“How much time do I have?” I asked.
Freeman did not answer. He might or might not have known, but he would not say which. The man stood seven feet tall and weighed in at over three hundred pounds. He had no fear.
“So that’s it?” I called after him. “Brocius sent you all the way to Terraneau just to hit me with a specking simmy?”
Freeman stopped again. He looked back at me, and said, “Next time, it will be a bullet.” And then he walked around a hangar. I heard a car start and saw taillights pull away.
“Friendly fellow. Who exactly was he?” Doctorow asked, as I climbed into the backseat of the car with Ava. As the acting administrator of Norristown, he had a nice car, with lots of leather and chrome, but he did not merit a chauffeur. He did have a radio, however, which he used to report my “assassination.”
Freeman had hit me with “simunition,” a kind of round specifically designed for faking assassinations. Instead of a slug, his cartridge housed a capsule designed to burst on contact and shower me with blood.
Unfortunately, Freeman always used a high-velocity rifle. Simunition or live round, any projectile coming at that speed would knock a strong man flat on his back. The round hit me hard enough to rip my blouse, and I was not anxious to see what else it had done.
I unbuttoned the remains of my shirt and found that the fake blood had soaked through my undershirt. I pulled that off as well and used it to wipe the blood off my chest. Not all of the blood was fake. A welt the size of an egg had formed just above my left nipple. The skin at the top of that welt had broken open, forming a crater on my chest
Freeman’s aim was as good as ever. If he had used a real bullet, it would have passed right through my heart.
Ava gasped and reached slowly to touch my chest. She cared. I felt encouraged.
She looked like an angel as she watched me, even more beautiful than the first time I had seen her. She wore a yellow dress with a low-cut neck and stringy, little straps that hung over her shoulders. Her dress was bright and happy and clean. It reminded me of daisies. I wanted to grab her, hold her, and press her body against mine, but I had to keep my mind on business.
“His name is Ray Freeman,” I said.
“You know him?”
“We used to be partners,” I said.
Peering through the rearview mirror, Doctorow saw me bunch the remains of my blouse into a ball, and said, “Partners eh? I’m betting you did not run a dry-cleaning service.”
“You’re hurt,” Ava whispered. She touched her fingertips to the wound as gently as a butterfly lands on a leaf. Tears ran down her cheeks.
“No, not a dry-cleaning service,” I agreed. “We did pretty much the same thing he’s doing now.”
“Shooting people with blood bullets?” Doctorow asked. “Sounds like a fairly specialized niche. Did you get much business?” Clearly, he did not think highly of mercenaries.
Realizing that I was sitting on a powder keg, I did not answer.
By that time, we had driven across the long stretch of destruction that separated the airstrip from the suburbs. The glow of streetlights replaced the starry sky. We drove past a school and a fire station. Light shone from the windows of both buildings. The familiar low glow from the streetlights helped me relax. It represented electricity, civilization, humanity.
We drove into a neighborhood with stores and schools and trees.
“That friend of yours …was he a black man, or was I just seeing things?” Doctorow asked.
Race had been abolished by fiat when the Unified Authority moved into space. As they spread humanity across their 180-planet republic, the founding fathers mixed people from every race on every planet. Heritage was discouraged and ethnicity all but banned as Earth’s continents and countries became a distant memory. Freeman, a living anomaly who grew up in a religious colony founded by African-American Baptists, had to live with a new kind of prejudice from people who thought he should be extinct.
Ava ran her fingers along my chest so softly that she did not disturb the deep purple welt that had formed around the wound. She caressed my chest. She stared into my eyes. My body responded to her touch, and we kissed. For a moment, I thought we might make love right there in the backseat of Doctorow’s car.
“There are three of us in this car, you know,” Doctorow said.
Ava blushed.
I laughed, and said, “Feel free to pull over and go for a walk.”
Ava hit me in the arm. Her punch did not hurt, but I turned to protect myself. The movement stung, but not much.
“Were you and Freeman friends?” Ava asked.
“Friends?” I asked. “I’m not sure Ray Freeman has ever considered anybody a friend. He doesn’t have friends, only people he trusts and people he does not trust.”
“Which are you?” Doctorow asked.
I unzipped my ruck and pulled out a clean blouse. I’d only brought one change of uniform for the trip. Assuming nobody else shot me, and that Ava and I did not wrinkle the fabric later, I would be fine.
“He trusts me.”
“That’s how he treats the people he trusts?” Doctorow asked.
“I’m still breathing,” I said.
A fine sheen of blood continued to ooze out of the wound on my chest. I wiped it away. I knew that I needed to call this in. Franks needed to know that an enemy ship had run the blockade, and Warshaw needed to know that we’d been served fair warning. Freeman had said they were coming, but he did not say when. Maybe Brocius was bluffing, trying to get me to play by his rules. He would not come until he had a big enough force to settle the odds in his favor, I was almost sure of that.
“Maybe we should go to the hospital,” Doctorow suggested.
“Why? Are you hurt?” I asked. I was a Marine, so I had to be stoic.
Doctorow laughed. Ava did not.
“Your friend scares me,” she said.
“Me, too,” I said, tearing a long strip from my undershirt to tie around my chest. “Can you tie this off for me?” I said, giving Ava one end, then pressing her hand against my chest. I leaned forward, looped the cloth around my back. Ava took both ends of the bandage and fixed them into a bow.
“What I don’t get is why he’s here in the first place. The government paid Freeman a lot of money to help liberate New Copenhagen. He doesn’t need the money.” I was also curious about how he got to the Scutum-Crux Arm and landed on Terraneau without being seen.
Now that I had finished with the wound, I looked out the window. I did not recognize the area. “Where are we?” I asked.
“We’re almost there,” Doctorow said. “My wife made dinner for us.”
“Your wife? How did your wife end up on Terraneau?” I asked. He had transferred here just before the invasion, meaning he had either brought his wife to a war zone or married a local.
Doctorow laughed. “Not exactly. I have a widow on Earth. Sarah is my wife on Terraneau. We met after the alien attack.”
“You mean you have two wives?” Ava asked.
“Well, it’s always possible that Tina has died or remarried,” Doctorow said. “It’s been several years since I’ve seen her, but she was alive and married to me last time I checked.
“Technically, I suppose that makes me a polygamist,” Doctorow said.
“Isn’t polygamy a sin?” I asked.
“Only if God is watching and cares,” Doctorow said.
I slipped on my spare blouse and fastened the buttons. Turning to Ava, I smiled and said, “See, good as new.”
Ava brought up a finger, pointed at me, then poked it hard into my chest. When I winced, she asked, “How can you stand living like this?”
“He wasn’t trying to kill me,” I said. “If Freeman wanted to kill me …”
Doctorow finished the thought, “You’d already be dead. I had that feeling, as well. How do you know he won’t come back to finish the job next time?” He thought for a moment, then added, “What did he mean when he said ‘you broke the rules’?”