Harvest of Stars (26 page)

“Now, snap it out, what’d you do on Thursday?”

“Bueno, uh—”

A light blinked red on the panel. Kyra saw, two or three klicks down the road, how traffic was bunching. Her throat went tight. “Oh-oh,” Valencia muttered.

He punched the receiver button. A shield bearing the infinity symbol appeared in the screen. A genderless voice: “Attention. There is a special inspection point ahead. Proceed on automatic. Do not leave your vehicle unless directed. The delay is estimated at about half an hour. This is an emergency situation and all persons are required to give the authorities their full cooperation. Stand by for further word.”

Kyra retracted the shade and peered up through the canopy. Two flitters cruised back and forth. “Is this on our account?” she whispered around the lump.

Valencia’s features had congealed into a bronze mask. “I’d lay odds it is,” he replied without tone.

“But we could be anywhere. How can they know?”

“They don’t, but they seem to think they have a scent worth pursuing. A two-way stop, you notice, and no turnoff before we get there. I daresay every road out of
Portland Integrate is blocked. No news announcement that might scare us off.”

“Wait, Esther Blum said something about not having been in a quivira for—decades—”

Valencia nodded. “That’s probably their hint. I worried about it, but when Sr. Guthrie insisted he couldn’t lose time lying low, I saw no point in mentioning it. We’d just have to take our chances.” Kyra shuddered. “Esther! Do you suppose they—” “I wouldn’t put it past them. If they have taken her in and, by now, wrung out of her that Kyra Davis is traveling with Anson Guthrie, we’re cooked. However, you recall that that’s unlikely.”

The pilot nodded stiffly. The mere fact that Blum had done something out of the ordinary shouldn’t seem—to whatever detective was assigned to trail her without having been told why—cause for arrest. From the quivira she had returned to her hotel. There another gunjin waited. He was to smuggle her out, and his organization would hide her for a couple of days. When she came back to Baker she’d tell people she’d been gadding about in Portland. It was not unreasonable to hope that the Sepo would assume this was true and their operative had simply, clumsily, lost her.

It had seemed almost a needless precaution. It had turned out to be vital. Somebody higher up in the hunt had received the report on Blum. Perhaps, desperate, he had ordered that anything at all unusual concerning anyone associated with Guthrie be called to his attention. A search tree program could readily do that. He’d supposed there was an off chance this was a clue, and had mobilized local forces to throw up road blocks. If Kyra got by, her story accepted, the Sepo ought soon to figure they’d misled themselves, and Blum ought to be safe from them when she came home. If Kyra did not pass— She refused to imagine what would follow.

Valencia leaned toward her. Under the black bangs, his jewel had gone topaz. “Listen, Pilot Davis,” he said. “They will not detect Guthrie unless they take this car
apart. We mustn’t give them reason to think that might be a good idea. I counted on grooming you till you could answer any question shot at you easier than if you were telling the truth. No such luck. But we can still pass if you don’t show you’re worried. Annoyed, curious, yes, but you’ve got nothing to hide, nothing to be afraid of. Can you carry that off?”

She ran tongue over lips. “I’ll … try.”

Slowing, their car reached the end of the line and halted. After a minute those ahead rolled forward a few meters and theirs followed. The line stopped again. A truck arrived to fill the rear view. They were hemmed in. Kyra smelled the sweat in her armpits, rank, and felt it, cold.

Valencia regarded her through a thick silence until he murmured, “I’m sorry, Pilot Davis, but I don’t believe you can swing this.”

“I never was a very skilled liar. Have you any suggestions?”

His eyes narrowed. Irrelevantly, she noticed that they were long-lashed and russet. “I do,” he answered slowly. “You may not like it.”

“We’ll see.”

“Por favor, understand, in my brotherhood we don’t funnyjump with a client. If you decline this notion, that’s the end of it and I’ll try to think of something else.”

Blood thudded in her temples. “You mean—the two of us—”

He nodded. “Quite natural, if a couple on friendly terms find a better way of passing time in line than turning on the multi. Then one would expect the lady to get rather flustered and out of breath.”

Suddenly Kyra must laugh. Must howl her laughter till the car rang with it. “Esther said … every good cause … whoop! … demands sacrifices. I’ve … whoop! … made worse ones. C’mere, you.”

It was a bench seat, though with separate backrests. His jewel glowed scarlet. He was unrighteously handsome. He glided to her. She laid arms about his neck. His went around her waist. As their lips touched, his hands began to caress her back. The kiss developed at its own pace. When
in full bloom, it made every other that she could remember at the moment, except maybe her awkward first, seem thin.

He explored leisurely. She had a hand under his shirt before his was under her blouse.

Once, coming up for air, she glimpsed a police car going by. Bueno, so much the better. Put on a convincing show.

She wasn’t quite on her back when they came to the checkpoint, but knew whirlingly that if the wait had lasted much longer she would have been. Damn. No, better this way. Wasn’t it? She ran fingers through her rumpled hair and gave the officer at the window a blurry smile.

He grinned back. He was a civil policeman, one of several under the command of a single tan-clad Sepo. That man strode forth and flung the questions he must have uttered a hundred times already. He was haggard, baggy-eyed, probably running on stim, his competence not worn down but his mind, perhaps, a wee bit distractable by a steamy sight. Kyra’s ident as Fireball alerted him to make some additional, nonroutine queries. She answered dreamily. Nero chimed in, showing less calm himself than she felt sure he’d have been able to. Meanwhile the police opened the engine and luggage compartments, checked through their possessions, and scanned about with an instrument that must be a Guthrie detector. Of course, they didn’t know that …

“Pass,” the Sepo clipped. It broke from him: “You might behave more decently in future!”

Valencia returned a half apologetic smile, took over the controls, and slipped the car forward. A few seconds later it was back on automatic at cruise speed.

Kyra sagged back. “Whoo-ee,” she breathed. Exultation awoke. “We made it, Nero, we made it!”

“So far.” He looked straight before him.

“Oye, don’t be nervous. You were, uh, you were ultra. I enjoyed every hertz of that waveband.”

He glanced at her. The jewel had faded to pale rose. For an instant, warmth and teeth flashed. “Gracias. I did too.” The smile died. “Don’t worry, Pilot Davis. I won’t presume on it.”

The metal came back into his face and words, into the very way he sat apart from her. “There may be more roadblocks later. Or that Sepo may have second thoughts. Like, if you want to go to Hawaii, why not fly straight from Portland? Is the reason really what your behavior suggested, that you’re taking a small extra vacation? If he calls headquarters about it and they scan the data received today, they’ll almost certainly find you’ve been the only Fireball employee who left Portland by ground. That could make them wonder. As soon as we’re under the horizon of those flitters, I’m going to turn off, the first chance I get.”

Kyra hated feeling the glory drain from her. “Where to?”

“I know a safe house. I’ll check the possibility, there, of changing our arrangements so we don’t have to go on to San Francisco tomorrow. It means letting two or three more people in on part of our trajectory, but they’re pretty reliable and if the enemigos do get interested in a couple fitting our description, they’re apt to beswarm the Bay Area.”

“Jesus María,” Kyra said weakly, “what’d we do without you, Guthrie and me?”

She barely heard his chuckle. “Get caught, I suppose. You did quite well at first, for paisanos, but this is my trade. Now let’s rehearse you some more, just in case.”

The offroad they found was paved but had no guide cable beneath. He took manual control with a deftness that became apparent after they got onto secondaries and tertiaries twisting through the mountains. On some of these the surface was cracked and potholed; others were dirt, eroded away to little more than trails, where dust smoked high behind the car. Wheels snarled and squealed. Curves tossed Kyra sideways. Often she looked straight down a slope of brush and boulders to the bottom of a canyon. “I thought I was a hot pilot,” she finally had to say. A bump rattled her teeth. “Is this kind of driving required by law?”

“I want us under cover as soon as may be,” he explained curtly. “A red Phoenix was a disguise of sorts on the main
route, but to any aircraft that passes over us here, it’s like a torch in tinder.”

She made herself fall into a dance of muscles responding to motion. At least, in his concentration, he wasn’t drilling her any longer. Besides, the country was lovely. Under an efficient government it might today have been another set of gene-tailored plantations or mineral-extracting nano-tech sites. As it was, its steeps were virtually deserted. Conifers serrated the ridges, peaks lifted majestic into the wind. Occasionally she spied the ruins of a home, occasionally she glimpsed the sea.

She didn’t know how closely he had calculated it, but their fuel was near exhaustion when they pulled into a remnant hamlet. While the attendant at the station exchanged their buckyglobe for one freshly charged with hydrogen, they got sandwiches and soft drinks to go in a place across the solitary street. “We don’t see a lot of tourists,” said the woman behind the counter wistfully. “Hard times.”

“I’m sorry, we have to run,” Kyra replied. Whatever they did, they’d be remembered here. Bueno, it was unlikely the hounds would come this precise way.

Munching and drinking, Valencia drove in less hellish wise. As hunger eased, Kyra felt a measure of peace steal over her. “Who are these people we’re bound for?” she asked.

“Their name is Farnum,” he said. “Jim and Anne Farnum. Mostly he works on a fish ranch, she keeps house and raises a little produce for the gourmet market.” Nothing unique there, she thought. Not High World, but not exactly Low World either. “No children, which is why they can do what else they do.”

“They’re—with your outfit, then?”

“No, nor with the Gentlemen Adventurers, whose territory extends that far north. They’re crypto-Chaotics. Part of the organized underground. Not as activists, but they provide a way station, a communications link, a hiding place at need. I wouldn’t be surprised but what they watch over a shedful of weapons in the woods somewhere.”

Crack, Kyra thought, this was getting in deep. “How do
you know about them? You, uh, Sally Severins aren’t revolutionaries, are you?”

“No. Most of us, personally, wouldn’t be sorry to see the government overthrown, provided its successor doesn’t curb us more effectively than the Avantists have managed to. But a brotherhood
qua
brotherhood has to be apolitical.”

Valencia seemed to consider for a while before he went on: “Now and then the police have discreetly engaged us for a job. We are, after all, officially a licensed personal service agency. Even the Sepo has tried a time or two, I’ve heard, but been refused, precisely because the purpose there involved politics. The Chaotic junta knows this and appreciates it. Hence we’ve done work for them—not specifically against the government, but helpful in various ways. I may not tell you more. Except for this, that it has brought about a degree of liaison. It’s sometimes mutually useful for certain brothers to know about people like the Farnums, and we can be trusted with the information as much as any undergrounder can. I’m betting that they’ll not only shelter us tonight, they’ll give us a boost … because this time our opposition is their enemy.”

“I see.” Kyra regarded his profile. Light slanting misty-gold from the west brought it forth against darkling trees. “You don’t talk like what I’d expected,” she said.

He smiled. “How should I?”

“You’re well educated, aren’t you? How’d you get into this line of, of work?”

“How do most people get into theirs?” He shrugged. “They drift in.”

“I always knew what I wanted to be.”

“And made it. Lucky. But you had Fireball to belong to, and Fireball has Anson Guthrie.” Valencia’s voice lowered. “A gunjin isn’t a wage robot. He’s reasonably free, and he finds use for everything that’s in him.” Sharply: “I’d better speed up again. Por favor, Pilot Davis, don’t distract me.”

Kyra sank back into the enfolding seat. Guthrie—How was he taking this, locked in blackness and silence? Bueno,
he’d toughed out a lot of things in the past. Death itself, for one.

The sun was at the horizon, huge and orange, casting a broken bridge over an argent sea, when they reached Noyo. The village overlooked cliffs above a narrow bay, at whose beach a few buildings nestled, with boats along a dock or anchored out in the water. The rest of the houses were above, old and few, three of them crumbling abandoned. Valencia halted before one that stood somewhat apart, screened by gnarled silvery-gray cypresses. “Here we are,” he said.

Kyra got out. Her body rejoiced to stretch. Wind off the ocean ruffled hair and slid sensuously cool around skin. It had a keen-edged smell, not much like the odors that wafted over Hawaiian strands. Its flutter was well-nigh the only sound she heard till her feet and her companion’s crunched on a graveled walk.

The house was large. Its antique frame construction recalled Baker, but this paint was bleached sallow. Archaically, Valencia struck the door with his knuckles. A man opened it. He too was sturdily built and weathered, his rufous beard grizzled though the hair above said he was in early middle age at most. “Saludos, amigo,” Valencia greeted. “Can you doss us tonight? This lady is cleared for the run.”

Farnum went impassive. “Come in,” he rumbled.