She can tell the truth or be caught in the lie. “Since I gave her a shot of painkiller. It’s the only thing I could do for the fracture.”
“You’re a medic?”
“My grandmother had diabetes. She couldn’t take the pills.” Kirsten knows that she has answered only half his real question—where did she get the drug?—but he lets it pass.
“All right.” With that, he appears again at the driver’s door. “Now then, Annie, if you and your dog will step down for a bit and let my friends check out what you’re carrying, we can take the young lady here up to the farm and see to her injuries.” As she starts to slide off the seat, he adds, “Oh. And give me your handgun, please.”
Very carefully opening her vest so that he can see her movements, she snaps the safety on and hands the pistol to him, grip first. “How did you know?”
He smiles and nods to the two others, who lower their guns and come to inspect the truck. At her side, Asimov is actually wagging his tail at the stranger. Griffin reaches forward to ruffle the fur of his neck. “Because you’d be foolish not to have a hidden weapon. And you’re not foolish. Come over to the line and have a cup of coffee. And welcome to Shiloh Farm.”
5
“For the last time, Manny, no.”
Manny Rivers’ face, already ruddy, goes a deeper shade of red, becoming nearly plum as his hands fist at his sides and his chest expands enough to put a serious strain on the zipper of his jumpsuit. The other members of the small group fidget nervously. Manny is usually the most placid of men, but when his anger sparks, the results aren’t always pretty.
Taking a quick look at the crowd they were drawing, Dakota signals to her cousin, and the two walk downwind to a relatively empty section of the bombed-out base.
“I’m not the little boy you can boss around anymore, shic’eshi.”
“I know you aren’t, Manny, and I apologize if I’m making you feel that way.”
Manny relaxes a little, but the tension is still plain in the lines on his youthful face. “At least tell me why.”
“Because I need you here.”
“For what? That’s the part you’re not explaining, Koda.”
Mustering what’s left of her patience, Koda pulls a military map out of the generous pocket of her coat. Laying it across some overturned cans, she trails a long finger north along a micro-thin line.
“That’s pretty out of the way,” Manny observes, cocking his head to get a better look.
“Less chance of being detected,” Koda replies. Her finger stops close to the border. “This is the only jail we’ll pass. It’s small, no more than twenty cells, max.”
“You’ve gotta take me, Koda! I’m the best fighter you’ve got. The rest of these guys couldn’t shoot fish in a barrel.”
“Niiice. And you picked them out for me all by yourself, hmm?”
He scowls. “You know what I mean.”
“Once we break those women out, we’re gonna need some temporary place to put them. It’s pretty barren up this way, but I think I know of a good spot or two.”
Manny gives a grudging smile, remembering when he was young, praying for a visit from his older cousin, who would sweep him away in her truck, taking him places where their ancestors had once made a home. They were his favorite times as a boy, and he remembers them fondly still.
Koda looks at him as he remembers, a faint hint of a smile on her face. When he comes back to the present, she nods. “I’ll need to communicate their position to the base somehow so they can be picked up.”
Manny shrugs his shoulders. “So? You’ve got the world’s most powerful satellite phone in your hand there. Where’s the problem?”
“And let every droid east and west of the Mississippi know their position? Think, Manny.”
“So what are you gonna do? Make like in’juns in a John Wayne movie and blow smoke signals from the top of the Black Hills?”
Koda rolls her eyes. “Listen to me, Manny, because I’m only gonna say this once, okay?”
Manny gives a reluctant nod.
“There’s a way I can use this phone and keep the droids from knowing where the women are.”
“How?”
“Uniyapi Lakota.”
Understanding draws over his face like the wakening dawn. His brow is a squiggle of conflicting emotion; part wanting to lift in an admiring grin, part wanting to lower in a defeated scowl.
“I spoke to the base commander this morning. As far as he knows, the droids have never been programmed with the Lakota language. It’ll give us an advantage that we sorely need right now, and before you say anything, I checked. We’re the only Lakota here.” She looks at her cousin for a long moment. When she speaks again, her voice is soft. “Now do you see why I need you here?”
The scowl wins. “I see it. I don’t like it, but I see it.”
“Good.”
“I’m giving you ten days,” he warns, pointing a finger at her. “Ten days, and then I’m getting in my Tomcat and coming after your ass, hear me?”
Folding her map and storing it in her pocket, she nods. He takes a step closer and flings his arms around her, no longer the soldier, the crack pilot, the man, but rather the boy she remembers so long ago clinging desperately to her in a silent plea not to leave. Her own arms gentle themselves around his trim, hard body. She breathes in the warm, familiar scent of him as a guard against the demons of the unknown she will soon face.
All too soon, the moment ends, and by mutual consent, they both step back, neither acknowledging, except in their hearts, the sheen of tears in the other’s eyes.
6
An hour and a half later, Lizzie is sleeping peacefully in the Shiloh infirmary, her arm set and immobilized in cast and sling. She has other refugees for company, one or two with far worse injuries. Kirsten’s handgun, returned to her, rides uneasily at her belt while she spoons up the last of the best vegetable soup she has eaten in her life. For the second time since she began her flight, she feels something close to safe.
Asimov snores on the flagstones of the farm’s common room floor, a paw over his badly scratched nose. Above him, firmly ensconced in the middle of the trestle table, a white-muzzled calico purrs as Father Griffin absently strokes her fur. The two-story tall window of the refectory looks out on a meadow white with new snowfall and a small pond whose ice shimmers with gold, blue and lilac in the late sun.
Dan smiles at her across the table. “More? Or will that hold you till supper?”
Kirsten laughs, pushing the bowl away from her. “Thanks, that will do for the moment. You have no idea how good that tastes after a dozen cans or so of Dinty Moore and Ranch Style Beans.”
Dan says nothing, merely waits. Confession time, huh? Kirsten observes wryly to herself. Not yet. Maybe never. No matter how warm and fuzzy the atmosphere, she cannot forget that she is a danger to every other human she encounters. So is the knowledge she carries. Instead she trails her fingers across the surface of the white pine table in front of her, its knots and whorls so carefully matched that they form a pattern like flowing water. “This is beautiful,” she says. “Do you make furniture here?”
“One of our members is a carpenter and cabinetmaker. Our resident Kabbalist—you’ll meet him at supper.”
“Kabbalist? I thought—I’m sorry, I thought this was a monastery or something.”
“Monks with shotguns?” Dan’s brows rise in mock surprise. “Not that there isn’t a precedent, mind. Go back to the ‘or something,’ though. Shiloh is an intentional community, made up of the lost sheep and farseekers of a dozen traditions. We have pacifists, mystic warriors, celibates, couples and families, Native American shamen and followers of Kali. We look for the things that are common in all our ways and attempt to live as lightly as possible upon our Mother Earth.”
“That’s why you didn’t have any droids.”
“That’s why we didn’t have any droids, and why we’ve survived. Fortunately, we did have excellent communications before the uprising. We can still get what’s left of the Net on satellite and listen in on CB. We don’t broadcast, though.”