24
The cottage did have a beach. It took a walk through the trees to find it, and it was only one or two meters wide, but it was sandy.
It was also cold and rainy.
Fortunately, the folks who owned the cottage had several cheap rain slickers hanging on pegs by the door. So Jack and Kris went for an early-morning walk to clear their heads and see if the gray morning light offered them anything better than they had mulled over in the false light of the fake fire.
It didn’t.
They had been dealt out of the game, and some serious squeeze was being applied to keep them out of what was afoot. Both agreed that was beyond stupid since they were two of the few survivors of humanity’s first contact with the alien menace. Then again, both of them could point out historical precedents for stupidity being the frequent, even routine, response of humanity in crisis.
“And this time we’ve got a Longknife, wealthy as Crassus, leading the charge into stupid,” Kris said with a sigh.
They settled on a log and looked out over the lake. Clouds or morning fog limited their view to little past a swimming platform that was in easy reach of kids during the summer months. Literally and metaphorically, Kris was in a fog.
She’d been there before. This time was different; she had Jack’s arm around her.
“How did you know it was me last night?” Kris asked, suddenly changing the topic in her head from a rabbit run to something much less important for the salvation of worlds but quite important to her at the moment.
“You were ugly,” Jack said. “Will that be you when you’re old?”
“Not if I follow Gramma Ruth,” Kris said, and elbowed Jack in the ribs. “Answer my question or face further torture.”
Jack laughed, and locked one arm around the offending elbow and used the other hand to stroke the soft flesh of Kris’s lower arm.
“Ooh, I’ll give you a year to quit that,” Kris murmured.
“It was the steel spring inside you,” Jack murmured back.
“Steel spring?”
“Yes. You were puttering along beside Penny who was putting on an excellent display of limited mobility, and your pretty little nose was buried under a ton of misdirection, but I could still see, maybe ‘feel’ is a better word, the tightly wound steel spring in you, ready to uncoil with a snap at any moment. You were doing your best to hide the power in you, but you couldn’t hide it from me.”
Kris found she was purring like a kitten. “That’s probably the best compliment I’ve ever gotten, even if you did lie.”
“About what?”
“My nose. It’s never going to be a little one.”
“For a young woman six feet tall, it’s a very nice nose, in my opinion. Tell me, Your Highness Kris Longknife, if we both decide to do something about making this present state of bliss permanent, will you always disagree with my best advice on how lovely you are and what you should do to save me from widowerhood?”
Kris did her best to look indecisively coy before allowing an answer of, “Yes, very likely. No, almost certainly.”
“I was afraid of that.” Jack sighed a sigh of resignation to an inevitable he’d already come to accept. But he kissed Kris, so it was clear he bore her no grudge.
The kiss was interrupted by two growling stomachs. Kris found she could actually giggle around Jack. “Sorry, I haven’t eaten since lunch yesterday on the Yellow Comet. Do you think there’s any food in the cottage?”
“I would very much like to find out.”
The fog lifted as they walked back. A clearer view showed them an isolated cove with only two other houses visible through the trees. Neither showed activity.
As they came through the trees, Colonel Hancock drove up in his borrowed car and asked their help unloading groceries. They turned to with eager hands.
But Kris’s paranoia was already activated. “Can that car be traced?”
“I’m pretty sure it can’t,” the colonel said. “Besides having a broken heater, its GPS is also on the fritz, as well as its central computer. It’s not only an old car, but a teenagers’ learnin’-to-drive car. My buddy has four kids and this is the car they get to learn in. You may notice it’s got a few knocks and dents.” In the light of day, the state of the car left Kris wondering how it worked at all. She said so.
“Three of the four kids are boys, and they know it’s up to them to keep it running. As for his daughter, she’s the one who took automotives in high school and is going on to be an engineer. She makes sure the boys take good care of the car.”
Kris laughed, but thought NELLY, CAN YOU GET ANY SIGNAL OFF THAT CAR?
NOT A PEEP, KRIS. THERE’S A LOW ELECTRONIC HUM, JUST WHAT YOU NEED TO HANDLE THE SPEEDOMETER AND FUEL INJECTION, BUT IT’S NOT SENDING ANYTHING.
They carried their supplies inside. There, Grandpa Trouble proved to be a competent cook, at least when it came to bacon and eggs. Kris managed to warm up some cinnamon rolls without burning them, and Jack reconstituted frozen orange juice. Feeling accomplished, they all settled down to breakfast.
And Penny started talking like a cop.
“We’ll probably need another safe house tonight,” was the first bombshell she tossed in with the eggs.
“You think so?” Grampa Trouble said.
“By now, they know we are on planet. If they got anything from asking around the bar last night, they know that Jack and Colonel Hancock are with us. That there are five of us and you three were not in any real disguise. Right?”
“I didn’t use my credit chit,” Grampa pointed out.
“Which immediately raises a red flag. Good citizens with nothing to hide always leave a nice trail behind them. Only crooks or other lowlifes,” she softened that with a flash of smile, “use cash.”
“So you think they’ll be trying to trace us three,” the colonel said.
“That’s what I learned at my father’s knee,” Penny said, “and the first day of internal-security training. Identify the subject of the investigation, then identify all their contacts. Have all of them talked to, that’s what the beat cops are for, asking questions of the people you want questioned. Spread the dragnet wide, then tighten it up and pull it in.”
“So what would you be doing right now?” Kris asked.
“I’d have a computer grinding through all the credit chits purchased with cash and what they’ve been used for. Every last one of them. There’ll be plenty of chaff. Lots of people don’t want their spouses to know they’re renting a motel room or taking someone to dinner. There are a lot of cash chits out there. It will take time to chase them down, but they’re onto us, and they won’t quit.”
Penny paused to think. “It’s true they won’t quit, right? Any chance your dad or the king will relent?”
“Not this side of hell,” Kris said.
“Then we need a new car and should be making tracks out of here. Any suggestions for where we might safely stay tonight?”
Whereas all the other faces around the table had gotten more dire as Penny laid out standard police procedures, Grampa Trouble was beaming when she finished.
“So, that’s all we have to worry about?” he said.
“Pretty much,” Penny said, nonplus.
“Good, good, good,” Trouble said. “When you’re done, you can leave your plates on the table. Someone else will be doing our dishes. Kris and Penny, you should be getting back into your disguises. Our next ride will be here in about an hour. We’ll want to meet him at the road. No need for us to leave any tire tracks in the mud outside, right Penny?”
“Correct, sir,” and the girls took over the back bedroom.
A half hour later, they were daintily making tracks over the pine-needle-strewn ground under the trees, careful to avoid any soft spots. They waited under the trees through another downpour until a blue four-door sedan halted on the road, then all made a rush for it.