Third World (18 page)

The whole world sort of came to a stop.
When it picked up to the normal level, it was somehow muted as if
things would never be quite the same again.

“
Why thank you, sir. That
was lovely.” She smiled impishly up at him, secure as it seemed in
her power.

Hank didn’t move a muscle, it was like
he couldn’t…or maybe he just shouldn’t. Not just yet.

She just stood there, waiting in his
arms, as the band picked up a new number…he didn’t know what to
do.

“
Oh, boy. Are we in trouble
now…”

Hank stared into those eyes and could
not help but agree.

***

Patricia Kane made some kind of remark
and Newton noted it for future reference. Something about everyone
else got to go. When Jeff Roy sort of disappeared for a while and
had no good explanation upon his return, Newton looked at his
watch.

“
Gentlemen, and lady.” They
regarded him with bland faces and secret thoughts.

“
Kane and Roy stay with the
trucks. Oscar and Barnes come with me—full kit, weapons loaded but
not cocked, full safety, and helmet visors up.” The faces showed
it.

More boredom, more work, more bother.
They were all big, tough soldiers, a ludicrous notion in Barnes’
case, and they didn’t like it. Still, there was nothing else on. He
could read them like a book sometimes.

“
You in the vehicles can
listen to music, fall asleep, talk to each other on the radio.
However, I would prefer if you would keep an eye on us. We’ll be
going live in a minute or so. Please don’t wander off, okay?” This
was for Roy’s benefit.

He looked at his small detail, the only
law and order for three hundred kilometres in any direction and
smiled. There was some irony in the situation, any man could see
that. There wasn’t likely to be much trouble. He was sort of
itching to see what the locals did on a Saturday night in a hopping
town like this.

People had come and gone from the
dining room. The bar had a few patrons, most looking bored as hell
but obviously not the dancing sort. Every population had a
percentage that were serious drinkers.

They would be here every
day, and sort of keep the place going, and
vice versa.

“
Let’s go.” Newton turned
and stepped out the door and down the walk and out into the
darkness of the street.

“
Kane?’

Her response came promptly in his
headpiece.

“
Sir?”

“
Can you see
anything?”

“
Ah. A couple of lights. Not
much otherwise.”

“
It will get better when we
get indoors again.” He went on for the benefit of the troops. “At
least we’ve confirmed the system is up.”

The dance hall was two blocks away
according to his information and this had been confirmed by quick
directions from Mrs. Gregory. He turned left down the street and
followed the predominant noise.

Gravel crunched underfoot and local
talk was mostly grateful for a dry spell. Newton was grateful for
it as well, it was the first time they’d had a chance to see the
country in its glory, for surely that’s what it was—a vast, green
panorama, in fact reminding Newton of brochures and advertising
posters in a train station, as he recalled. Those posters were for
other worlds, and enough people flocked to them…the night was pitch
black at the end of the street, which trailed off into nothing,
just blackness and stars coming right down to the
tree-tops.

They turned right and up ahead, light
spilled into the street, revealing a fair number of folks, none of
them apparently armed according to his reading. They were just
milling around and loitering and talking away in front of a
brightly lit doorway. The music was interesting, a fit backdrop to
the dark of the night, the cold blue pinpricks of the stars in the
sky and a faint glow in the southeast to show where a moon would
soon appear.

Something primeval and atavistic
stirred deep within him. It really was an adventure, he supposed.
That was one way of looking at it.

Someone spotted them, and the talk
quieted suddenly, they all turned and looked, and then the talk
picked up a little artificially in volume again.

“
Oh! I can see things now,
sir.”

“
Yeah, me too.”

“
Thank you, Shapiro
out.”

A minute passed.

“
Good work.” There was a
perceivable smile in his voice as Newton said it.

The four of them chuckled and mumbled
back and forth but it subsided quickly enough. Too many people on
live microphones required a fair amount of both discipline and
discretion. In that sense, this bunch wasn’t so bad—they were sort
of in the doghouse and they knew it, but he was pretty easy on them
and the shift had to end at some point. They were just
people.

That was one way of looking
at it. The three of them marched along at a comfortable pace past
lit and unlit buildings, some of them little more than walls, gable
ends and nothing but tent-cloth for a roof. The odd fabric roof
glowed from some small inner light. Probably tallow candles or oil
lamps, and he wondered just how often these small towns burned
down. The place at its best had a certain picturesque beauty of its
own, or so Newton was finding. It had just taken a while. It’s not
that he would miss it, but Newton would certainly remember it. In
that sense, it really
was
a kind of an adventure.

Travel broadens a man’s mind, or so
they say.

“
I hear music.” She was just
trying to be helpful. “All three. Audio pickups are working
well.”

Roy confirmed that he had them as well
from the other truck.

“
Yes, thank you.” The
intervening thirty metres passed quickly enough and Newton raised a
hand in greetings.

“
Hello. Lovely evening.” He
nodded pleasantly as one or two people responded politely enough,
with his two crewmen behind with their weapons slung on their
backs, looking out from under their smoky visors as if they didn’t
have a care in the world.

It was better than sitting alone back
in the trucks.

Pushing his way in through the crowd
after a brief but unanticipated pause to buy tickets, Newton
resolved to teach his people another lesson. He put the stubs into
his side-pouch for later accounts.

The place was bedlam, but when people
became aware of them, they moved back and shuffled aside readily
enough. With the two of them literally right on his heels, he
finally located the bar.

Off to their left, the dance floor only
seemed less crowded as the wheeling, rotating mass of people
danced. Some people were in shoes and some were in socks but they
were all pretty nicely dressed, compared to some of what they had
seen during the workday. The dancers passed by in a frenzy of some
kind of unknown passion. He recognized his people here and there,
oblivious to them so far and apparently having a good
time.

He turned and looked at the
barman.

“
Whiskey.” He plunked down a
fat coin, change from their admission fee, as the eyes of the
troopers bored into the side of his neck as they stood there
looking stupid. “I’d like a receipt.”

“
Just one, sir?”

“
Yes.” Lieutenant Newton
Shapiro smiled in a kind of bliss as the gentleman poured one out
and slid it across the scuffed dark planks, damp with constant
traffic in beer mostly, judging by the smell coming up off of
it.

Command—and responsibility—had their
perks, his attitude implied.

He raised the glass and tipped it back,
sending hot fire into his belly.

“
Ah.”

He put the glass down and turned to
watch the action for a while before taking them home.

It was just one more set of
observations for his report.

Chapter Fifteen

A Kind of Magic in the
Air

There was a kind of magic in the air,
and it was like she felt it too. It was like they could dance the
whole night away, and probably would. Hank hadn’t felt anything
like this in years.

They were both having fun, Hank being
the gallant escort and perfect gentleman, especially after that
kiss. He wasn’t taking anything for granted. His mind raced but it
wasn’t getting too far.

With Polly, and her lithe figure,
spinning and twisting along with him, her shuffling feet a blur
sometimes and her eyes flashing unspoken messages at Hank, it was a
dream, a wonderful dream of the sort that you wished you didn’t
have to wake up from.

The crowd had pretty much reached its
peak, and in another hour or so a few folks would begin to drift
off home, perhaps the older ones, or the hardened core of the more
religious would be thinking of worship already and how they had
someone babysitting at home.

He led her by the hand off the
floor.

“
I’m having a wonderful
time. But I need a cold drink, how about you?”

“
Sounds good.”

They were confronted by a solid wall of
spectators and folks just catching their breath or waiting for
another good tune.

“
Excuse me, excuse me…” His
deep voice and commanding height did the rest.

Finally they found an oasis of several
square feet of open space, although the noise didn’t abate much.
The drummer had maybe had one too many by now and was not so much
getting out of tune as louder and louder as the night wore on. It
seemed as if the rest of the band had caught on and were trying to
keep up.

It struck Hank that they had to keep
the music loud enough for people to hear it, and the place was
getting busier by the minute, fueled by alcohol and hope or
something.

“
Ah!” She pulled her hair,
damp around the temples, back a bit from her face and looked up
tolerantly at him. “You really get going there,
sometimes.”

“
Er, thank you.” Hank pulled
out his new red bandanna and dabbed at his own forehead. “I thought
I was just trying to keep up with you.”

She chuckled and put her arm around
him, drawing him in close and giving him a squeeze from the
side.

He saw an opening.

“
Let’s get that
drink.”

Moseying along with his arm around her,
her hip bumping up against his in a comfortable familiarity, Hank
marveled at his good fortune and prayed it would
continue.

But one thing was for sure. They seemed
to like each other just fine.

***

Newton could easily imagine the
troopers exchanging glances when he wasn’t looking and settling in
for a long wait. When in doubt, lead.

He was aware that they were drawing a
few curious looks, but in general people accepted their
presence.

“
It’s all right. We’re only
staying for a few minutes.”

“
Yes, sir.” It was Oscar,
Barnes still wasn’t speaking to him.

Newton, idly considering another drink
just to drive the point home, and feeling surprisingly good about
things, watched a couple as they parted, the young lady departing
in what he presumed was the direction of the powder room or its
local cultural equivalent, and the man tall and older, very lean
and yet intelligent-looking in spite of his rather gauche jacket
and shiny black shoes.

The man turned, made brief eye contact,
confirming Newton’s initial impression of a good brain in there,
and then he made his way to Newton’s left. His voice was rich and
deep as he asked for a small pitcher of draft and a glass of
wine.

There was a table, recently vacated, it
was one of only nine or ten in the whole place and most likely the
fellow was hoping to nail it before someone else noticed. The party
leaving, four or five of them, were still trying to make some
impression on the solid phalanx of bodies intent on the floor,
where music and action throbbed anew.

“
Sir!”

It was Kane in the truck.

“
Yes. What is it?” His heart
picked up a little at the tone.

It sounded like some little thing must
have gone wrong.

“
We’ve got a
hit!”

“
What? You’ve got a what?”
It took some time to sink in, in combat conditions it wouldn’t be
good enough and he wished they were clearer sometimes on the
radios.

“
Yes, sir, I see it too.”
That was Jeff Roy.

“
A hit!” He glanced at Oscar
and Oscar, about to speak evidently, clamped his mouth
shut.

“
Talk to me.”

“
Facial recognition has
found a pattern and artificial aging confirms it.”

“
Keep talking.” A
hit!

The last thing Newton or anyone had
expected.

“
The subject just moved.
He’s tall, about forty years old with dark hair, male pattern
baldness, and he’s going to your left across the front…”