"I won't," Flynn said, his face warming in embarrassment as he took the weapon and stuck it into his belt.
"Now get moving," Toby ordered, leaning down and getting his fingers under the edge of the box. "I'll close up behind you."
Taking a deep breath, Flynn got a grip on the rope and pushed himself off into the abyss.
For a moment he hung there, fighting back a sudden flood of vertigo and a terrible sense of vulnerability. Hang gliders, even malfunctioning ones, were no big deal to him. But dangling at the end of a rope, with Security above and shattering death below, was a very discomfiting sensation.
Above him, the diffuse light abruptly shut off as Toby swung the box back into place. Grimacing, Flynn started down.
To his mild surprise, once he was actually in motion most of the discomfort evaporated. The harness design held him securely, and Jensen's method of threading the rope through it provided enough friction to take most of his weight. It wasn't really any worse than rappelling, he decided as he picked up his pace, with the extra bonus of not having to worry about twisting his ankle as he bounced his way down a building or cliff face.
Jensen was waiting for him as far down as he could go without actually letting go of the rope. "Good," the blackcollar said as Flynn brought himself to a halt. "Now hook the knotted end around these ropes here." He indicated the technique with his own rope and harness. "That should hold you, though you'll want to keep a hand on it just in case it starts to loosen."
"Right," Flynn said, copying the other's technique. "I wonder what Toby uses these pulleys for."
"Probably not much," Jensen said. "Been a while since they've been used."
"Oh?" Flynn asked, his vertigo threatening to return as he looked up at the floor of the cabin nearly a hundred meters above him. "How long a while?"
"Don't worry, they'll hold just fine," Jensen assured him. "Nice souvenir."
"What?"
"Your new toy," Jensen said, pointing at the gun in Flynn's belt. "Toby give you that?"
"Oh." Flynn looked down at the weapon. "Yes. He didn't want any visitors catching him with it."
"I don't blame him," Jensen said, his forehead wrinkling as he gazed at the gun. "Security doesn't like concealable weapons in civilian hands."
"Security barely tolerates hunting rifles in civilian hands," Flynn countered, studying the other's expression. "Anything wrong?"
"Not really," Jensen said. "I was just thinking that gun has a definite military look about it."
Flynn glanced up at the bottom of the cabin. "You think Toby was in the war?"
"It's possible," Jensen said. "I know that on Plinry, at least, the Ryqril tried to tag all the vets when they took over, particularly the officers. Maybe Toby holed up out here hoping to evade the net."
Flynn thought about the old man living in a one-room cabin for the past thirty years. "Seems to me the hunt should be over by now."
Jensen snorted. "It was probably over three to five years after the occupation started," he said. "If he's hiding from the Ryqril, this is serious overkill."
"Maybe he likes it out here."
"Or maybe he got the gun some other way," Jensen said, his voice going dark. "Found it, or stole it."
A chill ran up Flynn's back. "Or killed for it?"
"Possibly," Jensen agreed grimly. "It might explain why he's still out at the back edge of nowhere."
"So what do we do?"
"For now, we stop talking," Jensen said, wincing as he rearranged his harness around his injured ribs.
"Sound can carry strangely in the mountains."
"I just hope he's not planning to turn us in," Flynn murmured. "This would be a rotten position to fight from."
"We'd manage," Jensen assured him, peering upward. "I just hope his visitors don't ask to use the facilities."
Foxleigh was sitting at the table, whittling industriously at a random stick he'd grabbed from the wood bin, when the two Security men arrived.
Typically, they didn't bother to knock. "Boulder Security," the younger of the two said brusquely, as if their uniforms weren't enough of a clue. "Who are you?"
"Who wants to know?" Foxleigh countered, not looking up from his carving.
The man snorted and grabbed the end of Foxleigh's stick. "When I ask you a question—"
Foxleigh let go of the stick, shifted his grip to the man's wrist, and pulled it sharply downward toward the tabletop. The other stumbled forward, off balance; and as he did so, Foxleigh twisted the knife around to point toward him.
The man froze with shock and probably astonishment, the knife point no more than ten centimeters from his stomach. "Manners, sonny," Foxleigh said softly. "You'd be surprised how far they get you."
"Smith?" the kid demanded in a choked tone, his wide eyes staring at the knife.
"Easy, Griffs," the older man said soothingly. He had his paral-dart gun out, pointing it at Foxleigh.
"You, too, friend. We're just here to talk."
"Tell him that," Foxleigh suggested.
"Everyone just relax," Smith said. "Griffs, apologize to the man."
"Me?" Griffs demanded. "Smith—"
"Apologize to the man," Smith said more firmly.
Griffs glared at Foxleigh, his throat working. "Sorry I grabbed your stick," he said through clenched teeth.
"There we go," Smith said encouragingly. "Now let him go, okay?"
"It's all about manners," Foxleigh said, releasing Griffs's wrist.
Breathing hard, the other took a step back from the table and yanked out his own paral-dart pistol. "Drop it," he snarled.
"It's dropped," Foxleigh said, laying the knife on the table and folding his arms across his chest. "Now ask your questions and get out."
"Let's start with your name," Smith said, lowering his gun to point at the floor.
"I'm called Toby," Foxleigh said.
"Toby what?" Griffs demanded. His gun, not surprisingly, was still pointed at Foxleigh's face.
"Just Toby."
"Look—"
He broke off at a gesture from Smith. "What do you do up here, Mr. Toby?" the older man asked in a more reasonable tone.
Foxleigh shrugged. "I live," he said. "Pretty much the same thing you do in the city."
"I meant, how do you survive?" Smith said. "Food and clothing and all?"
"There's plenty of game about," Foxleigh said. "I do some hunting and trapping, and I've got a small vegetable plot around the side of the cliff face over there."
"And the people in Shelter Valley help you out, too, I suppose?"
Foxleigh grimaced. "Sometimes," he admitted. "Some of them. Only when I can't do for myself."
"And that's not very often, I imagine," Smith said, glancing around the cabin. "You seem the selfsufficient sort. Tell me, how long have you been up here?"
Foxleigh shrugged as casually as he could. Here was where things were going to get dicey. "Don't remember exactly," he said vaguely.
"Since before the war?"
"Some, I guess," Foxleigh conceded.
"And you were, what, sixty or so when it began?" Smith persisted.
It would have been nice to be able to bring that number down to somewhere around thirty, Foxleigh knew. It would line up with his actual age and eliminate a lot of potentially unpleasant questions.
Unfortunately, there were people in Shelter Valley who might remember the real Toby being in his upper fifties when he turned his back on humanity and moved out on them. "Closer to fifty," he said, fudging the number as far as he could.
"Which would make you about eighty years old," Smith concluded, peering closely at Foxleigh's face.