VIII
The patrol made good time on the pilgrim trail before making camp, returning to where they had buried the roadkill. The cruiser had a microwave for reheat-rations and an in-built recaffolator, but Quincannon liked to get a real fire going. He said the desert night didn't sound right without crackling. Also, flames kept unwelcome critters away. Every month, some straying patrol logged a sighting of something that shouldn't be alive.
Yorke and Tyree spent half an hour rounding up scrubby weeds and wooden jetsam for the fire while the Quince and Burnside raised the wind-wall and the pup tents. With the sun falling rapidly, the task had some urgency. Under starlight, it was impossible to find anything.
Half buried by the road was a bookcase, complete with paperbacks. There was a set of Margaret Thatcher's 'Grantham' romances, which Yorke's mother devoured in the '80s before her father decreed that such slush should be burned in public, and a few pulps by Kenneth Livingstone, who turned out to be a Brit science-fiction writer.
The bookcase and books were all the troopers needed to get a good fire going. Yorke stamped the furniture into fragments and made a pile. Tyree was nervy about putting books into the blaze, which Yorke couldn't understand. They were just dead old words on paper.
While Quincannon boiled up a pot of recaff, hoping that real fire might improve the taste, Tyree hauled herself off to one side with a paperback called
'March over, Leona,' the Quince said, 'get your reheated taco and grits.'
Tyree scrambled nearer the fire and took a plate. With her helmet off, she had honeyish hair that cleared her shoulders by a couple of inches.
'What's the book about?'
'So far as I can scan, it's set in the future when intelligent swamp creatures rule the planet and the Brit government are amphibians. Except the prime minister, who's a jellyfish. The first couple of pages are missing.'
Quincannon looked at the faded book-cover. It showed a man-sized lizard with a big gun and a British policeman's helmet.
'I've heard enough strange stories not to be bothered with this stuff…'
Yorke could tell the Quince was in a vocal mood. They'd be lucky to get to sleep before three, by which time the sergeant would have done his best to pack them off to dreamland on the nightmare express. If it was scary, it had happened to someone Quincannon knew.
'Wasn't today strange enough for you?' Tyree asked. 'You met the Frankenstein monster. And Dr Zarathustra.'
'Hell, Leona, today didn't even go off the Odd scale into Weird.'
Yorke bit into his taco. It was standard Cav rations, meat in one end and fruit in the other. You ate your way through to dessert. He washed down protein-intensive chunks with swallows of hot, muddy coffee-derivative. Everyone who remembered what they called 'real coffee' bitched and pissed about recaff, but it tasted OK to bis buds.
Quincannon poured himself half a mug, then fished a flask out of his britches' pocket and sloshed in enough Shochaiku Double-Blend to fill the mug to the brim.
'The way I scan it,' he said, 'we're off duty. And off duty, our gullets and guts are no business of the United States Road Cavalry.'
He offered the flask around. Burnside and Tyree waved it away, but Yorke took a hefty gulp. Battery acid sloshed against his sinuses and seeped out his tear-ducts. Fire spread into his stomach.
'Ah, but it has a powerful kick to it,' Quincannon said, smiling like a proud father. The more whiskey he had in his blood, the more Irish crept into his accent.
Burnside, having wolfed his rations down, untelescoped his travelling flute and began to blow scales. He liked to get his hour's practice in every day, even on patrol. Scales became a mournful improvisation, low and unobtrusive. Wash Burnside had a melancholy, wondering streak. He didn't talk much about his past.
'Quince, did you follow what that Japanese woman was saying about UEs?' Tyree asked.
Quincannon shrugged.
'Scientists don't like to admit the Lord has them foxed. Recently, they've run up against too many things they can't explain. And explanations that have done good service for centuries have been wiped off the blackboard.'
'I don't see how that can be,' Yorke put in. 'Up's still up, and down's down.'
'Mostly,' the sergeant agreed.
Above, the desert stars were jewel chips scattered on thick black velvet. The universe was vast and coherent; endlessly changing, yet endlessly the same.
'That UE stuff sounds like blowback roadgrit to me,' Yorke admitted.
The Quince was quiet for a moment. Yorke thought his words were echoing out into the big empty.
'Give me your gauntlet, trooper,' Quincannon said.
Yorke was reluctant.
'I won't hurt it.'
Yorke tugged one of the heavy pseudokid gauntlets from his belt and passed it over. Quincannon exposed the digital read-out and scrolled through the functions – time, compass, blood pressure, geiger counter, atmospheric pressure – until he found the thermometer.
'Now, which of you bright souls can tell your ol' Quince what are the extremes o' the Celsius scale?'
'Zero degrees and a hundred degrees,' Tyree said. 'The boiling and freezing points of water.'
'Take a gold star and go to the head of the class, Leona m'love. For hundreds o' years, we used Fahrenheit which no one could figure. The idea of Celsius is that the scale stretches between the two easiest-to-remember temperatures.'
Actually, the gauntlet thermometer could read off in Celsius or Fahrenheit.
'Now, you watch that pot o' cursed God recaff.'
Quincannon squeezed his meaty hand into Yorke's gauntlet and picked up the hot pot. The glove was proof against anything short of an oxy-acetylene torch. Flipping open the lid, Quincannon shifted the pot from embers to a still-burning patch. Flames licked up around it, soot streaks clawing the sides.
The Quince dipped a finger into the brown liquid and stirred, making a disgusted face. Burnside played variations on 'Whiskey in the Jar', an Andrei Tarkovsky hit from the '70s. Within a minute, the recaff was bubbling and spitting.
'You'll stain my glove,' Yorke protested.
Quincannon waved him back with his free hand.
'Worry not, the bounty of the United States is unlimited. Now, you'll agree that this foul brew is boiling?'
'Yes.'
'Literally, boiling?'
Steam soaked the gauntlet. Angry bubbles burst on the surface. Liquid slopped over the side and dried to cracked paint.
'Sure.'
'Then, me bright boy, take a look at yer man, the thermometer.'
