But she was getting ready to kick a gate open, and kick down the door of the house beyond if it came to that.
An argument erupted from the house in the next courtyard over. At least three people shouted simultaneously. Each voice seesawed higher, building on the volume of its competitors. It was obvious that none of the speakers was listening to the other two.
The door opened fiercely enough to slam against the front wall of the house. A young man surged out, twisting his arm free of the older woman and man who had tried to hold him back.
“Sure, I’ll stay here!” the young man shouted. “Stay here and starve, that’s a fine idea! Why should I go to Potosi and live like a human being, hey?”
“Live like a filthy killer!” the woman shrieked. “My son, a killer like the killers who take everything we grow! Will you come back and rob us yourself, Emilio?”
She tore the front of her dress open. Her breasts sagged like banana skins. “Why don’t you just shoot me now? Wouldn’t that be easier than breaking my heart?”
Margulies motioned Barbour with her toward the gate into the adjacent courtyard. The low fence permitted them a full view of the events.
“Look, I’ll be able to send money back to you, Mother,” the boy said. He glanced at the woman, then jerked his eyes away in horror at her histrionic self-degradation. “Look, we’re all starving here!”
“Blood money!” the woman shrieked. “Blood money! I’d rather die!”
She flung herself on the ground. It wasn’t an effective ploy, because it freed the boy’s arm from her gripping hands. He half-ran, half-skipped toward the gate. His father followed, bawling, “Emilio!”
The door of the headman’s house opened a crack. When those within realized the strangers were going next door, a little man scurried out. He wore red pantaloons, a loose shirt of unbleached cotton, and a red headband.
“You there!” the headman shrilled. “Strangers! You don’t belong here! I’ve called for help, you know. You can’t just come in here with your guns and order us around!”
The only thing Margulies had said since arrival was “Hello?” Barbour hadn’t said that much. The whole business was informative about the social structure of Cantilucca, all right.
As Emilio reached for the gate-latch, he noticed the Frisians for the first time. He recoiled abruptly. The boy’s father grabbed his arm from reflex, but both of them stared over the fence at the strangers instead of carrying on their quarrel.
“You there!” the headman called. “Strangers! Come away from there at once!”
Margulies made a quick decision and turned toward the headman’s compound. “We’re here to see a friend of mine,” she said. “Angel Tijuca. Can you tell me where he lives?”
Emilio snatched the gate convulsively open and darted into the street. His father gestured toward him, but the near presence of the Frisians kept him from following the boy. Emilio carried a short staff and slung his possessions from it. The bindle was so slight that its presence was better proof of poverty than nothing at all would have been.
“Blood money!” his mother cried. The boy bent forward, as though he were hiking toward Potosi against a sleet storm.
“We don’t have any Tijucas here,” the headman said. “You should go away now, before the guards arrive.”
The fellow was short to begin with. He splayed his legs deliberately so that his eyes barely glinted over the fence. Margulies had the impression of a turtle peeping from a shell of palings.
“There’s a vehicle with four driven wheels on the way, Mary,” Barbour said. He looked doubtfully at the sub-machine gun she’d insisted he carry. His expression wasn’t so much frightened as confused, that of a bachelor confronted with a squalling baby.
Margulies wasn’t sure how Barbour had gathered the data—so far as she knew, the intelligence officer wore a commo helmet just like hers, with only the standard sensors. She’d have been willing to take Barbour’s word for the situation, even without the headman’s confirmation.
“That’s no problem,” she said, her voice reassuring. Though the implication was that there wouldn’t be any trouble—and probably there wouldn’t—Margulies’ mind was considering the quantity of troops and weaponry carried by a patrol vehicle, and the degree to which she could count on Barbour for backup in a firefight.
Not far, she was afraid. Of course, he might draw attention away from her by shooting himself in the foot.
“Angel was from Silva Blanca before he joined the Slammers,” Margulies continued calmly to the headman. The local shifted his weight from one leg to the other, at a rate which increased with the intensity of Margulies’ gaze. “And I got the impression he intended to return here after he retired. I just—”
An open car roared up from the other end of the town’s only street. It had four oversized tires mounted on outriggers to keep the vehicle from tipping during off-road travel; a 2-cm tribarrel was mounted on a central pintle. There were four men aboard, one of them at the grips of the big gun. The muzzles swung as the vehicle swayed on its long-travel suspension.
The patrolmen wore red; red gloves, in the case of the driver.
Emilio’s parents disappeared within their house The boy was out of sight also, though Margulies thought he might have ducked behind a hedge. She didn’t think there’d been enough time for him to have walked around the sweeping curve of the road to Potosi.
The vehicle shimmied to a halt. “Drop those guns!” shouted the man at the tribarrel. “Drop them right now or s’help me, I’ll kill you!”
The driver was extending the collapsed shoulder stock of his sub-machine gun. The other two L’Escorials pointed weapons as well. The fat bore of the grenade launcher wavered between Margulies and Barbour without ever quite aiming at either one of them.
Margulies set her fists deliberately on her hips and faced the car, arms akimbo. “I’m Lieutenant Mary Margulies of the Frisian Defense Forces,” she said in a harsh, hectoring voice. “An ally of L’Escorial if your Masters Luria can come to terms with President Hammer. Who in the hell told you to point a gun at me, boy?”
The driver’s foot slipped off the brake. The car had a hub-center electric motor in each wheel. Their torque jerked the vehicle forward. The gunner fell back, lifting the tribarrel’s muzzles. It was pure luck that he didn’t manage to trigger a burst while he was at it.
The back of the vehicle was full of food and personal gear in wicker baskets. The tribarrel’s gunner untangled himself from the clutter, awkwardly helped by one of his fellows. “Shut it off, Plait!” he shouted. “Shut it off, you dickhead! D’ye want to kill us all?”
The driver, a rabbity-looking fellow, cut the power. The motors’ singing wound down against friction, leaving the village quieter than it would have been without that contrast.
The gunner slapped the grenadier on the shoulder to point him out of the crowded car, necessary so that the gunner too could step down behind him. The driver and the remaining gunman got out also. They stood on the other side of the vehicle; perhaps for the sake of cover.
The headman scurried out his courtyard gate to join the group in the street. “I told them they had no business here,” he said. “And I called you right away, just like I was supposed to, sir.”
“We do indeed have business here,” Margulies said, frowning at the gunner, the apparent team leader. “I came to visit an old friend of mine from the FDF—Angel Tijuca. He was my driver for a year and a half.”
The grenadier stared at the gunner. The gunner frowned in turn. “You know Angel, then?” he said.
“Yes, he was my driver,” Margulies repeated. The L’Escorial didn’t sound hostile for a change, so she didn’t add a gibe to the statement. “He got me out of a tight spot. A really tight spot.”