7th Sigma (27 page)

“She's a lot of trouble. Okay, give me five minutes.”

What he had in mind wouldn't take as long as the painstaking slog across the arroyo to get Thayet, but it was probably as dangerous.

While one might be able to take the carts and saddle horses cross-country downstream to where the walls of the arroyo were less steep, the freight wagons would have to detour thirty miles to a crossing they could handle.

Unless they could clear this crossing of bugs.

The spot he chose was a half mile downstream where the walls of the arroyo had been undercut by the recent flooding but a three-foot stratum of limestone kept the rim above solid. There was more limestone below, with shallow pockets that had caught some of the iron-bearing sands and, while the bugs were nowhere near as thick as at the crossing, there were some grazing for ferrous bits.

He found the first thing he needed about fifty yards back, a place where water running between two rocks had dug a channel, perhaps two feet deep, two feet wide. He used the shovel and made it deeper, but he kept his eyes open as he dug.

The last thing he wanted to do was uncover an old metal fence post.

The second thing he needed he found closer to the arroyo, a big chunk of limestone about the size of a large watermelon. It was sunk in the dirt, but he cleared an edge and levered it out with the shovel. Its top and bottom were flat, so it didn't roll worth beans. He might have carried it a few yards, but instead he just flopped it over and over, thud, thud, thud, all the way to the rim. Then he shifted it sideways a bit and tested his choice by dropping a very small pebble over the edge. Nope. Another pebble, a foot to the right, was dead on target so he shifted the boulder, took a deep breath, and shoved.

He was running before it hit, but he still heard multiple “pops.” One would've been sufficient. He could hear the bugs in the air, a harsh cicada buzzing with ultrasonic overtones. It was mostly from upstream but he still had to dodge a few that arose from the brush in front of him. He dropped into the hole and several buzzed overhead, more than he'd expected. Maybe there was some old barbwire in the neighborhood.

After five minutes his heart had stopped pounding and his breathing had slowed and he was back to boredom. He stuck to the plan, though. Bugs could keep coming for a while and it was better to be cautious.

He'd intended to meditate but he fell asleep instead.

The teamster boss' voice woke him, yelling at the top of his lungs, yelling his name from about ten feet away, worry and fear in his voice.

Kimble shuddered awake, his heart pounding, the sick sound of a bullwhip crack fading back into the dreamscape.

What on earth has happened
now
?

Kimble stood up and his head cleared the rocks. The teamster wasn't looking his way and when Kimble spoke the teamster boss almost fell over.

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! We thought you were dead!”

Oops.
“How long have I been asleep?”

The man opened his mouth, shut it, opened it again, then just shook his head and marched back toward the crossing. “He's all right!” he yelled back toward the road.

They were all out there, the Joffreys, the teamsters, and the others, spread out across the desert, looking for Kimble. He picked up Joffrey's shovel and waved it overhead. Kimble started back toward the edge of arroyo, to take a look down at the impact site, but the bugs were thick on the ground before he reached the rim, their wings extended and held flat to the sun, so he veered away. He could only imagine what they were like in the arroyo below.

Back at the crossing they'd already brought the stock and vehicles across and when Kimble glanced down the cut into the wash it was just sand, clear of bugs.

Mrs. Perdicaris snorted and walked to meet him. Mrs. Joffrey, with a large smile on her face, handed him a cold apple empanada. When Kimble thanked her for it, she lunged at him and it was all he could do not to throw her in the dirt before he realized she just wanted to hug him. When she let go her eyes were wet. When Kimble gave Joffrey his shovel back, the man nodded gravely and said, “I'll keep this handy. I see it still has plenty of use in it.”

Thayet was lying in the shade under their handcart, a jug of water to hand. Kimble approved. “You pee yet?”

She shook her head.

“Drink more water.”

16

Dancing in the Dark

Kimble put Thayet up in his cart and Joffrey unlashed the crossbar on the Hahns' cart so they could hitch Stupid to it.

“What kind of name is that?” Kimble had asked.

“Sarcasm,” said Joffrey. “Damn thing can open any latch ever made. I couldn't tell you the number of times we found him in the kitchen garden as a colt. Mrs. Joffrey kept saying, ‘You get that stupid horse out of my garden!' It stuck. He was almost horsemeat before he got grown but he really turned into a good all-round workhorse. Saddle, cart, plow. You name it.”

Thây
Hahn wouldn't ride in the cart, but he led the hitched horse, walking, his fingers counting through the beads on his rosary, all the way to the edge of the alkali flats. The area below the Manzanos is a closed basin and the flats were where the water ended up (if it didn't evaporate before getting down there).

The village of Three Bean Salad sat on two springs and one of the more reliable streams running down into the basin. Beans, as you might imagine from the village name, were the largest local crop—mostly pinto.
Las Tres Hermanas
—the Three Sisters—was a restaurant and hotel below the village on the last bit of raised ground before the flats began. In the summer, when the winds gusted from the south, there was little shelter from the stinging dust storms, but it was sited around a good spring that flowed year-round.

The Hahns and the Joffreys and Kimble paid a small fee to camp on the edge of the inn's cherry grove and draw water. The teamsters paid more for rooms and stabling and an active night watchman for their wagons.

Mrs. Joffrey wondered at the expense. “You'd think they'd want to save their money!”

Twelve-year-old Thayet laughed. “They want their visitors more.”

Mrs. Joffrey had offered to fix dinner for all of them, and while Kimble had accepted immediately, the Hahns were vegetarians. Thayet shared the cook fire, though, to prepare their brown rice and lentils while her father meditated back in the grove.

“What on earth are you talking about, child?” Mrs. Joffrey asked.

“The bed girls. The hotel has a deal with them. They don't go to the campsites and, in return, the hotel cuts them in on a bit of the room cost.”

Mrs. Joffrey blushed. “Bed girls?”

Thayet added, “Sex workers. You know, women who—”

Kimble tried not to laugh. “She understands, Thayet.”

Mrs. Joffrey turned away, busying herself with the stew she was cooking—the one she'd just checked.

Kimble turned back to Thayet. “Why are you here, Little Dove? Away from the capital?”

“
Ba
is officiating at the opening of the new buildings at the Pecosito Zen Center. We came down last fall for the groundbreaking. We stopped here then, and I saw the bed girls going from room to room and asked
Ba
. He said they are heavily yoked to the wheel.”

Kimble shook his head minutely as Mrs. Joffrey's bustling became more pronounced. “Tell me about the Zen Center, Little Dove.”

“You don't want to hear what else
Ba
told me about the bed girls?” She glanced aside toward Mrs. Joffrey and grinned.

“Little Imp, I will beat you. Your
ba
will let me.”

She laughed. “Very well. The monastery is below the bluff but above the high flood, on the shared irrigation canal. They have several fields of good bottomland and a high-volume solar still.” Suddenly she frowned and the cheerfulness of her earlier mood left. She poked the ground with her finger.

“What?”

“The still. Someone threw rocks from up on the bluff and broke the glass panels. And they threw shit.”

Kimble's eyes grew wide. “They messed with their water? Their
drinking
water?”

This was vandalism by any standard but in the water-poor areas of the territory this was more extreme than a mere misdemeanor. In some of the smaller communities people had been killed for such an offense and their killers acquitted of wrongdoing.

Thayet nodded. “Several times.”

“Is there any dispute about the water rights?”

“Not exactly. The rancher who donated the site deeded the water rights, too. It's complicated.”

Kimble raised his eyebrows.

“Ask
Ba.
”

After supper Kimble brewed a large pot of peppermint tea and offered it around. He slipped Thayet a large lump of sugar for hers with a whispered, “Brush your teeth well.” The sky was clear, awash with stars, and the temperature dropped, making the group move closer to the fire and cup their tea in both hands.

When they were settled, he asked
Thây
Hahn why the land situation at the Zen Center was “complicated.”

“Complicated?” He considered his teacup. “It is awash with suffering, like all life, with desire and the desires of attainment.” He held his right hand before his chest, forefinger extended skyward. His posture, always straight, became somehow even more erect and grounded.

“Attend,” he intoned. “A rancher named Ronson left his ranch, split into quarters, to his three children and
Roshi
Mallory.”

Kimble found himself sitting up. “Are questions permitted,
Thây
?” Thayet, on the other side of the fire, rolled her eyes at Kimble's respectful tone.

Hahn smiled. “Merit may be gained through seeking knowledge.”

“Was Ronson a Buddhist?”

“Oh, no. He was, in his words, an indifferent Methodist. But the
Roshi
was the caregiver for his wife's passing.”

“Doctor?”

Hahn shook his head. “Hospice care. She had colon cancer that metastasized throughout her abdomen. They caught it much too late, though they made the trip outside, to M.D. Anderson in Houston. They offered massive chemotherapy but they gave it less than a five percent chance. She'd been through one round already and wanted to die at home, without the nausea. It took two months.”

“Oh.”

“
Roshi
Mallory also sat with Ronson for the month after his stroke, until he died. The two sons maintained the will was changed then, when Mr. Ronson was
non compos mentis
and challenged its validity.

“The court found that the final version of the will had been witnessed several years earlier, right after his wife's funeral, by a county magistrate and their own sister, Ronson's daughter. The brothers appealed the ruling at the district level and then above. The Territorial Court awarded damages as well as court costs to
Roshi
Mallory, this last time, and they held the brothers and their lawyer were in violation of Rule Eleven of the Federal Rules—the part where they must perform due diligence to ascertain the factual basis of their case. They almost held the lawyer in contempt but, in the end, they just severely cautioned him never to come before their bench with any case so lacking in merit.”

“Sounds like you were there.”

Hahn smiled. “Oh, yes. Mallory stayed with us for the appellate hearing—the court is five blocks from the temple. Mostly I meditated, but I was there to support
Roshi
Mallory. I learned far more than I ever wanted to know about the laws of inheritance. The ACLU lawyer was very good about explaining things.”

“Wait a minute—why was the ACLU involved? You've left something out, I think.”

Hahn frowned and looked up for a moment. “Oh, yes. There was the religious intolerance part. The Church of the New Paradise hired the law firm for the challenge and the appeals.”

Kimble mouth formed a silent, “Ah.” The Territorial Church of the New Paradise was part of the Prosperity Gospel movement. Believe and you shall receive wealth here on earth. The leaders certainly received. One of the ways of expressing your “belief” was by giving heavily to the church. The movement was big outside the territory, too, where they were responsible for some of the mall-size churches you found all over.

They weren't so big in the territory, though they were growing. You couldn't support the same concentrations of people without metal-based tech. No cars, no mass transit, meant no giant churches. The message itself wasn't unattractive and certainly found its willing recipients. Who wouldn't like to become wealthy just by believing, especially when you were breaking your back trying to farm a drought-ridden patch of desert?

“I take it one or both brothers belong to the congregation?”

“Both, I believe,” said
Thây
Hahn.

Pecosito was a largish town for the territory, perhaps four thousand people, straddling the Pecos south of the ruins of Ft. Sumner. “How big is the church there? Congregation-wise?”

Hahn shook his head. “I don't know. There are many churches there.”

“My brother belongs to Church of Christ in Pecosito,” volunteered Mrs. Joffrey. “He said they've got about three hundred members.”

“Is that where you're headed?”

She nodded. “We were farming but we were struggling because of last year's dry spell. Then while Michael was plowing, he uncovered an old pipeline that ran across our place. The bugs moved in big time before we could cover it up and that was that. My brother in Pecosito recently expanded his fish farm and needs the help.” She poked the fire a bit. “That's the plan, anyway.”

There was a burst of laughter from the direction of the inn, several voices, male and female, mixed.

Thayet said, “And the drinking has begun.”