flag is a set of compact headphones, attached to a portable tape player blaring music the runner is too exhausted to hear. Jogging is a world inhabited by strange, misshapen creatures who unsmilingly haunt the countryside and city while insisting that they're having a wonderful time. A strange basis for a society.
Running seems to me more honest.
The woman in bed with Jachal Morales was not his wife. That honor belonged to the portly gentleman who had just unexpectedly entered the simply decorated bedroom.
The eyes of the hausfrau snuggled contentedly in Jackal's arms expanded from somnolent to terrified as she espied her husband. Reflexively, she wrenched the covers up tight about her neck. This had the effect of completely denuding Jackal. The sight of his lithe, naked body further inflamed the thoughts of the already apoplectic man standing in the doorway.
Calmly Jackal sat up, slid out of the bed, adopted his most ingenuous smile, and approached the older man with a comradely hand extended in greeting.
'I apologize for this, citizen Pensy. Quite honestly, things are not what they seem to be.'
How odd to finally use that line without lying, he mused. Unfortunately and expectedly, citizen Pensy did not believe a word of it.
Even worse, the poor old fool had a gun.
'You rotten, dirty blaspet,' he sputtered, shaking with fury. 'I'm going to kill you. They'll have to scrape you off the walls of my house!'
'That'd be a foolish thing to do, sir. Bad for both of us.'
'Worse for you.' His finger tightened on the trigger.
Jackal had no more time for diplomacy. He feinted to his left and, as the gun swung shakily to cover him, kicked up and out with his right foot. The little pistol went flying out of the banker's hand. It struck the floor at his feet, where it had the extreme discourtesy to discharge.
Banker Pensy slowly looked down toward the little hole in his jacket, which was framed by a slowly expanding circle of red. Jackal gaped at the gun. Likewise banker Pensy's wife, who promptly stumbled out of bed to embrace her collapsing husband. She cradled his head in her lap and turned a shocked stare on her almost lover.
'You've killed him. Musweir man, I should never have listened to your sweet words. You've killed my poor Emil. '
'Now just a minute, lissome, I . . .'
At that point it occurred to her that it might be useful, not to mention seemly, to scream. She did so with admirable energy, her anguished wail echoing around the room and doubtless out into the rest of the apartment complex.
Ignoring her as well as the unlucky banker slowly expiring in her arms, Jachal turned and dressed quickly. The second-floor window opened onto a broad dirt street. Too broad, but it was a cloudy morning, and most of the populace would be at work.
Closing the curtain of her screams behind him, he gauged the drop and jumped. His legs stung with the shock of contact, and his hands touched the ground to give him balance. Dark eyes darted right, then-left. He had to get out of sight and fast, before the banker's wife, now more siren than siren, alerted the entire community.
Caution never insured against bad luck. He'd been telling the truth to the poor, dead Pensy. The banker should have been at work this morning, preparing to fleece some farmer, not returning home at just the wrong moment.
Jachal had been in quest of information, not sex. Specifically the control codes that would have given him access to the central credit line of the fiscal computer controlling Pensy's small bank. The banker had caught him in the act of theft, all right, but not the kind the poor man had thought.
Jachal blended into the shadows of the small street he turned into, six feet of man, lean and dark as cured lumber, black of hair and eyes. He did not think of himself, even as he ran, as a bad man. He never worked to break the law as much as he did to circumvent it. Bad timing, the bane of a precarious existence, had finally caught up with him.
He forced himself to slow to a fast walk. He was out of range of the distraught widow's screams. The sight of a stranger racing through the streets would attract unwanted attention.
Embresca was a new town, growing slowly but steadily via an influx of bucolic types who sought to make a fortune from the incredibly productive soil of Dakokraine. Jachal wove his way through streets lined with prefabricated buildings imported from manufacturing worlds. They were not a luxury but a necessity, for Dakokraine was nearly devoid of useful building materials.
Stone and adobe were not fashionable.
In any new community of modest size word traveled quickly. Jachal was doing his best to keep ahead of it as he maintained a steady march toward the airport, where he had a chance of losing himself among the flow of goods and settlers from the northern dispersal points. No one had stopped him yet. Perhaps his luck was returning.
It had been an accident. If anything, he'd acted in self-defense. Cuckolding someone was not grounds for shooting. Self-defense, sure . . . and naturally the bereaved widow would testify on behalf of her would-be seducer. Sure she would.
Jachal walked a little faster.
Rounding a corner, he caught sight of the cluster of armed men blocking the single entrance to the airport facilities. They carried a variety of weapons and made agitated gestures with them.
He didn't hesitate but turned and headed back through town. The airport was sealed off, along with his future. If the locals were determined to get him, he'd never have a chance to plead anything. He'd go down 'while fleeing from arrest.' He'd seen that obituary on the graves of too many acquaintances to wish it for himself.
If they would leave it open to him, he had one chance left. A slow suicide instead of a quick lynching by gunfire. He opted for it instantly.
Two of Dakokraine's three moons were high in the evening sky when he approached the towering electrically charged fence that ringed the town of Embresca. Barely visible to the left and right were automatic gun emplacements. He ignored them. They were programmed to watch for something else, not for him. Their lethal, transparent barrels pointed outward.
Outward over the rolling, world-girdling plains that formed most of Dakokraine's surface, out over the green and brown ocean that the settlers fought to tame. Out over topsoil measured in depths of many yards, which supported an endless sea of grasses and grains that was mined by the settlers as tenaciously as any precious metal to feed the exploding and ever hungry population of man.
Here, near the town, the native grasses had been plowed under and imported hybrid grains grew to fantastic heights, nourished by an ideal climate and soil. Rising among them were the twenty-foot-high fences, charged versions of the heavier-duty barrier that shielded the town itself.
The fences and weapons ringing Embresca were designed to prevent entry, not egress. Jachal had no trouble making his way outward. He adjusted the small pack of supplies he'd barely had time to gather together, pulled it higher on his back, and hurried out into the first field. It was planting time, and the grain was barely up to his knees. In three months it would tower above his head. Then it would hide dangers of its own.
No point in worrying about that now, he told himself. A glance back over a shoulder showed the sparkling lights of Embresca – dancing against the Dakokrainian night. There was still no sign of pursuit.
Turning to his chosen path, he set himself the task of covering ten miles before sunrise. His legs pumped steadily, rhythmically, carrying him over the firm loam and the flexible stalks of the seedlings. Two moons led him eastward, and a third beckoned from just below the horizon.
One man among the armed mob that halted inside the fence line wore a uniform. He represented half of Embresca's police force. His partner remained at the station, monitoring calls.
It had been an eventful night. The agricultural community was relatively crime-free. Its people were uncomplicated, hardworking types interested only in wresting a living from the bountiful soil, not from one another. Usually the cop's job was dull and uninteresting. He liked it that way.
Now this visitor had caused a genuine uproar, rooting the cop out of a sound sleep, bringing him on-shift early, and forcing him to adopt a tiring pose of authority. Not to mention all the official forms that he still had to file.
