“I said we would be damned lucky if it worked. It didn’t work. Now we have to deal with it.” Quindlan made a loud noise and cut the connection. Kvannis took a deep breath. Quindlan had talked tough for years, pushing for action, but like too many civilians he fell apart when the time came. Well, he’d either make it to the rendezvous or not.
He himself had, he thought, at least six hours to finish up, and then two to do the final packing. He left his office on time, went to the Commandant’s Residence, smiled and nodded as usual to staff, and went upstairs, claiming a headache and little appetite. In the next two hours he cleared his residence office, packed the few clothes he would take from his closet. He lingered over the presents he’d bought for his daughters, but left them. Then he went back to his main office to finish up there.
It was later than that, after all, when he left, past midnight. Too many things had needed to be burned, and burned without detection—something possible only after the Academy’s document shredder and incinerator weren’t likely to be heard. He’d long made a habit of wandering about in the evening when no event was scheduled, and that did make it easier.
And then… that last quiet descent of the stairs with his two small cases, disarming the alarm, going out to meet the waiting car, the polite pause at the gate, the excuse—a family matter at his city home—and they were off in the quiet dark for the small airfield mostly limited to private aircraft. From there, crammed into the backseat, he stared at the darkness below, the pattern of the lights that pierced it. By local dawn in Port Major, he was over a thousand kilometers away, in a roomful of fellow conspirators. He looked them over. Nervous, perspiration gleaming on their faces, all but the military ones. He put aside thoughts of his family back in Port Major, and the life he had known, and prepared to do what he could to salvage the revolution.
The rest of the day, for Ky, was a mad scramble to reposition her assets, avoid those of the opposition, and maintain contact with the rescue teams. The second group, she heard, had also made it safely to Port Major after she left them. The third, shepherded by half the team the sergeant major had put together, was somewhere in the northeast now, making ground in that direction. There’d been a brief firefight; one of the survivors had been hit, but not fatally. No names were mentioned in these updates. She had made her interception of the fourth group, successfully retrieving Lundin, Gurton, and Droshinski. Most of the third special ops team had stayed back to delay pursuit, but Philo had come with her in case of trouble. They were now far behind the original schedule, traveling for the moment in a farm truck headed home from a cattle auction. The truck smelled strongly of cattle and bounced as if it had never had springs.
A sharp turn, lurching and bouncing on gravel that crunched beneath them, and then the screech of brakes. “We’re home,” the driver announced. He pulled open the side door. Ky got up, jumped down, and helped the others out. “Mama!” she heard the driver call. “Got folks to feed!”
Unlike farmhouses Ky had seen farther west, mostly built of stone, this one was brick. Ky shed her muddy boots on the porch and the others followed suit. Inside, the wood floor was polished, the walls plastered a pale cream. The farmer, Jacob Arender, introduced them to his wife, Anna, and the children, Barry and Luisa. “First we have supper,” Arender said. “Then you can take the car and go into the city. You won’t have a problem.”
Ky didn’t believe that last. But they were less than 150 kilometers from the city, with good communications. She took herself off to the bathroom and called Rafe on her skullphone. Still no answer. Well—he could be somewhere without coverage. She reached Rodney. “Where are you?” he asked. “I’m tracking several military search parties. And there are roadblocks on every highway into Port Major. It’s been on the news—attempt to prevent dangerous contagious disease getting into the city. You’d better get a disguise.”
Ky’s mind went blank for a moment. They’d gone to such trouble to bring ID and uniforms for the survivors—and how could they find disguises out here, at night? Businesses would have closed in the nearest town.
“What’s the word?” Arender said when she returned to the kitchen.
“Roadblocks,” Ky said. “And a few chase parties trying to find where we are.”
Arender frowned. “Don’t want to lose my car because they spot you in those uniforms.”
“They don’t have to stay in those uniforms,” Anna said. She grinned. “I’ll go with you. Drive the car and then I can drive it back. It’s almost the holidays; we can go as a group for the dance festival.” She looked at Ky. “I used to go every year with my friends. I have all my old costumes.”
“Anna! You can’t leave the children—”
“You’ll be here.” Her eyes sparkled as she turned to Ky. “It will be fun, like old times. You’ll see.”
Arender threw up his hands. “No use arguing, I can see. When Anna makes up her mind, what’s said is done.”
While they ate, Anna rummaged in the storage room for costumes. Ky stared at the armloads of stripes in garish colors, ruffles, lace, ribbons that she piled on the bed. “It’s a district thing, stripes,” Anna said. “In those days, we all matched, but what I saw the last time I went is that some didn’t. So it’s all right if you don’t. Here—try this one.” It fit, even over her other clothes. Ky looked down at herself, trying to keep a polite smile on her face, but the green, purple, and orange combinations were almost too much for her.
Anna looked them over as they headed out the door, uniforms hidden under voluminous skirts, ruffled blouses, and shawls. She stopped Ky. “That hair—you can’t have it like that.” She reached up and unfastened Ky’s braid, pulling her hair loose until it was a dark cloud around her face. “That’s better. Means you’re not married; the rest of you, with scarves and earrings, are betrothed.”
The ride to Port Major, Ky crammed in the backseat with the survivors, the special ops team member now wearing the farmer’s best dress shirt as well as a felt hat with a feather, and carrying a drum and three tambourines on his lap in the front beside Anna, was, as Anna had predicted, fun. They had to stop at two roadblocks—one to get on the highway, and one nearer Port Major. Both times Anna had them singing a country song she’d taught them.
The second roadblock took much longer, because a long line was ahead of them, including freight trucks. Uniformed men opened every truck and trailer; some were waved over for more complete searches. When it was finally their turn, the men in uniform asked Anna where they were going, and her confident “To Port Major, of course, for the winter dance festival. Can’t you see?” Lights flashed in their faces, and one of the men said, “Can you believe it? How far back in the hills did they come from?” Then he gestured. “Go on, go on, don’t hold us up.”
Rafe hoped Ky was away safely with the three new rescues. He also wished he knew anyone on the planet but Ky’s family and immediate associates. The transport center had been a near disaster. He’d parked on the wrong side, in the lot for those with season passes. The out-gate had a guard checking those passes. He realized just in time, and walked off to the train station, where he’d hoped to mingle awhile and come out by another door. But the truck itself must have interested the guard—perhaps because it had no sticker in the window—because when he looked back from just inside, he saw the man walking around the truck, and then pulling at the back door.
He knew what would happen when the man looked inside and didn’t wait to watch. He left the station by a side door, then went around the corner toward the tracks. A train waited; passengers crowded the platform. Could he just get on a train, pay for a ticket once aboard? But he saw a crowd of passengers, a conductor checking tickets. Ky would be furious—worried—when he wasn’t waiting to be picked up, but he could call from the train. He eeled through the crowd, most of them taller than he was, aiming for the locomotive. Surely one car wouldn’t have a guard—but they all did. Between cars he could see a second track, then a tall fence and then rising ground. He reached the locomotive and ducked around it. Another train was approaching—would hide him once he was across that track. A warning blast from the moving train—he was already bolting for the fence. He felt the wave of air pressure that meant he’d cut it dangerously close. But the train now blocked him from any pursuers. He leapt for the fence, pulled himself up, sacrificed his heavy outer jacket to the barbed wire at the top and rolled over, landing neatly, then bounded up the slope beyond, where coarse bushes gave some cover. And remembered that all his ID—the ID that would get him arrested and deported as an illegal alien—was still in that jacket’s pocket. He couldn’t go back. It took him hours to climb the hill—it felt like a mountain—as the clouds thickened, the light dimmed, and the temperature dropped. Initially he was sweating from the effort, feet slipping on the steep slope, and didn’t notice the cold.