I did recognize the house, from a print called “A cold winter morning.” The recognition of the scene did something warm inside me. Before the string of associations could start again, I shut it off with another question.
“Are all the homes in Currier and Ives taken from old prints?”
“No, but they’re all built in the old style. This is the course where we take the tourists around, and the town is made to look authentic, too. But we have a very limited number of people we let in. The waiting list for reservations is years long.”
“What kind of excuse did you use to explain to the business community why you shut down the Christmas tourism business at the hottest time of the year? The businessmen must have gone ballistic.”
“No, I wouldn’t say that. You’re not going to understand this, but what I told them was the truth.”
“You what? But those Easter eggs are classified! And what about the panic—”
“Do you see any panic?”
“Uh. No.”
“That’s right. And as far as classified goes, not in the Republic of Currier and Ives. I told them the exact circumstances of what was up, and they all understood why we had to close down. We don’t have anyone here who has a panic attack every time he hears the word ‘nuke.’ ”
We passed a spot on the side of the road where a sleigh trail came out of the woods. “I live down that way,” Jo said. “The team hasn’t been through yet to plow off the snow. That wouldn’t have mattered if Mary Lou hadn’t thrown that shoe. I could have gone through it easily. I hope she makes it back to the house all right.”
There was another thing I wondered about. “Why you, Jo? Since everybody knows the truth about why I’m here, you didn’t have to be my guide to keep it a secret. Why didn’t you just have one of your aides take me around since it’s the holidays?”
“ ‘Aide’,” Jo said. “I only have one assistant. And Andy has a family, that’s why. A wife and two little ones. He should be home with them. My kids are long gone—one’s in orbit around Venus, and my girl is about seven thousand klicks to the west and three klicks down at Pacifica. And my husband passed on years ago.
“How about you? How’d you get stuck with this chore?”
I just chuckled. “Same reason. Everyone else has family to spend Christmas with.”
“Well, then, I guess you’ll just have to spend it with me,” Jo said. “That is, if we’re still here.”
Ten minutes later we came in view of another farm house. Typically New England in design, but I didn’t recognize it as coming from any Currier and Ives print I’d ever seen.
“This is Buck Black’s place,” Jo said. “This is where Manny was a boarder for awhile. Buck’s daughter is the girl that Manny was caught with, so if Buck had seen him, his body would have been leaning frozen stiff against the barn and waiting for us. I don’t see it, do you?”
I wasn’t sure if Jo was being serious or not, and I didn’t pursue it.
We pulled up to the front porch, but then Buck came out of the barn from behind us. “Hey there, Governor. Merry Christmas. You too, stranger.”
Another stereotype shot to hell. Buck Black was a black man, probably in his fifties, and I could tell he was put together like a tree even through the bulky coat he was wearing. It had just never occurred to me that Currier and Ives would have anyone other than white people living in it, but I couldn’t honestly say what had made me think so.
“This is Jake Morgan, Buck. The man from the Patrol.”
“No, I didn’t see Manfred around here,” Buck said without being asked. “If I did, you would have found his dead, frozen ass leaning against the barn.” Jo gave me a glance at that and a wink. He went on. “Livvy’s a changed girl now, since she’s married and had the baby. No more wild oats to sow in that girl. But I’d never let that bastard come around again.”
“You did tell her that we think he may have planted the bomb around here, didn’t you?” Jo asked. “I know she doesn’t have a TV or even a radio out at her place.”
“ ’Course, Governor. I asked her if he’d been around, and she shuddered, said no, and ran for her Bible. Didn’t actually get to mention the bomb. But I told you, she’s a changed girl. She’s a good girl, now.
“Now, you two want to come in for a cup of coffee?” I could tell by the way he asked that he didn’t want us to accept.
“No. Thanks anyway, Buck. It will be dark by the time we get back to my place as it is, so I guess we’ll just head out.” Black looked relieved and we turned around and headed back the way we came.
Here this was my mission, and I hadn’t even asked the guy a single question myself.
“Buck comes from a very strict Baptist background. He died inside when he caught his little girl with Manny. It was his wife who’d wanted to take in a boarder. I don’t know if he ever forgave her, but once she died the light went out in his soul. At least, until Livvy got married and gave him the granddaughter. Now he’s overprotective, but he’s a good man.”
“Are there a lot of people like him here in the Republic? He seems hostile to the world.”
“I wouldn’t say a lot. Buck just wants to be left alone. The world can go its way, and he’ll go his. Nothing wrong with that.”
The governor’s home was another place out of a print. The inside looked like it came from a print, too; it was all comfortable and warm. The house had a big fireplace and I helped the governor carry in wood from the woodpile, but only after wed gone inside and she got me that pair of boots shed promised me.
Supper was ham and corn and beans and sweet potatoes and baked potatoes, finished off with apple pie à la mode. The governor fixed it all herself, too. Granted, her kitchen did have most of the modern stuff so it took her only fifteen minutes to prepare from a standing start, but the food was Earth-fresh and -grown (it does make a difference!), and by the time we were sitting in front of the fire at seven o’clock (1900 hours, though it was actually 0400 Luna time) sipping hot cider and brandies, I was feeling pretty good about the Republic of Currier and Ives.
It’d be a pity if this particular part of it was blown to hell.
“Tomorrow we’ll go into town and you can talk to some folks who knew him a lot better than me,” Jo said. “Besides, the town is another place he might have wanted to hide the bomb, though no one says they saw him there, either.”
“This is a hopeless pursuit, isn’t it?” I said. “You knew that before I came, too.”
“It’s the nature of the problem,” Jo admitted.
Manfred Rolff had left us with an impossible task. A mini-nuke—leave it anywhere within a kilometer or two of what you want to destroy, and that’s all you need to do. All the commandoes had been able to get out of him was the approximate time it was supposed to go off, and that it was in Currier and Ives (they’d actually caught up with him in Peru). It wasn’t at all certain that Manfred would have even come to this part of the Republic, despite the local connection. If he had wanted to wreak maximum financial havoc, he could better have left the bomb up in the New Hampshire region where the posh ski resorts are, or further up the coast where the bulk of Currier and Ives brand seafood gets processed.
Mark had been honest with me before I left that this mission was likely to be a failure. But as he’d put it, for political reasons, the Patrol had to at least send someone to try.
I wondered about that, though. Had Mark suspected that Jo would have told the entire population what was up? He said he’d have to kill me if I let out the secret of the Easter egg. Mark is a decent man. My guess was that his superiors just wanted him to send someone down to look around. Then they’d wait for the bomb to go off, decry the disaster to the press, deny the real cause, and wait for the furor to go away since, after all, those folks in Currier and Ives were just a bunch of nuts anyway.