“I have to assume you left someone back there,” he said, drawing the hand laser from its holster. “He better not peep. You want to go back and tell him that?” He kept the laser pointed at the ground.
The farmer stared at Jeff steadily, maliciously. “Ain’t no one down there. We all there is.”
“Sure.” Jeff leaned back against the floater. “This is government business. If you cooperate with us, we’ll forget those two shots. Understandable, the way things are.”
“The way things are” the farmer said, still staring, “is that we got no guv’ments, or maybe two. Which one might you be from?”
“The legitimate one.” He showed his badge. “I’m a field agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”
He laughed. “That don’t mean shit. It was you and those goddamn spacers got us into this.”
“Not true. Richard Conklin’s a traitor, but most of the FBI is loyal. We’re trying to straighten things out We need help.”
The man kept looking at him, silently but not as maliciously. “Look at it this way,” Jeff said. “If we’d meant to do you harm, you never would’ve got out the first shot. You’d be roast meat by now, if that’s what we wanted. Isn’t that true?’
That’s right, Pop,” the young woman said.
“You shut up,” the fanner said mildly. “What kind of help is it you want?”
“Food, water, and transportation. We can pay.”
“What we hear on the cube, your dollar ain’t worth bum fodder. Food’s worth plenty.”
“We can pay in gold.”
“Gold.” The farmer took a step forward.
“Get back.” Jeff raised the weapon halfway.
“Sorry. Just wanted to look at your machine. Never seen a Mercedes before.”
“It’s a special police model. Got us all the way from Denver on fuel cells.”
“Now, that might be worth somethin’. Once the power net gets up again.”
Jeff hesitated. “I could kid you about that, but I won’t. It’s not mine to barter, even though well have to leave it here. It’s government property and it has a tracer signal embedded in the fuselage. If you tried to drive it you wouldn’t get ten kilometers.”
The farmer stroked his chin. “You just said the right thing, I think.” He half-turned, and shouted down to the farmhouse. “Maw! It’s all right. They jus’ cops.” He shrugged at Jeff. “Left the ole lady and the baby down there. Didn’t know what the hell you was up to.”
“How far you got to go?” one of the young men said.
“The Cape. New New York Corporation.”
“Why you want to go there?” the farmer asked.
“Bring them something they aren’t expecting,” Jeff said, smiling.
The fanner nodded. “Can’t do you no good there. Floater’s down in a soybean field five plat away.” He glared at one of the boys. “Goddamn Jerry comin’ back from a night on the town. Got a pigfart tractor—”
“Methane,” Jerry translated.
“—get you into Gainesville. You might could pick up somethin’ there.”
So for one gold coin we got a knapsack full of dried meat, bread, fruit, and cheese, and several jugs of well water, and a ride into Gainesville. The “baby,” who was ten or eleven, traced us a copy of their map of Florida. Jeff had him draw in the areas that were state parks and recreation areas; if possible, we wanted to find an overland vehicle, so as to avoid roads and towns.
They traded me a change of clothes—I’d been abducted in a bright red kaftan—and Jeff changed into his FBI uniform. We took from the floater a first-aid kit, compass, burglary kit, and enough armament to start our own revolution.
The tractor ride was at top speed, about equal to a fast walk. Both of the sons came along with us, armed and alert. Martial law evidently wasn’t working too well in Gainesville.
“Americans aren’t really bad people,” Jeff said, nearly shouting to be heard over the hammering engine. “But we’ve been trigger-happy for three hundred years. There are four hundred million firearms registered in the various states, and probably just as many unregistered. Two per person, and you can bet every one of them is greased up and loaded today. The people and the firearms.”
I was maintaining the national average. Ten-shot laser pistol stuck uncomfortably in my belt, riot gun on my lap. It was similar to Perkins’s shotgun but worked on compressed air rather than gunpowder. It kept shooting as long as you held the trigger down, eight seconds per cassette. I was certain I could never use it.
The farmland gave way to lowrise suburbia, then high-rises and malls. Whole blocks were burned out. There were squads of soldiers at some intersections; they saw Jeff’s uniform and waved us on.
The city proper was a mess. Nearly half the stores were gutted, shoals of glass on the sidewalks and streets. Other stores were being guarded by conspicuously armed men and women.
The boys had a city directory. They took us first to Honest Ed’s RV Rental, which was a smoking ruin, and then to Outdoors Unlimited. It was unharmed, and a fat man with a hunting rifle lounged in the doorway.
“You rent cross-country vehicles?” Jeff shouted.
“Got three,” he answered. We unloaded our gear and the boys backed up to the intersection, and roared away with obvious relief.
“We need something that’ll get us to the Cape and back,” Jeff said. “About five hundred kilometers’ range.”
“That’s no problem. Problem is, will you bring it back.”
“I have no reason not to. This is FBI business—”
“I can read.” The three letters were prominent on Jeff’s right breast pocket.
“If I don’t make it back, you can bill the government I’ll write you out a statement, good for the replacement price of the vehicle.”
“Now that’s just it. The money situation is really confusing. I’ve been doing business by barter, all day.”
“I have some gold. Four thousand.”
He shook his head. “My cheapest one’s worth twenty times that. Tell you what. Your statement, the gold, and one of your lasers.”
“That’s against the law.”
“Not much law around, you may have noticed.”
“Let’s see the vehicles.”
None of them was a floater. Jeff selected one with six large wheels; he verified the charge in the fuel cells and checked the manufacturer’s handbook. There was plenty of power for the trip.
He wrote out the statement and signed it, then gave the man two gold coins and his laser pistol. The man asked for the holster, too. Then he handed over the keys.
We started for the door. I heard a soft click and turned around. The fat man was standing there with a fading smile on his face, the pistol pointed in our direction. Jeff was already halfway to him in a smooth balestra. He gracefully kicked him on the chin. He fell like a fat soft tree.
Jeff buckled on the holster and retrieved his laser. “It’s not common knowledge, but the thumbrest on an agent’s personal weapon is a sensor keyed to his thumbprint. Good insurance.” While he was talking, he checked the fat man for a pulse. “Still alive.” He found a tube of liquid solder and squeezed a few drops down inside the barrel of the hunting rifle. Then he searched the man’s pockets for the gold and the statement. “We’re felons, now. Let’s go.”
The RVs motor was a quiet hum. The seats were soft and deep. “Ah, sportsmen,” Jeff said. He pushed a button and the windows rolled up. He said the glass had to be shatterproof but he didn’t know whether it would deflect a bullet. He told me to keep the riot gun very visible.
We sped through the streets of Gainesville with only one incident. We both saw the silhouette of a man with a rifle, standing on the roof of a building across the street. Jeff slewed the RV to the left and we passed under him driving along the sidewalk, horn blaring to warn pedestrians. If he shot at us, I didn’t hear it.