Conquistador (16 page)

“Oh,” Barnes said. “I think I might like to open a burger joint. I figure you owe me the seed money.”

The park along the American River was one of Sacramento's better spots. It stretched along both sides for twenty-four miles from the junction with the Sacramento River, and it was big enough to form a fairly considerable corridor for wildlife and birds. Tom parked his battered compact, paid the admission fee and looked around for the sleek little two-seater Italian job Adrienne Rolfe had driven to meet him at Maharani's. It wasn't there, and his chest gave an abrupt lurch; then he saw her stretching on the grass beyond the pavement, under the shade of a big willow tree. She was doing splits, then curling over to each side with her chin pressed to her knee and fingers touching around the sole of that foot. A water bottle and fanny pack lay against the base of the tree.

Ballet training for sure,
he thought, watching her for a moment with sheer pleasure, then walking forward past a Ford Windstar.

Discovery Park was the western end of the riverside trail, at the mouth of the American River where it joined the Sacramento, and just north of downtown. It was flat—this was a spillover zone during the late winter when the river crested—but pleasantly landscaped, with open grassy fields, a band of alder and willow along the riverbank proper where it swelled out into a small lake, and some impressive valley oaks. A double-crested cormorant was sunning itself on a stump in the hot brightness beside the lake, with its black double-V wings spread and its snaky neck curved in an S, altogether looking rather like an organic Stealth Fighter. Pelicans and gulls rested out on the surface of the water; the sun was still high at five-thirty on a summer's day, and the bands of strollers, kids Rollerblading and happy dogs leaping after Frisbees added to the pleasure of the scene. Still too urban for his taste, but a lot better than concrete and steel, and it smelled of water and fresh greenery.

The background faded as Adrienne looked up at him and smiled.
Lot of megawattage there,
he thought, smiling back.
If they could hook that up to the grid, California's energy problems would be solved.

“Hi,” he said. “Didn't spot your car.”

“Oh, I walked,” she said. “Thought you might give me a lift back to Amber House afterward, and perhaps we could catch something to eat.”

“I'd be delighted,” he said sincerely, and began his own stretching.

“Want some help on that?” she asked, when he was seated and bending forward.

“Thanks,” he replied.

Adrienne went down on one knee behind him, pushing properly—a forearm just below the point between his shoulder blades, and a hand just above the small of his back. You were supposed to bend at the waist with your spine nearly straight, and try to lay chest and chin on the ground before you. He gave a grunt when the tightness in his back and hamstrings told him to stop, and held it while he controlled his breathing.

“That must have been alarming,” Adrienne said.

He could feel her breath on the skin of his neck, and the pressure of her hand and arm on the knotted scar tissue where three 7.62mm rounds had punched through his body armor.
Interesting that she knows what a bullet scar feels like,
he thought.

Fortunately they hadn't penetrated very deeply, and God bless Kevlar and ceramic inserts for that. It
had
been alarming, afterward; at the time his first thought had been worry for the mission. The Rangers didn't leave anyone behind, and humping
his
carcass out would be a genuine burden. Luckily they'd pretty quickly won the firefight that followed the ambush, and then had called for a dustoff. For an instant he was out of the hot Californian sunshine; the wind was bitter and cold and intensely dry, flicking grit and thin dirty snow into his eyes as he lay and let the medic cut the harness off. Explosions and the rattle of gunfire echoed off the great gaunt slopes of the bare mountains. . . .

“Up,” he said, and shook his head as he eased back and got his feet under him. “Nothing too dramatic,” he went on as he rose. “We here heading up a gully, a dry wash. Had to be done, but the enemy were
real
good at hiding, even from our sensors; the recon drone said the way was clear. I was on point, and
I
didn't see 'em either.”

“You remind me of Granddad,” she said. “He doesn't talk much about Okinawa, either. Let's go!”

They set out, running along the edge of the bicycle path to let the odd cyclist or Segway rider go by.

Now, that's weird,
he thought.
Why on earth ride one of those things
here,
when you could walk?

The little two-wheel computerized electric scooters were fine for getting around cities, for distances where a car was too much and shank's mare too little; he wished there were more of them, and fewer lawsuits and regulations to keep them out of towns, to cut down on smog and congestion. But what earthly purpose was served by standing on a platform and letting gyros and computers and electric motors do half the fun part
here?

“Strange,” he said, indicating one of them with his chin.

There was an art to talking while running; you couldn't do too much of it, and you had to synchronize your breathing.

“Yes,” she replied. “That's like using a machine to live and hanging yourself in the closet.”

Hmmm,
he thought.
I approve the sentiment . . . but why doesn't she ever use certain contractions? The next “yeah” I hear from her will be the first.

Aloud he went on: “And that's a lazuli bunting, I think.”

The bird gave a
pit . . . pit . . . pit
as they went by, followed by a series of rising and falling warbles. It was a male, the head and upper parts a pale powdery blue with an iridescent sheen, very much like lapis lazuli, the wings blue until a white bar crossed them, and the chest orange fading to pale cream on the belly. Tom thought they were nearly as pretty as hummingbirds, and it was a pity they were so rare. It was a little odd that Adrienne gave it only a casual glance; it wasn't that she didn't know her birds. In the next mile she picked out as many as he; one was a black-headed grosbeak, a spectacular little black-and-orange bird with a fast, sweet warble.

“So,” she said after a few minutes of companionable silence broken only by the
plop
of a fish in the river and the sound of their feet. “What do you read? I'll give odds you do.”

“Ah . . .” He did; the problem was his tastes were a little plebian. “A lot of wildlife and biology . . . some history now and then . . . If you mean fiction, mostly SF and mysteries.”

“Me too!” she said. “I was mad for Tolkein as a teenager, of course. Nowadays De Lint, Martin—and Turtledove and Williams, too; it's not all Big Fat Fantasies.”

“Anderson?” he said, and she nodded. “Bujold? Baxter?”

She countered: “Dick Francis?”

“James Lee Burke?”

“Ford Maddox Roberts?”

“And the classics—Christie . . .”

They laughed and continued the game—she called it name-dropping in a good cause—until they reached a bridge that spanned the river across a little islet. They stopped there to catch their breath, and to lean on the railing and watch the water flow past, green and cool-looking below. Daddy longlegs skimmed over the surface, and there was the odd predatory glitter of dragonflies.

“Too bad we can't just dive in,” she said, wiping her face with a wristband.

“Inviting, but I wouldn't advise it,” he replied, with a wordless gesture eastward.

There was a lot of Central Valley in that direction, and that was the birth-place of industrialized agriculture. God alone knew the full list of things that were sprayed or pumped onto the fields, and then drained into this water; the ones Tom knew about were bad enough. He'd met farmers who kept special gardens for their own use, upwind of the fields where they grew vegetables for sale. Things were better than they had been, and there were more fish below than there would have been in the year of his birth. He still wouldn't eat anything that came out of this river, though.

She shook her head angrily as they started back. “That's one thing I hate about this . . . about the modern world. The feeling that I'm taking in all those chemicals every moment, and there's nothing I can do about it.” She gave a shudder that seemed only half-assumed.

“Nothing much we
can
do about it,” he said, a little surprised.
Bit vehement, surely?
“Although we're both trying, in our way.”

“Still . . . have you ever thought what California might be . . . have been . . . like? One city, and a few towns, a scattering of farms and ranches in places that don't need massive engineering to function. All the power from small-scale hydro and geothermal . . .”

He laughed. “It's an appealing fantasy, but if I let myself dwell on it, it would drive me completely crazy,” he said. “One of those ‘if I were king' things.”

She smiled. “We all do our bit, though. I think I'm making progress convincing a couple of key legislators that something has to be done about the illegal animal trade. It's coming back, and strongly; one of the unfortunate by-products of prosperity.”

“Damned right,” he said. “Any progress on the LA thing from your side?”

“Nothing so far,” she said. “We're combing through the transit records at our Oakland facility, cargo manifests and so forth, but of course it would have been covered by fake documentation.”

“Bet the publicity doesn't help,” he said. “There was more coverage of the LA thing than I'd have wanted.”

“Yes, and the TV people did their usual distort-and-get-wrong,” she said. “Bizarre indeed. There was even something about extinct animals! Did you turn up any dinosaurs or saber-tooths?”

“No, just rare ones—and a live California condor, believe it or not.”

“A genuine California condor is impressive enough. Quite a nice bit of knight-errantry, rescuing a
Gymnogyps californianus,
no less. To hell with beautiful princesses.”

He chuckled; the run was starting to make his lungs burn a bit, but it was a good feeling. He paced the words to the rise and fall of his barrel chest: “Not exactly extinct,” he said. “Not that that was any credit to the poachers; they were trying hard enough.”

She managed to glow at him while running, and he smiled to himself at his instinctive urge to preen.
I'm no more immune than the next man to showing off before a pretty girl,
he thought, and went on: “Yeah, and a damned strange bird it was; too
clean.
”

“Clean?” she said, frowning.

“No lead, no pesticides—and strange. The San Diego Zoo people had its DNA tested. It wasn't related to any of the other condors, which . . .”

It was a relief to talk to somebody about the aspects that had been teasing at his mind. When he was finished they ran in silence for ten minutes or so; he glanced aside from time to time, watching her frown in concentration.

“I think your friend Martinez's explanation is the most likely one,” she said after a long moment. “Excluding time travel, that is! But if there is
one
condor from an unknown breeding population, it's nearly certain that there are more. And the poachers know where they are, and might well kill some while they're trying to capture them. They're not likely to be experts, or very careful.”

Despite the heat of the day and the sweat that was running down his body and plastering the T-shirt to his muscular torso, Tom felt his blood run cold.

“Yeah,” he said. “I was afraid of that.”

“Best bet would be to have people out looking, and beat the poachers to it,” she said thoughtfully. “I can pass the word to HQ and have our contacts in the Sierra Club and some of the birding clubs keep an eye out. If they knew there actually might be unexpected condors, they'd be a lot more likely to find them, right?”

“Good idea!” he enthused.
Lord, tell me I haven't become a
complete
bureaucrat, and started discounting whatever nonofficials can do.
“Hey, we're back!”

“How time flies when you're having fun!” Adrienne said. “Just a second—I have to make a phone call.”

Tom walked up and down while he waited, cooling gradually—or cooling as much as you could on a Sacramento afternoon in June; it had the great merit of being better than July or August, but that was about it. He caught a few words of what Adrienne was saying, particularly toward the end of it, when she raised her voice.