds and ends.
A few scientific finds had been noteworthy. The economic mainstay, however, was mostly a trade cycle of rendered electronic gold, silver, and platinum; for which Mother Russia traded dearly—and witness to it all was the impatient major.
Dobruja had originally been promised command of an expeditionary battalion. He was to be given free rein in the extermination of those northern crazy bands and convict tribes liberated from asylums and prisons when the Great Quake hit. Such a policing action had been planned to endear the peasant population to a growing Soviet presence. And the combat experience was certain to assure Josef a prominent role in establishing a string of Soviet forts across the new West Coast.
But there was always one bureaucratic delay or another preventing Josef from starting the crusade and establishing his name. Some in government even questioned his enthusiasm and methods. It made him angry and long for a return of the old Communist hardliners—people who would understand and approve, not reprimand his efforts like the indecisive weaklings now in power back home.
The wait had frustrated Josef enough to dare some unauthorized search and destroy missions into the northern Wilds and eastern nonpartisan sectors. Most were paltry victories over bands of wretched woodland crazies, but one recent patrol had proved worthwhile.
He chuckled grimly. How pathetically easy; textbook to a fault. A classic X-shaped ambush of five South American search trucks drawn to a brief and questionable S.O.S. call. Dobruja had considered a more in-depth search of the call, afterward, himself. But the signals were far distant and had long faded. So back here, to the drudgery it was.
The major shouldered his way through another gaggle of American rubes. Walking along, he sighed. Military Governor Dobruja. The title carried such a nice ring. But the wheels of the gods moved so pitifully slowly. He'd long realized that his only hope in expediting his career would be the orchestration of some grand maneuver. But what of any consequence might ever happen in this dung heap?
Josef's instincts were suddenly roused by an unformed flash of alarm. His hunter's eyes darted about the vagabond commoners and zeroed in on two approaching men. They too shared the notion, for they eyed him in return. The taller one offered a deferential nod as they passed. But the other stayed coolly neutral, a hawk's raw keenness in his face. Josef made a mental note of the pair.
Further down the crowded street Baker spied Geri. Standing on an opposite corner, she quietly watched them.
"Well, lookie there."
Trennt did look. But he kept his pace, making no effort to communicate with her. In moments, though, it was she who came jogging up behind them.
"I can imagine what went on last night," she spoke with a hint of respect to their backs.
"Too bad you weren't there to share it," answered Trennt over a shoulder. "I wouldn't say they're real happy with you, either."
Coming alongside, she offered a dismissive shrug.
"That doesn't matter. What does is your decision on me going along."
Trennt stopped. "Where?"
"To find what's lost," she replied.
"What makes you think we'd look?"
Her green eyes slashed between the pair.
"Because nobody sends your kind packing. And because I've got as much right to be part of a search party as either of you."
"How do you figure?"
"Squatter's rights," she declared. "I spent almost two years with some decent caring people, ones who deserve more from their labors than a cheap race to their findings, while lying forgotten, burned to ash and shredded."
Trennt frowned.
"Where's the satchel of papers?"
"I have it. Say 'yes' and you can have them back."
"What we've been through might be nothing compared to what's ahead."
"I'd carry my share."
Trennt hissed cruelly. "How? On your back?"
A hand swept toward his face, which he caught and twisted aside.
"Those papers!" he demanded.
Her green eyes met his with an equal glow of contempt.
"Break both my arms if you want, tough guy. Either I go along or you'll never see them."
Trennt held his grip for seconds more, but she matched his stare, unafraid and every bit as unyielding. He finally flung her hand away.
"I go along?"
No answer.
"I go—or no papers."
"Yes, dammit," he growled. Without saying more he walked off.
Behind, Baker flashed Geri a wink.
"Welcome aboard, Sweet Thang."
The old man was making some under hood adjustments to his truck as they approached. He greeted them in the old-fashioned slang he seemed to enjoy.
"What's shakin', dudes?"
Trennt nodded. "You?"
"No complaints."
The old man set down his wrench, wiped his hands, and motioned the trio aside. He dipped a couple of fingers into his shirt pocket. Out came a hefty clump of folded scrip money, which he handed over.
"From your goods."
Trennt took the cash and peeled off a handling fee to stuff back in the old-timer's pocket. Top accepted it with a nod of thanks. Before he spoke again, he glanced about, then shook his head in disbelief.
"I got something else, too. A wild-ass story, that's so far-freakin' out it just might be true. If you'd want to waste your time listening, I can tell it."
"Top," confided Trennt, "we've got nothing but time."
Leaning back against his truck, the old Marine relayed his previous night's encounter. When his audience didn't laugh, he advanced a proposal.
"From what Fibs said, this plane is working its way to the northwest, just about what you figured should be its direction of travel. Don't know where it goes to or comes from. But if it keeps on flying and we could spot it every couple of days, simple dead reckoning should get us close enough on its trail for shits and giggles—providing it doesn't keep on and wind up out in the drink."
Baker was skeptical. "Jimbo, you don't really think . . ."
Trennt puffed his lips. "It does match what Kosinski told me about it."
He offered back the remaining fold of trade money.
"You up to leading the way?"
Top waved it off.
"Let's take a ride out first and see if Fibs' story is real. I'm curious enough to scope that out for free. If we boogie all night, we could make a good vantage point by dawn tomorrow. We'll talk trip and pay later. In the meantime, burn some of those Commie bucks and get yourselves a hot shower and change of clothes. They'll be the last you'll have for a while and you cats need 'em. Be back here and ready to book at sundown."
The group disbanded. Nothing in their brief exchange appeared any more noteworthy than would any other discussion among pickers over the next few days. But even so, their talk had been specifically observed and noted by a familiar young Russian corporal casually trailing behind.