“We have to pick my sister up. She’s out east.”
Maynes looked unusually good for the early evening.
It was a three-hour drive on the bad roads to Frederick, Maryland. I had no knowledge of the roads, so Maynes sat up beside me, pointing out landmarks—at least those that could be seen on a night with irregular patches of electricity along the roads.
I’d already proven to him that I had a decent memory for things I’d seen before. “You’ll have no trouble getting back.”
“No sir, no trouble. Long way. Need gas?”
He looked at the gauge. “We’re good. They’ll probably have some at the conference, though, so we’ll get another half tank there, just in case.”
We were out of the mountains and into open country of green hills. It seemed to be patches of farmland mixed in with returned wilderness. As it was night, I saw little of Frederick itself. We parked outside a hotel (a big bird like a crane figured into the hotel’s logo, but I don’t remember the name) along the highway, glowing like the last bulb in a string, surrounded by darkened, boarded-up structures.
“Thought I’d surprise you,” Maynes said as his sister walked out in response to a page. “A little birdie told me you’re breaking up early. Any marriage proposals this time?”
I am not the best judge of human physiognomy. I knew she was female and Maynes was male, and they both had the same sort of hair. She was younger, both in age and in the use of her body—Maynes’s habits had aged him prematurely. “You don’t have to keep tabs on me, Joshua. You know I’m staying at the palace and dy
ing a spinster.”
“Nay-nay, you’re always welcome here.”
“Ah, admirable caution. I’m glad your failure elsewhere has taught you something.”
“You know I’ve never failed at what matters to you.”
Elaine Maynes returned a sour smile.
“Ready to leave crab country?”
This was a side of my employer I hadn’t seen before—thoughtful, easygoing, making an effort to please.
“I have to say good-bye to a few people from the production working group. The Georgia Control rep invited me to a party, but since it’s not on-site, I can decline. If anything, it’ll enhance my reputation as someone who stands up to the Control. Or as a lady who doesn’t like those sorts of parties.”
“You’re beautiful when you get political,” Maynes said.
I noticed through the rearview mirrors that the lights in back were off.
As we travelled, bumping along the potholed roads and negotiating the odd border-area washout, it occurred to me that this particular transport was vulnerable to anything but someone taking a potshot from the side of the road. Guerillas or gangs of headhunters looking for snatchable aura could seize the three of us easily enough.
Once we made it back to the Coal Country, Maynes stopped at the first all-night diner (located at the edge of a rail yard that rearranged trains day and night) we came across and descended from the van to get a sack of whatever greasy hash the place offered.
He brought me a coffee, loaded almost out of its liquid state with saccharine. “Here you go, old cock.”
Hair disheveled, half-drunk, and smelling of drying sweat and sexual musk, he’d clearly been in a tryst with his sister. I wondered how much of a secret this was with the rest of the family, and if it had anything to do with Maynes’s being in an unimportant sinecure and his sister’s being relegated to production. But again, I had to wonder who was really running the Maynes Conglomerate, since the Maynes family members appeared to spend most of their time throwing elbows, backbiting, and hamstringing their relatives.
The night and the empty road made me nervous. At every moment I expected the blast of a bomb buried in the gravel that filled the potholes between the better-paved sections. Perhaps I’d been too long a guerilla and knew what easy pickings I was.
I relaxed a little as we came into the Maynes county, where the White Palace waited for our return. I was within easy radio distance now, in the event of an emergency.
I came around a wooded bend and suddenly horses surrounded me, their teeth and eye whites bright in the headlights. Only the fact that I was travelling at less than thirty miles an hour saved me from a collision with one or more of them.
A figure astride a horse in the mob flashed by. It was white as moonlight, mouth agape, thin hair streaming. The lathered horse had no saddle, just bloody tooth and claw marks about its neck. Human? The face was human, vaguely. The body was too thin and wasted, a starved corpse like that Gollum character from the pre-Kurian Tolkien movie. But I was tired and needed sleep, and I saw it for only a second while trying to avoid turning a Maynes horse into the next NUC fund-raiser stew.
Now that I look back on it, they were probably horses from the Maynes ranch on the other side of the ridge from the White Palace. As for the rider? I would say it was my imagination, a waking dream, but no other dream has ever made my fur stand on end like that even years later.
By the time we returned to the White Palace, it was well into the morning. The sun would be up in a few hours.
THE BEER GARDEN ON THE CHEAT RIVER