James Hendrix was lost in Great Expectations; Miss Havisham had just gone up in flames, and he was considering whether it might be worth opening the ice box for some cold roast chicken, and contemplating his tight waistband, trying not to let the idea prey on his mind. Can’t stay under fifty years old, much as I’d like to, but I’d sure like to stay under a hundred kilograms.
He was far ahead of his students in the literacy class that he taught most nights of the week. But conditions were perfect for reading: on this bright, sunny day, opening one set of drapes and laying a mirror on the floor to reflect up to his white ceiling made lovely indirect reading light where he lay sprawled on his comfortable couch. Besides, he would rather be doing this than anything else in the world. Perhaps some cold water would help him ignore his stomach? He could—
The knock at the door was followed at once by scratching, so he knew it had to be Leslie Antonowicz and Wonder. He pretended to sigh at the interruption, but three seconds later as he opened the door, he was grinning.
“Come on, old man,” Leslie said. “It’s beautiful outside but I had radio room crypto duty all morning, so I couldn’t get out to the fun part of the woods.” By “fun part,” he knew the tall, slim blonde woman meant some mixture of “scary” and “exhausting.” She was beaming at him. “I saw that one window open and knew you were lying here in the dark turning into a library fossil. Now come on, you and Wonder both need a walk.” Wonder, hearing his name, woofed once; he was a shepherd-husky cross—James always said, crossed with a moose.
“Just so you don’t expect us to use the same trees,” James said, pulling his boots on.
The morning’s rain had left the air damp and cool, and the sunlight since hadn’t warmed things much; down by the rain-swollen Arkansas River, they followed the trail away from town, watching Wonder run back and forth and smell everything. Friends from long before Daybreak, they didn’t have to talk; James knew that Leslie usually didn’t want to spend her weekends in his indolent company, so there must be something on her mind, and she knew she could take as long as she wanted about getting around to it.
He wanted to watch for the moment when she’d say something, but that was too much like watching her all the time, and he didn’t feel free to do that: years ago he’d let himself get fascinated by her grace, by the big eyes and high cheekbones, and by her lithe, muscular body, until awkwardly, angrily, she’d told him it was creepy. So he looked at the sky and the river and enjoyed her nearness.
After a while, she said, “Last night, when I was walking home from Dell’s Brew, something just slightly weird happened.” After a few more steps she said, “Arnie Yang asked me to walk him home.”
He fought down the twinge of jealousy; Arnie was their boss and close to Leslie’s age. Word had it that the girl he was courting at Mota Elliptica had died in the tribal raid there. He’d long suspected Leslie told him more about her love life than she really wanted to, just to keep him from developing hopes again, and was sorry she had to do that.
She still hadn’t spoken, and he was calm now. Keep it light. “It’s not that unusual for a man to ask you to go home with him.”
“No, it’s not, you dirty old man, but what was really unusual was, he just wanted me to walk with him. Expressed no interest in having me come inside. Really didn’t talk much, either. Now, since I always take Wonder when I go to Dell’s, it wasn’t unreasonably dangerous—after we dropped Arnie off we went on home, me and the mutt, no problems on the way and for part of it we walked along with the watch, anyway. But… well, everyone’s heard how brave Arnie was in the battle at Mota Elliptica, and everyone knows he’s pretty good with those double knives he carries. If anything, I should’ve been asking him to walk me home.”
“Maybe he’s just shy or got cold feet.”
“No, I’m sure he wasn’t trying to hit on me, James, because I have a pretty good sense of that, and because he didn’t hang around me at the bar before, and he didn’t ask like a guy who was trying to find company for the night.”
“Hunh. What did he ask like?”
“Well, that’s the weird part I wanted to talk to you about. He asked like a guy who was really scared. At least that was my first impression. But if you’re bringing along backup because you’re afraid of something, don’t you tell the backup what it is?”
“Well, I would. Maybe Arnie is weird.”
“Definitely Arnie is weird. I’ve just never seen him weird this way before—really, he was terrified. But he didn’t tell me what of. Do you know anything about him?”
“Just what I know from working with him. I archived his report on the Battle of Mota Elliptica yesterday afternoon, but it was more or less a normal action report. It’s a mystery to me, too.”
They walked for another hour and a half, and then James fixed them a light supper before Leslie went home, well before sundown because she had early morning duties. He watched the tall, strong girl and the big dog till they went out of sight around a building, then adjusted his mirror to catch the last hour of sunlight, and returned to Great Expectations.
2 DAYS LATER. PUEBLO, COLORADO. 10:15 PM MST. MONDAY, JULY 21, 2025.
Tonight was starting out like Stephen Ecco’s favorite books and daydreams did. Heather O’Grainne’s note, delivered in a neat pocket-drop by Patrick, had asked for a night meeting and specified “tell no one you are coming.” Even if it was Heather, not M or Wild Bill Donovan, and the organization was the Reconstruction Research Center, not MI6 or Mosby’s Raiders, still, it was a secret night meeting straight out of his fifteen-year-old self’s fantasies.
Central Pueblo was inhabited, but it was already dark; candles and lamp oil were expensive, and nowadays people rose early. He saw the watch only once, from more than a mile away.
Knowing himself too well, he tried to fight down his excitement, not wanting the sheer romance to affect the mission. Sure hope it is a mission or I’m gonna feel like a total fool with a headful of dreams. Which ain’t exactly unfamiliar.
Something moved.
He turned, center low, body neutral—and laughed. A gigantic possum scuttled across the road. You could be a little more romantic, dude. But then I bet you’re thinkin’, “You could be droppin’ a little more food, dude.”
The guard nodded and let Ecco pass. He ascended the dark stairs in the old courthouse; the only open doorway glowed with candlelight.
“Steve, thanks for coming.” Heather sat in an armchair with her feet propped up on a desk. “I’m claiming pregnant lady privilege and not getting up; Arnie will show you what’s up and then we’ll talk about what we need you to do.
Arnie Yang had laid out maps on an old picnic table; standing over it with a pointer, he looked like he was running some weird casino game. On the tabletop, sheets of drafting vellum covered topo maps of southern Illinois and Indiana. Pale Bluff was near the lower left corner of the map, and the upper right just reached to Fort Wayne. A swarm of different marks gathered on the left of the Wabash; penciled lines intersected in the Palestine/Warsaw area and just east of Bloomington. Bridges on the Wabash and the Tippecanoe were tagged with bits of construction paper.
“It looks like you want me to go some beyond Pale Bluff?”
“We sure do,” Heather said.
“And come back alive,” Arnie said. “That’s the tough part. There is something real bad happening east of the Wabash and the Tippecanoe, and north of the Ohio; that lobe of the Lost Quarter is much more lost than it was even two months ago, and we can’t find out what’s happening.” His strong, thin fingers walked like dividers down the line of the Wabash, tapping black arrows that pointed across the river. “Stations across the Wabash stopped reporting around mid-May. The flow of refugees dried up by early June. Since then, five different local governments have tried to send someone over onto the left bank of the Wabash, plus these two attempts to cross the Tippecanoe. Every mission disappeared completely, and those were all local guys that knew the territory and had some background. One was a force of four guys.