7th Sigma (33 page)

“You don't have anything on me!”

“Assault with a deadly weapon, remember? What happened to that crossbow, by the way?”

Pierce glared at him for a moment before saying, “I traded it for a meal.”

Kimble raised his eyebrows. “Really? Wouldn't it have been more cost effective to keep it and hunt?”

“Look, it's pathetic, I know it, but you don't have to rub it in. I lost all the quarrels and I never hit a single animal. And I broke the string.”

Kimble raised his eyebrows. “And I shall call you … animal lover. Have you considered a career in middle management?”

*   *   *

“HE
had me follow Deacon Rappaport.”

Alvarez was a part-time day laborer, mostly garden work and pumping the used sludge and slurry out of people's biogas tanks. He was fastidiously clean. Pierce had brought Kimble to Alvarez behind the Pecos Hotel's stables, introduced him, and then vanished, with cash, toward the nearest pub.

Kimble raised his eyebrows. “Deacon? Which church?”

“New Paradise. He runs the Public Action Committee.”

“What does the Public Action Committee do?”

“They're assholes.”

Kimble raised his eyebrows.

“They're into ‘civic improvement.' That is, they rip through the shantytown every week or so. They beat up drunks. They chase migrant workers out of town 'cause they prefer to steer any daywork toward their newest members. ‘Believe and thou shall prosper.'”

“Rappaport's first name wouldn't be David, would it?”

Alvarez looked surprised. “
Verdad
. You know him?”

Kimble shook his head. The men he'd interrupted at night above the Zen Center had mentioned a Deacon Dave.

“So, did you follow him around town?”

“No. I was doing some work for the widow who lives next to the Rappaport place. The peddler wanted me to follow the Deacon if he left on horseback. I only did it the once. They almost caught me.”

“They?”

“It was some of his ‘pack.' That's what they called themselves—Public Action Committee, P.A.C. It was the top guys: Steve Bickle, the Ronson brothers, and Pudge Moorecock. They went out with draft horses, harnessed for wagon work, though they didn't take a wagon with them.”

The Ronson brothers could be the ranchers who'd disputed their father's will over the Zen Center. The last name Alvarez mentioned also tickled a memory. “What does Moorecock do?”

“He's got the Pecosito Hardware and Feed.”

That was it!
One of the stores selling the stolen water filters.

“If I'd known how far they were going, I don't know that I would've done it. They went all the way out to the Pits.”

“What are the Pits?”

“Where the old PeCo Refinery is. They had a lot of underground tanks and pipes, so the bugs ate down. Lotsa bugs. Strange animals, too. It's bad out there 'cause you never know when you're standing on solid ground or just thin crust over a deep hole. When I saw them turn off the main road, I holed up in a gulley and waited.

“Two hours later they drove back through and this time they
had
a wagon. I don't know what they did with it, 'cause my horse neighed as they went by and I had to run for it. Luckily it was near dark, by then, and I lost them.”

“What did the peddler say when you told him?”

“I didn't. Never saw him after that. Kept expecting him to show up. He still owes me half—that guy said you'd make good.”

“So this was three weeks ago?”

Alvarez thought about it. “Uh, yeah. Three weeks tomorrow.”

Lujan had never shown up because he'd been shot the same day and sky-hooked out of the territory the following morning.

“I'll stand good for the peddler.”

*   *   *

IN
general, it was a bad thing to travel at night in the territory. Not only did the roads leave a lot to be desired, but it was hard to tell when a random bug might end up in your path. And the other bugs needed no light to swarm on a crushed comrade.

But at least bugs were not acting with malice. Their motives, if you wanted to call them that, were straightforward: defense first, electromagnetic radiation second, eating metals third, absorb sunlight last.

Men's motives are rarely so obvious, even to themselves, but Kimble knew enough, now, to prefer the bugs.

He spent the afternoon encoding a message for Major Bentham. In the dusk he slipped into town and left it in the cavity in the theater wall. Before it was full dark, he was riding Mrs. Perdicaris southeast on the main road toward Andrews, Texas.

He was particularly interested in Alvarez's information about the Pits after finding out it was in this direction. All of the disappearances had happened on the route from Andrews.

The moon came up after eleven and he pushed Mrs. P up to a gentle canter, hoping that if he did crush a bug, he'd gallop past the site before the worst of the swarm got there.

He found the turnoff about three in the morning, two thin wheel ruts paralleling the old asphalt turnoff, but he wasn't willing to go any farther toward a known bug infestation without full daylight. He found a clump of cottonwoods in a dry gully and slept. When a noise in the grass awoke him, the stars were fading and the eastern sky was light. He lay still, listening. Without lifting his head he could see Mrs. P standing over by one of the cottonwoods, dozing. The noise had come from the tall prairie grass, to the south, away from the road. He heard it again: steps, not human.
Cattle?

He opened his bedroll and pulled his moccasins on. He'd left his
jyo
lying beside him. He took it with him to the edge of the cottonwoods.

A mule stood out in the grass, its head down as if it were grazing, but the head was still.
Asleep?
He blew through his lips, imitating a horse's snort, and the ears swiveled toward him.

He felt his stomach clench like it was full of ice. “You're kidding me!” He said it aloud, and the black mule lifted its head fully and looked at him without eyes.

“Not-dog and not-steer. Now a not-mule?”

Just like the previous creatures, the not-mule had darker patches of black where the eyes should be and its skin was oily black, but the hooves were the color of old bronze, right down to green corrosion streaks. Even more disturbing, to Kimble, the not-mule had two holes in its right ear. One in the middle and one at the edge.

Just like Mrs. Perdicaris.

Kimble stepped back several paces. He kept imagining the high-pitched shrilling of an incoming swarm. He rolled up his bedroll and lashed it to his pack. He whistled to Mrs. P. He heard hoofbeats but she didn't come and she wasn't where she'd been dozing. He slung his pack, lifted Mrs. P's saddle pad, and walked back to the edge of the cottonwoods.

Mrs. Perdicaris and the not-mule were trotting across the grass, turning back and forth. The not-mule was moving beside Mrs. P, matching her step for step. Kimble shook his head hard. It was like double vision, the not-mule a solid shadow of Mrs. P. At one point Mrs. Perdicaris pivoted, putting her rear hooves toward the not-mule, and kicked out. The not-mule would've been struck, if it hadn't duplicated the maneuver exactly. Mrs. P's hooves flashed over the not-mule's lowered head, which dropped as the not-mule also kicked out with both rear legs.

“Come
here
Mrs. Perdicaris!” He whistled as loudly as he could, for emphasis.

Mrs. P flicked her ears at Kimble and came trotting. As did the not-mule. The ozone smell he remembered from the not-dog and from the not-steer was stronger. Mrs. P stopped with her nose up against his stomach. The not-mule stopped a yard off to the side, in the same posture. Kimble could've stretched his left arm out and touched it.

Mrs. P shoved him with her nose. He smiled nervously. “Okay, girl.” He dug out a sugar cube and fed it to her, wondering if the not-mule would demand its share, but it just stood there, its head turned toward Kimble and Mrs. P, watching.

Kimble stepped around to Mrs. P's left side, away from the not-mule, took a deep breath, and saddled her, keeping his movements small and careful.

Is this what happened to the travelers? Was it bugs?

He fingered the bug scars on his right arm. He wanted to run screaming, but he was also fascinated.
Like a bird staring at a snake?
He put on Mrs. P's hackamore.

The not-mule stretched out its nose, touching briefly the stirrup strap of Mrs. P's saddle, then backed up. It took a few sideways steps and stopped where it could see Kimble adjusting the Velcro closure straps on the hackamore.

Slowly, smoothly, Kimble pulled himself up onto Mrs. P's back. The not-mule stretched its neck straight up in a posture that raised the hair on Kimble's neck. He nudged Mrs. P with his right knee and she turned away. He looked back at the not-mule, half expecting it to follow, but it stood there, its neck and head still raised unnaturally high, and watched him ride away.

*   *   *

THERE
was a thin trickle of smoke rising up from a stand of cedars near the Pits. Someone was either having breakfast or keeping their coffee warm. The clump of trees was on a slight rise and overlooked the old road and the new trail. Just beyond, the gaping holes that were the Pits began, two of them straddling the new trail. The old road terminated in one of them. Kimble didn't see any other movement, but the rims of the pits glittered in the early sunlight—photovoltaic crystalline blue, copper, and aluminum silver.

He changed Mrs. P back to her halter and left her, loosely tied, down in a draw where a pool of brackish water was left over from the last rain. He didn't try to bypass the stand of cedars. It was the first thing he wanted to see.

It took him forty-five minutes to work his way close, staying low, crawling through the grass.

There were two guards, but they weren't terribly vigilant. One was reading a Bible and the other one was playing solitaire. A canvas tarp strung between two trees formed a shelter and, dead center beneath it, between two bedrolls, Kimble saw two gyro rifles, indistinguishable from those carried by the Territorial Rangers.

As Kimble watched, the Bible-reader got up, went to the edge of the cedars, and walked around the grove, staring out at the horizon. Kimble dropped his head flat and stayed still in the dry, brown grass. The guard passed thirty feet away but didn't see Kimble. When the guard completed the circuit, Kimble saw him go back to his Bible.

There were no mounts at the camp, no saddles or other tack visible, though Kimble could see where horses had been tied, churning up the dirt and dropping manure. He wondered how often they were relieved. It was hard to tell from where he lay, but the manure looked old, dried out and breaking up.

He drank some water and waited. After another ten minutes the Bible-reader said something to the solitaire player and that man put his cards down and did a similar circuit of the trees. It made sense. You could see five miles back down the trail. If Kimble hadn't diverted to the draw, earlier, they would easily have seen him before he got near their post.

If he hadn't seen their fire. He wouldn't have seen that, if they'd used drier wood. He looked around. The grove was pretty bare of deadwood.
They've stripped it clean. They're burning green branches.
They'd occupied the grove for quite some time.

Kimble didn't have to ask himself what Major Bentham would want him to do now. Get out. Get out and ride for Colonel Quincy. But Kimble wanted to know what was in the Pits.

It's not like it was with Lujan
, he thought.
The last report I sent will lead them straight here.
He waited for the next patrol circuit and, as soon as the Bible-reader had seated himself on his stump, Kimble crawled away from the trees and ran downhill, fast as he could go, heading for the Pits.

He tried counting seconds, taking a break at what he thought was eight minutes after the last patrol. He sat beside a low sagebrush, looking back at the cedars. After a bit, he saw one of the guards make the circuit. When he'd disappeared, Kimble ran on.

He had no choice but to follow the trail. Bugs were thick on the ground or the ground wasn't there. The trail edged close to one pit and he peered over, then backed quickly away. The edge he stood on seemed solid enough but it was deeply undercut. In fact, the pit opened like a sinkhole and the walls below were actually under the trail. In his brief glance, he'd seen indistinct shapes in the shadows below and an opening, he could swear, into the pit on the other side of the trail. He could tell from the tracks that they'd brought heavily laden wagons along the trail, but he still imagined the land dropping away in great chunks from beneath his feet.

He hurried on. The land sloped down, and the trail cut off to the left in a deepening rut. There were bugs, singletons, here and there. He wondered what the PAC did about them when they brought their wagons through. The trail ended at the bottom of another pit, not nearly as deep as the others. Looking at its shape, Kimble realized it was once a huge tank, a hundred feet across, completely below ground. The very bottom of the tank, about two feet, was still intact, but that was because it was full of dark, still water, reflecting the collapsed opening above. It seemed to have been steel-lined concrete. The bugs had eaten all the above-water metal, but the concrete around it, though cracked, was mostly intact.

They'd built a ramp of rock and dirt on into the bottom of the tank to roll the wagons past the drop.

He took a step forward and his eyes watered. He bent down at the edge. Rainbows sheened the surface of the water. The fumes were strong but not overwhelming. He held a bandanna over his mouth and waded out into it.

The missing wagons were all there. There were the two Conestoga freighters from the Texas boys, the FlyWeight buggies and U-Haul heavy hauler from the doctors' party, and the peddlers' wagons, all standing hub-deep in the water. There were others, too: several two-wheeled carts like Kimble's, some brightly painted with the colors typical of northern Chihuahua, a heavy dirt hauler with bottom dump doors, and something that looked like a gypsy caravan.