Tom ran one thick finger down the Sierra Nevada until he came to its southeastern edge. It ended in some of highest peaks in the continental United States; Mount Whitney was over fourteen thousand feet. The less lofty Inyo Range paralleled that north-south scarp to the east; between them was a long, flat trough, with a river running down it to a sizable lake—the Owens Valley, and Owens Lake. On FirstSide the river was the source of a lot of LA’s water, brought down from the snowmelt of the Sierras’ peaks and glaciers and then over the deserts and mountains via aqueduct and siphon and canal. The valley floor was high semidesert; right across the Inyos was Death Valley, much lower and hotter—a desert, plain and simple, with no “semi” about it.
Southward was the Mohave; not as bad as Death Valley, but pretty damned bleak, as he knew by experience.
“Bingo,” he said softly. “Just far enough away to be remote—”
“There isn’t anywhere within the zone we control that’s more remote,” Simmons said. “No overland traffic at all—everything goes in and out by air. It might as well be an island.”
“Yes!” Adrienne said, hissing the word. “The Collettas operate the mines there under license from the Commission—nobody would ask any questions, as long as the silver output was consistent with the ore body and the labor they were putting into it.”
Tom peered more closely at the map, then got out a smaller-scale one that covered the southern Sierras. “I’ve been through there FirstSide,” he said. “The old Cerro Gordo mines are up this side canyon, just east of Owens Lake, or what used to be Owens Lake.”
“This isn’t FirstSide, thank God,” Simmons said, leaning forward and then wincing slightly. “Owens Lake is very much there, a hundred and twenty square miles of it. It’s officially called Lake Salvatore, of course.”
Tom frowned. “But if the Collettas are supposed to be operating a silver mine here and they aren’t really pulling out silver…”
“…then they could slip the silver in from their share of other mines,” Adrienne said. “The committee checks pretty carefully to see that none of the Families running the smaller mines shorts the Commission. They aren’t going to look further if the amount is right—it’s the same trick we use FirstSide, with the mining properties we own there. If the Collettas want to waste money on a marginal operation, who cares? Most of the production comes from the big digs that the Commission runs directly, anyway.”
He whistled. “Perfect, then. Hmmm… an aerial recon run? Visit by an inspector?”
He looked around; Adrienne, Simmons and Botha were all shaking their heads.
The woman explained: “First, there probably wouldn’t be much to see from the air; not if they’ve kept it quiet this long. Second, that would let them know what we know, or expect—which might trigger off the coup we’re trying to prevent. And yes, they’d know the minute the plane lifted off. There aren’t enough airports in the Commonwealth to keep that secret, and you’d have to use military aircraft, either the committee’s or requisitioned from one of the Families. Not to mention that if I were running this, I’d have radar surveillance running from Mount Whitney, and maybe some light ground-to-air missiles, if I could manage to smuggle ’em in from FirstSide.”
“Hercs would be perfect for this,” Tully said. “They’re made to lift from grass and dirt strips. Anything hard and level would do.”
“And the Owens would be a good place to grow supplies, too,” Tom added. “Plenty of water, this side of the Gate. That means we can’t judge their maximum numbers by the amount of supplies they ship in.”
They sat and looked at each other, thinking. Sandra went out and came back with a tray of sandwiches and soda; Tom munched at his—excellent thin-cut roast beef with horseradish—and went right on thinking. The soda was a copy of Dr Pepper, the old-fashioned kind.
“The only way I can see to settle this is to go in on the ground,” he said at last. “A small party, overland, could get definite well-documented proof and then get it out again. I take it your grandfather could move once he got that?”
Adrienne nodded. “Not a problem. The committee would suspend the Collettas and the Batyushkovs and any other Family involved—raising private forces beyond their quotas, a no-no, arming natives with modern weapons, a really serious no-no, and attempted overthrow of the state, pretty well the ultimate no-no. They’d be far too outnumbered, without surprise, and with all the other Families prepared and united against them.”
“Well, let’s get in on the ground, then,” Tom said.
Again, he was conscious of the way the others looked at him—the ones who’d spent a long time here in the Commonwealth, or who’d been born here.
“Easier said than done,” Adrienne said. She stood and traced her own lines on the map. “You could try to get a small party in through the San Joaquin, south to Lake Tulare and then over the Sierras. Trouble is, you’d be like a bug on a plate coming in that way, not to mention everyone seeing you as you went through the Carquinez.”
“Well, you could come straight up from LA and through the eastern Mohave,” Tom said, drawing the pathway. “It’s only a couple of hundred… ah.”
Botha and Simmons nodded, and began to speak at the same time. They exchanged glances, and the big Afrikaner spoke: “Man, there aren’t any roads across the desert, except for the one to the borax mines—I live just south of there, on the sea side of the mountains. You might get a caravan of good four-wheel-drive bakkies through, but then again you might not. You’d have to take all your fuel… and you’d be bliddy conspicuous dragging a plume of dust, eh?”
Simmons nodded. “The only way to do it without hanging up a HURRAH, WE’RE HERE! sign would be to go on horseback. Over the Krugersberg—the Santa Monicas—through the San Fernando Valley, over the San Gabriels, then north to the Tehachapi and up the eastern front of the Sierras—”
“Nie, nie,” Botha said. “Too bliddy obvious, kerel. That’s the easiest way across the Mohave. We must swing further east, through the springs at Atolia.”
Simmons winced slightly. “Love punishment, do you, Piet? You’d have to travel mostly by night… but you’d do that anyway, in the Mohave.”
Unexpectedly, the Indian spoke, mixing weirdly accented English with his native tongue. Simmons looked at him and replied in the same, then addressed the rest.
“Then there’s the Mohave nomads, the”—he spoke something unpronounceable.
The Indian spoke up again: “Kinun’ya’tuk. Means ‘mixed-up,’ or ‘many tongues.’ People from all peoples.”
“They’re hostile?” Tom said.
“Very, some of them.” Adrienne sighed. “When we cleared out coastal southern California a couple of generations ago, we gave the surviving natives some presents and horses and pointed them east. Some of them kept going—some of them crossed the Mississippi! But a lot didn’t; they joined up with the tribes who were already in the Mohave. A fair number of white renegades ended up there, too—deserters, criminals, escaped convicts. A mixed bunch, very tough, and more of them than you might think. There’s enough continuous contact across the mountains with the New Virginian settlements that they don’t get hit by once-in-a-generation plagues. Plus there are a couple of missionary groups there who do vaccination programs against smallpox and measles and so forth for children brought into their stations.”