Ray came awake, grabbed his commlink, and punched for Lek. "Old boy, that gremlin that was in our net is gonna be back any time now. Only this time, he's on our side."
"You sure?"
"We'll know soon. He's supposed to help you go over Harry's samples and see if there's a harmonator-whatever that is-and a couple of projectors. That might help us find the vanishing box, assuming we can get a blimp up in this weather." Out Ray's window, the clouds were scudding past, headed south. Hurricane number one must not be too far away.
"I'll get right on it, sir."
Ray sat back on his bunk. He'd just sworn alliance with a dozen of the strangest critters ever to cross a human's path. Had he done right? Was the enemy of my enemy really my friend? Humanity had survived by that creed for a long time-and paid no small price. Ray considered the string of hurricanes pointed at his base, weighed the odds, and found them acceptable. Matt could still rock this place if all else failed. Nice thoughts for a loyal ally. He wondered what the AI's were thinking. Probably not far from his own. Trust took time to build. Time they didn't have. Experience they were about to get too much of.
The barefoot girl ordering a pail of beer was the first lead they had in a month. Jeff wanted to run after her the second she said her grandma knew where the box was. Ned and Du followed more cautiously The girl stopped outside a small stone house. Ned hurried ahead to open the door for her, she disappeared inside. Ned and Jeff followed her into an unlit room. Dumont stood in the doorway for a long minute, eyes searching the street, then ducked inside and closed the door.
"Your man's a nervous one," a voice said from a dark corner.
"He's alive. Others of his ken are not," Ned answered.
'Till me glass, baby duck, then run along home. That's a good one," the voice told the girl who struggled to pour beer from her large pail. Ned took over. Dumont opened the door for her as she left hurrying, as much as her load would permit.
"What do you know of Annie?" was what Jeff wanted to blurt out. He squatted down, waiting for Ned to do his magic. Today, Ned seemed in no hurry. "Do you think it will rain?" he asked.
"Da ya think it will ever stop raining?" the voice replied.
"Ya'll need a high mountain. And strong friends," Ned said.
"Like yours?"
"They're not a bad bunch at your back, not bad at all."
"I hear tell the starfolk are building a wall around their base. And they're letting those who build it stay inside. You'd need a lot of people to build a wall around all that How do you get a job like that?" the shadow woman asked.
"You'd need to be a starman's friend."
The woman edged out of the darkness into the light of the single window. Old, her hair was white, most teeth gone. "I can't dig, but I do know something you want to know." Ned said nothing. "I know where the girl is that the other two seek. The six that came South a month ago, my son takes them food. High up in the hills, at the rock castle. From the chatter of old women around town, I'm not the only one who knows. And if many know, someone is likely to talk to the others who want to know."
"Who else asks?" Jeff demanded.
"You're the young Sterling boy, aren't you," the old woman reached for Jeff's face. Cold, calloused hands turned his head from side to side. "Why should you be asking?"
"Annie's my ..." Jeff choked.
The woman cackled. "So the Sterling boy has lost his girl to his sister's toughs. That's a funny one. Why don't you run home and ask your big sis for her? Wouldn't she be glad to give her back to you?" Jeff's face burned, but he said nothing. Still chuckling, the woman held out a paper to Dumont. "Write to your people to let me and mine in the base."
Du pointed his wrist unit at the woman. "I'll do you one better. Duty section, Dumont here. This woman's doing us a good turn. If she shows up at the gate, let her in." Dumont got an acknowledgment, then added, "If you don't hear from me, assume her good deed was a trap and act accordingly."
"That wasn't a nice thing to do," the crone whined, but she turned to Jeff and shoved the paper under his nose. "You say something nice to your sister about me, too. You can never tell where I might need friends."
Jeff scribbled, "Help her, she helped me, Jeff' on the paper and shoved it back. Still cackling, the woman slipped out a back door Jeff hadn't known was there.
"Team, home on my signal. Bring the horses. We're out of here," Dumont snapped into his commlink in the curt way of talking the starmen had among themselves.
Ned rubbed his chin. "Think she told the others?"
"The more the merrier," Dumont sighed. "Let's move it, folks. Guns up. I wouldn't put it past her to have sold us to Vicky." So saying, Du slammed the front door open, waited a moment, then crossed the threshold at a run. He stopped only when he was across the street, his back to the stone fence, head and rifle high, sweeping the roofs.
"All clear," Du called without a trace of the embarrassment Jeff would have felt if he'd admitted to such a fear, let it make him act like that, only to find it meant nothing. What would make a man like that? Jeff wasn't sure he wanted to know. Then he remembered where he was headed and who was racing him there. There was no one better than Dumont to go there with.
The mule rolled up the alley, a dozen horses capered behind it. They piled in with the rest; it was a close fit. "Head east out of town, then take the south fork. We're going back country. And boys and girls, heads up. We ain't alone on this trip, and there's no second prize."
Then Du called the Colonel. "I got a handle on the vanishing box," they both said at once, then laughed. The Colonel explained a blimp would be heading their way with some kind of gadget aboard that might locate the box. Du told him what the woman had said. Their review of the rock castle formation showed several large mounds of boulders covering thirty hectares. "Lots of places to hide," the Colonel concluded.
"If your gadget ID's the hideout, I'd be much obliged."
"We'll try. You say there are two other teams on this."
"At least."
"I'll get a spy eye going south to give you a hand. Du, we got bad weather coming with north winds. Once they get up to sixty, seventy knots, there's not a thing on Santa Maria but the shuttle that can work its way upwind."
"Understood, sir. But we'll get 'em first."
Yes, Jeff whispered to himself, now we get the bastards who have Annie.
Dear God, let her be safe.
"Up, slut!" the voice shouted as a foot took Annie in the ribs. "All of you, to the horses. We've got work to do." Annie shook Nikki awake; sleeping was all they could do in this stinking barn. It seemed forever that they'd been here.
"About time," "What took you so long?," and "Where are those damn greens?" were the greetings Pretty Boy's words brought from his thugs. Annie stood, waited patiently for someone to tell her what they wanted her and Nikki to do.
"Some old bitch in that stinking mudhole finally decided to take Vicky's copper," Pretty Boy bragged. "Told on her own son. He doesn't know hell be leading us in tonight." That brought laughs that held no humor.
"Bitch must have believed the weather report" drew more derisive laughter. Annie wondered; she'd heard the talk of four monster hurricanes headed at them out of season. Everyone here scorned the story. Annie trusted what Jeff had told her about the super computers the Colonel was fighting.
"Maybe the bitch wasn't so dumb. I talked to Miss Vicky while I was in town. She believes that story enough to evacuate Richland. She definitely wants the box. Wants to be there when the starbase disappears."
"Can we get more money?" the woman asked. Annie tried to shrink into the shadows. The men talked bad; the woman was bad.
"She doubled her offer if we get the box to her in the next three days." That brought joy all around.
"She'll triple that when we have the box," the woman said with a soft smile. Annie tried to suppress a shiver, to hold perfectly still and stay unnoticed. The look in the woman's eyes ... Annie didn't want that focused on her or Nikki.
The men saddled horses, checked air rifles, got supplies. The woman came over to Annie, a knife in her hand. "When we find them, you'll do what I tell you or die worse than the woman at the house. You understand me, you two mud sluts?"
"Yes," Annie stammered, keeping her hands folded, covering her wallet. For all this time, she'd seen no chance to escape. She'd held Dumont's pistol and not used it. Today she'd find a way. Today she'd use it.
But not now. Not here, where there was no way out. She might kill the woman, but the men would get her. That was the counsel of despair, the old priest said in his sermons. No child of grace need taste despair, no matter what happened. Annie wondered if any child of grace had ever been in as big a mess as this. Somehow she doubted it.
Ray dropped by Lek's shop. The old man was shaking his head. "That was one hell of an experience, Colonel."
"Tell me about it later. Lek, you remember that rock in the cave I had you look at the day after Mary ran her first ore tap?"
"Yep."
"I read your report on it. No activity of any sort, you said then. What do you think now?"
"Damn, sir, it could be pudding pie, for all I know."
"Bring it in here. Then you and Net Dancer go over it, see if you can make it active again."
"Sir, that AI is gonna be a busy little routine for the next couple of hours, working what we loaded on the blimp."
"Can't be too much of it there. How much bandwidth can our radio carry?" Ray frowned. "Seems so, boss, but I don't think those things are as big as we think they are. I mean, they're big, but not like we think of as big. I don't know." Lek took his hat off, wiped his forehead. "I tried to get it to explain what it was doing. It laughed. I've never had a computer laugh at me. Said it would be easier for me to explain my network to some naked savage just hacking the first spear point out of flint than it would be for it to explain what it was doing. And you know, boss?" Ray nodded into Lek's pregnant pause. "I believe it. Damned if I don't. I don't know about bringing that thing home. Before I talked to it, I thought it would be great, what it could do, what schooling our kids could get. Now, I don't mind saying I'm spooked. That puppy is spooky shit."
Ray didn't blink. "Take part of Net Dancer out there when you get the stone. Can't risk damaging it accidently. Maybe he can tell you how to cut it loose." Ray finished what he intended to say. He'd heard Lek's worry. Someday he'd think it through, but not now. Right now, he had four megahurricanes headed his way and needed every trick he could get his hands on to stop them. After that, he'd think this through. Assuming there was anything after, after that.
Ray had been in some weird staff meetings in his time. Today set a record he hoped never to break. Kat and Doc represented normal; Lek sat like a stone statue, just back with the rock. The padre represented the locals. Blimp pilot Rhynia Loramor had a pile of weather maps in front of her; Harry flipped through papers. Mary was late; Ray would start without her. The humans congregated around the right side of Ray's battle board, casting uncomfortable glances at what stood on the left side.
There was the Dean and his twelve; Net Dancer had arranged it so all of them could access the local net. That might be another reason why Lek was so quiet; his net was totally compromised. Ray considered his options and decided to be glad Net Dancer had changed sides. Each of the dozen images that sporadically haunted Ray's dreams now was a holograph, thirty centimeters tall, standing along the edge of the battle board, staring at the map Ray projected on it of South and North Continent. Most were in tweed jackets, their attempt at battle dress past. Net Dancer-or at least as much of him as wasn't tied up on the blimp-wore a white lab coat complete with the ancient and required pocket protector of the technonerd.
"I'm isolating us from the two main protagonists. Are the rest of you here?" Ray began, making a circle around the table.
Mary came in, worry dripping with the rain from her face. "Colonel, we've got a problem."
"Later, Captain; I've got an agenda, and we're sticking to it." Mary frowned, but settled into a chair.
Ray went on. "Are the twelve of you in here yet?
"Yes." The board turned brown around the base as the Dean walked across it. "Though I don't know what good it will do. The P and P can follow us anytime they want."
"They can, but we can make it hard on them. Net Dancer, what's the main avenue of approach to the base?"
"The line left by the Gardener. It runs up this railroad bed, then follows this road." The mentioned line lit up in red. "Your fanners don't mess around with roads, so I guess the Gardener found them the safest routes to use."
"We'll cut it. Harry?"
"It's mainly farmland. This route looks the most likely to me, too. What do you want done?"
"Since you fellows are inside," Ray said, glancing at the Dean, "we blow it. In several places. Long, deep gashes that'll take some repairing. Harry, take out a team of marines as soon as we're done. Captain, can you spare Cassie?"
"Yes, sir." Mary came out of what was bothering her long enough to start calling orders into her commlink.