Jane said nothing.
He looked her in the eye. "Stop worrying so much. I'm not gonna do anything stupid. If I were a bigger guy, and a stronger guy, and a nicer guy, I'd go have it out with your boyfriend about that way you've been groaning at night." He shook his head, under the big paper hat. "I won't, though. I think I know what kind of guy Mulcahey is, and I think you're crazy to hook up with a guy like that. But hey, I'm not one to judge. That's your life, that's all your decision."
"Thanks a lot," she grated.
He smiled at her. "You're really happy here, aren't you?"
She was surprised.
"I've seen you act really crazy sometimes, Janey. And I still think you're acting pretty strange. But I've never seen you act so happy before." He smiled again. "You're chasing tornadoes in a wasteland! But you're waltzin' around here with a smile on your lips, and a song in your heart, and your little bouquet of fresh wildflowers. -...t's kind of sweet, actually."
Jane straightened to her full height and looked down at him. "Yes, Alex, I'm happy here. About everything but you, basically."
"You really belong with these people. You really like them."
"That's right. They're my people."
Alex narrowed his eyes. "And this guy you're with. He treats you all right? He wasn't beating you or anything really sick and twisted, was he?"
Jane looked around for eavesdroppers, smoldering with rage, then centered her eyes on him. "No. He doesn't beat me. I was fucking him. I like to flick him. Hard! Loud! A lot! I'm not ashamed about it, and you can't make me ashamed!" There was a hot flush in her cheeks and ears.
"Get this through your head! That is the man in my life!
He is my grand passion." She stared hard at Alex, until he dropped his gaze.
"I never thought I was gonna have a grand passion," she told him. "I didn't ever believe in that. I thought it was Hollywood fantasy, or something from a hundred years ago. But I have a grand passion now, and he's the one. There'll never be another man like him for me~ Ever!"
Alex took a step back. "Okay, okay."
"It's him and me till theaky falls in!"
Alex nodded quickly, his eyes wide. "Okay, I get it, Janey. Calm down."
"I am calm, you little creep. And it's no joke. You can't ever make it a joke, because you don't know one thing about it. I love him, and I'm happy with him, and we do what we do, and we are what we are, and you just better live with that! And you bettet never forget what I just told you.
Alex nodded. She could tell from the way he bit his lip that her words had sunk in-for better or worse, she'd connected. "It's okay, Janey. I'm not complaining. I'm glad I had a chance to see you acting like this, I really am. It's real weird, but it's refreshing." He shrugged, uneasily. I "The only thing is-you shouldn't have brought me out here. That just wasn't a good idea. I don't belong in any place like this. I'm not like these people. You should have left me alone." He lifted the pick carefully and placed on his narrow shoulder.
"You're gonna stay with the Troupe awhile, Alex?"
"I oughta make you take me home right away." He balanced the pick handle on his collarbone, clumsy and restless. "But I got no home to go to at the moment. Mexico is out, for obvious reasons. I'm sure not going back home to Papa in Houston. Pa p a acts even stranger than you do, and those clinic people might be lookin' for me there.... And anyway, there are possibilities in a setup like this. It's stupid for me to stay here, but I think I might do okay for awhile, if I can get everybody to mostly ignore me. Especially you." He turned away.
"Alex," she said.
He looked over his shoulder. "What?"
"Learn to hack something. Like everybody else does. Just so you can get along better."
He nodded. "Okay, Juanita. Have it your way."
ALEX FOLLOWED ELLEN Mae's precise but extremely confusing directions, got turned around several times, and finally found the paper-tagged stick she had driven into the earth to mark the spot. The fluttering paper tag marked a low trailing vine on the ground. The vine was about two meters long, with hairy, pointed, conical leaves, and it smelled rank and fetid. It harbored a large population of small black-and-orange beetles. It was called a buffalo gourd.
Alex scraped the vine aside with the flat blade of the pick, got a two-handed choke-up grip on the shaft, and started to chop at the yellow earth. He was impressed with the pick. The tool was well-balanced, sharp, and in good condition. Unfortunately he was nowhere near strong enough to use it properly.
Alex chipped, gnawed, and scraped his way several centimeters down into the miserable, unforgiving soil, until the sweat stood out all over his ribs and his pipe-stem arms trembled.
When he spotted the buried root of a buffalo gourd, he stared at it in amazement for some time, then left the pick beside the hole and walked slowly back to camp.
Carol Cooper had pulled a pair of lattices from the wall of the garage yurt. The highway maintenance hulk rolled out through the big new gap.
Carol watched the machine lumber downhill while she folded and tied the wooden lattices. Alex joined her, tugging down his mask.
The machine hit the highway, hesitated, and began creeping along south at ten klicks an hour.
"Well, let's hope the poor damn thing gets to paint a few road stripes before they shoot it to hell and gone again," Carol said, stacking the lattices in the back of a truck. "What's the deal, dude? I'm busy."
"Carol, what's the weirdest thing you've got around here?"
"What in hell are you talking about?"
"What have you got, that's really strange, only nobody else ever hacks with it?"
"Oh," Carol said. "I get your drift." She grinned. "There's a touch of that in every Trouper. Old-fashioned hacker gadget jones. Toy hunger, right?" Carol looked around the garage, at the scattered tools, the bench mounts, the table vise, an industrial glue sprayer. "You wanna help me pack all this crap? Rudy and Greg are coming later."
"I'd like to," Alex lied, "but I got another assignment."
"Well, I'm gonna be glad to have this thing off my hands, anyhow. You want to play with something, you can play with this bastard." Carol walked to the welding bench and pulled off a long, dusty coil of black cable. It looked like a pneumatic feedline for the welding torch, a big coil of thin black plastic gas pipe. As she caught it up and brought it to him, though, Alex saw that the apparent pipe was actually sleek black braided cord.
One end of the cord ended in a flat battery unit, with a belt attachment, a small readout screen, and a control glove.
"Ever seen one of these before?"
"Well, I've certainly seen a battery and a control glove," Alex said.
She handed him the works. "Yeah, that's a damn good battery! Superconductive. You could drive a motorbike with that battery. And here I am, keeping that sucker charged up to no good end-nobody ever uses this damn thing!" She frowned. "Of course, if you work that battery down, kid, you're gonna have to pull some weight to make up for that."
CHAPTER 6
"I'm pulling, I'm pulling," Alex told her. "My people in Matamoros have got that shipment ready, they're just waiting for us to give them the coordinates."
"Standard satellite global-position coordinates?"
"That's what they use, all right," he said. "Just like the Troupe, like the army, just like everybody."
"I can give you those anytime, it's no big secret where we're pitching camp."
"That's good. I'll try and phone 'em in, if I can still get that encrypted line."
'No problema," Carol said, bored. She watched as• Alex hefted the cable, then slid the whole coil of it over his right shoulder. It rested there easily. The cable weighed only a couple of kilos, but it felt bizarrely serpentine and supple, somehow dry and greasy at the same time. It was as thick as his little finger, and maybe twenty meters long. "What is this thing exactly?"