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"So what does the flea-ranch over there want with the Bulletproof?"
"I'm just trying to get from point A to point B."
"We'll be at camp a little after sundown. Don't fall off."
Gib drove the legworm a little faster through open country. After a few unheeded yawlps, the mule trotted behind to avoid being dragged. The rolling blue hills left off and they climbed onto the beginning of a plateau, where they gave man, grog, and mule a breather. Valentine saw wooded mountaintops in the distance.
"Keep your guns handy," Zak warned as night fell, looking over the landscape with a monocular. "There are guerillas in those mountains."
They struck a road and followed it to a waypoint town of a dozen empty homes, unless you counted barn owls and mice, a couple of hollow corner bars, and an overgrown gas station and market once dependent on the farm clientele.
Valentine marked fresh legworm furrows everywhere. Some ran right up to the road surface before bouncing off like a ricocheting bullet.
They passed up a rise, and a boy standing guard over the road and his bicycle waved them toward a commanding-looking barn. A pile of weedy rubble that might once have been a house stood close to the road, and a crisscross of torn earth emanated from it. Valentine guessed that from a low-flying plane the landscape would look like an irregular spiderweb. Legworms stood everywhere, pale blue billboards in the moonshine.
"Who's that with you, Zak?" a man afoot called.
"Visitors looking for the Dispatcher. I'm vouching, and I'll bring 'em in. Where is he?"
"Up in the barn."
Zak turned around, an easy operation on the wide back of the legworm. "We're here, folks. You'll have to leave your guns, of course."
"Urn, how do we ... ?" Duvalier asked.
"Get a newbie pole, Royd," Cookie called down.
"No, I'll help," Ahn-Kha said, sliding down the tapered tail. He lifted an arm to Duvalier. "Here."
Valentine jumped down, as did Bee and Price.
"Why not just jump?" Valentine asked Duvalier quietly. "I've seen you dive headfirst from two stories."
"Just a helpless lil' ol' thing without a big man around, Val," Duvalier said. "No harm in having them think that, anyway."
They got out of the lane and made a pile of their weapons and packs.
"Coffee's by the fire pit. Toilet holes are up in the old house," Zak said. "There's a lime barrel, so send down a chaser. Let me know when you're ready to see the Dispatcher."
"Bee-guard!" Price said to his assistant.
"Doesn't she have to use the toilet pits?" Duvalier asked.
"She's not shy," Price said. "And she always buries."
"I would just as soon not scoot my hindquarters on the grass," Ahn-Kha said.
Cookie stretched. "There's plenty of New Universal Church Improved Testaments up there. Help yourself."
Valentine wanted coffee more than anything. Duvalier took her walking stick and headed for the rubbled house.
They'd missed dinner, but a line of stretchers propped up on barrels still held bread and roast squash. Sweating teenage girls washed utensils in boiling water as a gray-haired old couple supervised from behind glowing pipes.
"Coffee?" Valentine asked.
"That pot, stranger," one of the girls said, tucking stray hair into a babushka. Valentine took a tin cup out of the hot wash water, choosing a mild scalding over the used cups tossed on the litters and plywood panels, and shook it dry.
It was real coffee. Not the Jamaican variety he'd grown regrettably used to while with Malia at Jayport, but real beans nonetheless. He liked the Bulletproofs even better.
