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The violence between the two churches had something to do with a condominium on the Derrickâa big orbital station that serves as a base for some space-mining operationsâand a disagreement over divine intention as expressed through the Mars colonies. But Chance is tired and just not interested enough to parse through the complex details.
While Chance One is in the archipelago reading about the Apostolic Brotherhood, Leap Three stands up inside the truck. He crosses to the couch, and drops down beside Chance Four, his long legs stretching out in front of him. He shifts his body to peer surreptitiously at the others, then leans toward her, his blue eyes intent, and says under his breath, “Find out what you can about Jackson and Terry.”
Conscious that Jackson and Terry, although deep in conversation with Leap Two, may be close enough to hear her response, Chance Four whispers back, “Is something they're saying worrying you?”
“Other than the talk of possible war?” Leap whispers.
“Yeah, I guess.” Chance chuckles. “That, and the fact that they don't consider us human?”
“Well, those are the two main things,” agrees Leap with a quick grin. “But I just don't like them. They do seem friendly, kind of, but . . . Anyway, I can't do any real research. All my drives are here, in the truck, so they're cut off from anything worthwhile.”
At that moment, Chance hears Leap Two asking a little more loudly than she had been speaking, “Why have you crippled the network?”
“It's just to reduce network noise,” Terry says, “that could help them profile our cargo. All the armadillos have limited net access from their apartments. Standard stuff.”
Chance Four says softly to Leap Three, “I've been looking. They're just who they appear to be. At least on the net, there's nothing contradictory about them.”
The journey goes smoothly. After
the initial friction, Terry and Jackson turn out to be accommodating, if somewhat clumsy, hosts. They tell Leap and Chance that they're going to be driving for three days, without stops.
The armadillo's control center is in a pilot's cabin separated from the cargo area by a mantrap, a sort of foyer with security doors on both sides. Terry, Don, and Jackson take shifts driving. When they're not driving, they have a regular safety routine to check the truck's systems. It reminds Leap and Chance of their flight checks. There's also a lot of gin rummy, meal preparation, and sleep. The truck moves nonstop.
Leap and Chance aren't allowed in the pilot's cabin and aren't allowed to know where they're going. After about thirty hours, a huge storm passes outside. The armadillo stops moving and lowers its massive trailer over its tires until the trailer sides are resting on the road. They all wait out the storm for a couple of hours while the armadillo hugs the ground. They hear rain and thunder crashing like the fists of mountains against their armor-plated sides.
From the storm's start, Jackson is agitated, irritable. Terry is drowsing in one of the chairs, glancing around blearily in response to the storm's most vicious sallies. Jackson is glowering in the direction of Leap Two. Leap Two is listening to the storm but notices Jackson's look and offers an interested smile.
“You know, the Directorate could stop this,” Jackson says.
“Stop what?” asks Leap.
“The storms. The poisons all over the planet. I've read things. I've seen reports. This could all be fixed. The Earth made whole again.”
Leap Two's light brown eyes narrow with friendly skepticism.
“There are ways to fix it,” Jackson persists, “but the Directorate doesn't want to figure them out.”
The armadillo reverberates from a blow, and the howling of the storm is momentarily deafening. Leap Two looks away. Jackson glares at the container's roof, above Leap Two's head, and mutters, just loudly enough to carry, “They want to kill the solos first.”
At that moment, Don Kim drops down the stairs from the sleeping quarters. “Our schedule is now officially toast,” he says loudly, to be heard over the noise. “This storm is killing us. Let's play cards.”
Chance One, Two, and Five
have each spent time looking for the armadillo on information feeds from the road systems. With both Two and Five unemployed, at least temporarily, Chance has decided to return One to the data farm soon. The office might get access to additional feeds.
Several rigs of the right class left New Denver at approximately the right time, but they were all moving cargo that was accounted for. And it's not clear that the truck carrying Chance Four and Leap actually left New Denver on the same day that they got into it. It might have just driven around for a day and then left.
The storm could have been a clue, but four large storms occurred within the required combination of time and range, and there were more than two hundred twelve trucks of the same class held up during those four storms. Chance can't find anything that sets the truck they're in apart from the others.
Late on their third night
in the truck, Chance thinks they've been driving downhill for a long time. Chance guesses that they're going to one of the underground transfer citiesâvast subterranean facilities that allow cargo transfers to happen without too much concern for storms. There are four such facilities that the truck might be visiting. Chance One starts scanning video feeds from them, but there's a lot of activity, and Chance is not sure what to search for.
In the early hours of that morning, Jackson announces that the container apartment is going to be moved to a different truck bed. Don and Terry will be outside supervising. Chance and Leap will stay inside with Jackson.
Jackson has taken Leap Four under her wing and told her things about the church while asking her not to tell “the other Leaps.” When Leap Four confessed that she actually was the other Leaps and that Jackson had, in fact, just revealed those confidences to all of Leap's drives, Jackson winked at her and responded, “If you have to tell them, I guess it's okay. I wouldn't want you to lie.”
There is a loud cracking and banging as the jaws of a crane close on the outside walls of the armadillo's apartment, the metal frame shivering. Immediately after, an earsplitting creaking and winching begin, and the gravelly churn of immense gears vibrates raggedly through the apartment's floor and walls.
Leap Three and Chance Four have been reading on the couches set across from each other. Everything is trembling, though not enough to knock things down, as the apartment gathers a slight upward momentum. Then with a very subtle shift and a dramatic lowering in the timbre of the grinding and ragged buzzing, they start to descend. After several more minutes the entire apartment is bathed again in welcome quiet.
The engine starts, a bass thrumming that breaks into long phrases bracketed by whines and thumps. The living quarters begin to vibrate lightly, as they have for the past few days. The new truck sounds louder than the old one.
About an hour later, and after two five-to-ten-minute stops, the new armadillo's engines cut off, and the noise ends.
Leap Three answers a call. He walks shakily to the bathroom, feeling internal reverberations from the last hours of uncertainty and racket. He briefly snags the top of his head on a rope slung just below what appears to be a rectangular beam but is actually a long table that can be lowered and unfolded into the center of the living space. As the tallest person in the transport, Leap has to keep an eye out to avoid smacking into high shelves or other ceiling-mounted, space-saving contraptions.
The quiet doesn't last long. The pneumatic lock on the door to the pilot's cabin hisses loudly, then pops as its seal is broken. The door swings smoothly and silently open, and Don appears beside it. “We're going to step outside for a little bit while some folks sweep the apartment. Then we'll come back and see what's what.”
Chance asks, “Sweep?”
“Just to make sure there're no trackers. The Directorate would be pretty interested in what happens next. C'mon, everyone. And that means all the drives upstairs too.”
Jackson waits behind for Leap Three, whom Leap expects will need to stay in the bathroom for a couple more minutes. Chance and the rest of Leap's drives file out. They exit through a side door in the mantrap, then down a few stairs to the ground of the facility.
They're in a subterranean warehouse filled with a very fine mist, almost a light fog. The ceiling is barely visible, maybe fifty feet above them, and there are no walls visible in any direction. The ground is a uniform, coarse gravel.
Other trucks of the same class are parked within twenty or thirty yards. On one of them, two bodies blurred by the mist are climbing about like a symbiotic species grooming a host. The air is slightly chill. A steady glow from the ceiling supplements broadly spaced poles that support more powerful arc lamps.
Terry is humming absentmindedly as he offers a hand to help Leap Two step down from the cabin. While it's become clear that among Jackson, Terry, and Don, Don is the only one who's really on the ball, Jackson and Terry have been making awkward efforts keep Leap and Chance comfortable throughout the trip.
Leap Two smiles at Terry but doesn't take the extended hand. “Thanks,” she says, as she steps down from the cab. She recognizes the tune he's humming and says, “I used to play that. Scott Joplin, âThe Entertainer.' I played it for a while in college. We had a 1920s theme party.”
As Leap Two is saying this, inside the apartment Leap Three has just finished washing his hands and has opened the bathroom door. As he ducks to exit the bathroom, Jackson is leaning against the back of a couch. She's singing, “Da da da, da, da da, da da . . .” The same tune. Leap Three stops just outside the bathroom door. Jackson's singing is precisely synchronized with Terry's. Jackson glances over at Leap Three, sees the question on his face, and the singing stops. Jackson's face slackens and pales.
Outside the truck, Leap Two says to Terry in astonishment, “You're a join.”
Don is standing a few feet away, waiting for Jackson and Leap Three. “What?” he demands. “What did you say?”
Leap Two says, “Terry and Jackson are joined.”
The same lookâmouth widening slightly, skin tightening with alarmâpasses like a quick shadow over both Terry's and Jackson's faces, simultaneously.
Then Terry says, in a friendly voice, “What? What are you talking about?”
Leap Two takes a step away from Terry and turns to Don. “They're joined,” she says. “That's the only way to explain it.”
Three unfamiliar men had been waiting on the ground as Leap, Chance, and the others exited the armadillo. Don motions to one of them, who quickly climbs into the control cabin and heads toward the apartment. Inside the apartment, Jackson has regained her composure. She says to Leap Three, “C'mon, let's go outside.” Leap Three takes a step back from her, into the open bathroom.
Jackson says, “What's wrong? We should go to the others.” But the color hasn't fully returned to Jackson's face. To Leap, her calm seems forced. They hear the man climbing through the control cabin toward the apartment.