"Hope. Someday we'll have ships going up the Mississippi to your Ozarks. I have a feeling ... things are about to get better."
Valentine felt a pleasant thrill at the latest example of their minds following similar trails. If it weren't for the quickwood...
"Hope for someday, then."
"'Someday.' That's all our generation has: hope." She raised her chin. "Texas is waiting. I don't wish the men to see me teary-eyed. Back to hard-nosed captain, Captain."
"Yes sir," Valentine said, saluting.
She returned the gesture, her emotions under control again. Valentine felt the old wall go up. It was as if they had never kissed. As if they were strangers. Inspiration came to him.
"I left that old Coastal Marine uniform coat in the closet in my room. You're welcome to that. It doesn't mean much
to me, and won't do me any good where I'm going. All I'm keeping are the boots and the pants I dyed."
The wall vanished. "I'll make earrings out of the buttons," she said with a smile.
"Better and better." He caressed her cheek with the back of his hand. Carrasca... caress. He smiled to himself. "Good-bye, Malia."
"Adios, David. You can always find a home with us on Jamaica, you know that."
"I do." He hurried off the Thunderbolt. Valentine couldn't let his mind dwell on the idea.
Four days later, Valentine and Post sat in the Academy Map Room. A pair of electric fans fought a losing battle with the lingering summer heat. Ahn-Kha stood behind and in between them. His bulk wouldn't allow him to do anything but demolish the antiques in the room, and the Grog had declined the offer by one of the Rangers at the meeting to go seek out a piano bench.
"We've accomplished part one," the colonel said from the head of the library table, after hearing the reports from the various Rangers involved. "Now comes the hard part, getting those wagons up to the Ozarks. Zacharias, before my encounter with that piece of shrapnel, you used to be in charge of our northern areas. What's your suggestion?"
Zacharias's dark eyes studied the map, as if looking for something that would appear if he just stared long enough. "With the kind of men we'll need to guard the wagons, there's no question of slipping it through the San Antonio-Austin-Houston belt, though I bet we could get north of Corpus Christi. We're going to have to swing west of San Antonio. Not too far west, we can't be moving across the desert, either. The hill country could shield and water us."
"That means crossing the Ranch."
"The Ranch?" Valentine said. "What ranch?"
"You've never heard of the Ranch?"
Valentine began to shake his head, then stopped. "Wait, you mean what I think you mean? That's a legend in a lot of places. No one's ever proved it true."
"What's this?" Post asked. "I've never even heard the story."
"The Ranch," the colonel said, "is a real place. Maybe elsewhere sometimes it is and sometimes it's not, but I'll tell you it's true in Central Texas. We've seen it. The Ranch, Mr. Post, is kind of an experimental farm the Kurians run. According to our sources, they use it to come up with new life-forms. Biological servants. Even something other than humans to squeeze the juice outta. Intelligent, but easier to handle."
"There's a lot of strange sights to be seen in those hills," Zacharias said. "The Kurian settlements give it a wide berth, there's a huge stretch of empty ringing it. The Ranch gives us our best chance of getting up to the Dallas area and past it. Then it's into the pinewoods of East Texas, and you'll be home. Getting back will be easier with no cargo to guard. We can either break up and get home in small groups the direct way or trace our route back."
"It's your part of the country," Valentine said. "If that's what you want to do, I'll support it. Whatever gives us our best chance of getting through without fighting."
"Colonel, if we're going to try to get across the Ranch, I'd like to have Baltz along," Zacharias said.
"I'll send word."
"What's his specialty?" Valentine asked.
"Her specialty," Zacharias corrected. "Back in the cattle-drive days, they used to have one or two old bulls to lead all the other cattle, especially for things like river crossings. Baltz is kind of like that, except she ain't a bull. Bullheaded, oh yeah. She grew up in the Ranch, worked there. Not in the secret buildings, on the outside. She knows the land. We'll need her and her staff, sure as a hot summer sunset."
exas Coast, October: South of Corpus Christi, the southernmost Kurian city in what had been the United States, the coastline is a collection of fishing villages hiding among ancient concrete resorts, suffering under the depredations of both the Kurian Alcaldes of Mexico and the Texas variety farther north and inland. The long stretches of the thin, sandy island running the coast of Texas provide a protected inland waterway that sees little commerce under Kur other than smuggling. Stopping this was one of the gunboat's principal duties in her cruises under Captain Saunders, when her crew spent years losing fugitives in the thornbushes and grassy hummocks of the half-mile-wide, seemingly endless coastal sandbar where once vacationing college students lost their underwear along with their virginity.
This part of Texas is typical of most of the state not under the direct eye of the Kurians: independent and isolated, asking nothing from the outside world and trusting no one.
The Thunderbolt followed her new prow into South Bay on a rainy dawn. A few open shrimp boats bobbed in the bay, and beyond them, some beach fisherman could be seen, their oversize rods hanging out over the lapping surf of the bay.