tory destruction of three mining vehicles, two earthmovers and an excavator, which had been incautiously parked under a cliff so they had to be guarded on only two sides. I obtained some explosives from the mine office and planted them above and brought down a substantial chunk of hillside on them.
Replacing entire ambulances and mining site loaders was an expensive prospect for the Maynes Conglomerate. They were having a bad coal year because of Number Four and events elsewhere, despite labor drafts to increase production. Only one currency had any real value in the Kurian Order, and that was from living human beings. For the first time, the Coal Country lost something other than miscreants and social outcasts to “repurposing.”
At this, the embers of revolt smoldering all over the Coal Country heated up.
Accusations have been leveled at me, since, that I was responsible for the deaths, as I was the one doing the damage that resulted in levies of vital aura being sent to the Georgia Control and elsewhere to replace the machinery I was wrecking. That is between my conscience and me. Few of those making the accusation ever lived under the Kurian Order or supplied any kind of other idea for its destruction, other than “spontaneous” and “organic” uprisings of those trapped behind the fangs and claws of the Reapers.
I’ve also been accused of deciding, on my own, that the Coal Country should be plunged into revolt, rather than letting the locals make up their own minds. I assure you, it would not have been difficult for the people of these coal-filled mountains to turn me in, if they’d so desired. A furry creature the size of an outhouse gets noticed, moving from one valley to another, even if it’s only by boys and girls out fishing for a supplement to the family supper.
The Coal Country Kurian made his worst mistake, however, when he decided to clear the hills of the mountain people. They expected nothing of the Kurian Order save the right to be left alone, and when carriers full of troopers and firemen suddenly pulled up to either side of their valley, deploying horsemen and bicyclists to empty their settlements and carry off whomever they could catch, they made a bitter and resolute enemy.
MY WAR BEGINS
I don’t know how long I could have carried on my one-Xeno war. Winter would cut down on the nuts and berries and fish I could gather and make getting around more difficult. I might have retreated into Kentucky and started up again next year, if the temptation to bargain for a legworm ride back to the Mississippi didn’t prove too strong, that is. In any case, a chance meeting cut it short.
A small fire had heated a couple of cans of beans and WHAM!, and I’d just smothered the small fire over a couple of foil-wrapped potatoes I’d buried under it as my breakfast, when I heard an approach to my camp. If they’d meant to backshoot me, they probably would have done it while I was framed by the firelight.
“Want some beans?”
They showed themselves, two adults, male and female, and a boy. Each adult had an infant strapped across the chest, wrapped in a sort of blanket roll of thin insulating material. They looked haggard, except for the boy, who held a squirrel rifle with a water-bottle silencer in his arms, cradling it like a ten-year veteran Wolf.
The man had a long-stem pipe and a long-barreled pistol in his belt; the woman two knives, a big butcher model and a small paring or skinning version. They had the wary, foxlike look of hill people.
“Want some beans?” I repeated.
The boy produced a spoon quickly enough, but the mother held him back until the father nodded.
“You’re that Golden Eel.”
“Yellow, maybe, in the right light. It’s only poetry to call my kind ‘Golden.’”
“Well, that’s what I heard you called. Slippery enough and lots of teeth. Thanks for the hospitality.”
They sat down and produced small pannikins from their bundles. They politely waited for me to decide how much I wished to share. I divided the beans and WHAM! into four portions, pushed a couple extra chunks of meat into the portion for the (probably) nursing mother, and distributed the food.
They ate eagerly. “Nothing like hot food,” the boy said.
The woman turned discreetly sideways and took the infants for nursing. The father took a gallon plastic water container out for her and held it so she could drink easily at intervals.
The mother produced a bag of hard candy. She gave one striped treat to the boy and offered another to me.
I shook my head. “Thanks, I’m not much for candy.”
He extracted a sample of the recent output of the Maynes photocopier, unfolded it, and passed it to me. It wasn’t the latest password, but a wanted poster with my identification photo with the cropped-off ears. I was worth twenty thousand dollars and a house on Maynes Mountain, it seemed.
I glanced at the reverse side. Someone had drawn a crude map of a trail west.
“There’s a bad spot for Reapers on the fifth leg, just before the Kentucky border,” I said. “Picked up some bodies there.”
“Oh, they’re mostly operating around the mines and railroads these days. Showing themselves, even in daylight, to scare off saboteurs.”
“You’ll want something to trade in Kentucky,” I said. “They’re a good bunch, but sharp dealers.”
“We have about thirty yards of silk folded tight,” the father said. “Plus there’re a couple of old gold coins my father saved for his escape. He never made the try; died of a broken pelvis in a rail accident. With the troopers scared to go out in less than a squad size, we thought we’d try our luck.”
“I’ve no particular destination. I’ll give you a ride tomorrow.”
“You’re not on your way to Hopkins Hollow?” the girl said through a mouthful of beans. “They’ve been looking for you. Looking for you in a good way, I mean.”