there brought him no more information or useful material than they had on the other side, but he persisted. He had nothing else to do anyway. Once, he halted before some tiny openings and tried to see outside. All he managed to catch were a few brief glimpses of earth and sky, neither of which was very enlightening.
Continuing up the line back toward the front of the prison, he came upon a young woman wedged against the cold metal. The compartment was not heated and she was shivering, her hands trembling as she tried to keep the baby in her arms warm.
Peeling off his gloves, he handed them over to her. Her expression as she took them said more than words. In gratitude and wanting to reciprocate, she picked up a small bag with one hand and dumped its contents out on the floor where he could see them. He shook his head, declining the offer. There wasn’t much to see anyway. Some cotton puffs, Q-tips, a comb with half its teeth missing, an incongruously intact lipstick, a lone shoelace....
His eyes widened slightly and he pointed at the shoelace. Grateful and pleased that she was able to give back, she pressed the length of fabric into his hand.
It was all he was able to glean from his questioning, but it was better than nothing. On the face of it, it would not be of much use against even the smallest of the fighting machines. But over the years he had learned not to despise even the smallest potential weapon. As he rejoined Virginia and the now sleeping Star, he carefully tucked his prize into his shirt. Then he settled down to listen to the older woman sing.
Her lilting voice brought back memories he had thought forever forgotten.
It seemed an incongruous place to seek shelter for the night—beneath a machine. But the rusting hulk of the huge constructor had never possessed an independent mind, had never been tormented by consciousness. Its driverless cab flaunted levers and wheels, buttons and dials. It had been manufactured before the age of malevolent self-awareness circuits and devious communications parsers. Without a human driver it could do nothing, and consequently was perfectly harmless.
At the base of this mountain of silent metal, flames blossomed, a flickering red-orange rose of heat holding back the night chill. Wright fed it another log and it leaped gratefully into the cold air.
Which, if the murderous machines had their way, would not be long in coming.
Lying on the ground, he shifted his attention from the fire to his companion. The pile of scavenged logs and kindling wasn’t the only presence close to the machine that was giving off heat. It didn’t take long for her to notice that his gaze had become fixed.
“You’re staring, Marcus. Thinking about your past?”
Unaware that his concentration might have strayed into the realm of the impolite, he blinked and turned away.
“Sorry. Didn’t mean anything by it. It’s been a while since I spent any time around someone who wasn’t,” he hesitated briefly before finishing the confession, “scared of me.”
Using a long stick she stirred the embers, wishing they had something worth cooking. Marshmallows, she thought. And polish sausage. Might as well wish for creme brulee and chateaubriand while she was at it.
“After seeing how you handled those three drifters I can understand why some folks might cross to the other side of the street when they see you coming, but I don’t scare easy. Besides, we’re not alone out here. We have a chaperone.” She patted the heavy butt of the Desert Eagle, now restored to its proper place in the holster hitched to her service belt.
“Maybe you’d be scared if you knew more about me.” Lying flat on his back now, he regarded the stars that were starting to peep through the shifting cloud cover.
“Like what?” The heat from the fire was making her sleepy.
“I was in prison. Before.”
She set her stir stick aside and turned her attention from prodding the fire to her suddenly pensive companion.
“Didn’t know they had any left.” When he looked sharply at her, she added, “What did you do? Usually when someone talks about having spent time in prison, they’re not referring to their long career as a guard.”
He took some time before replying.
“I shot a cop.”
She took more time before responding.
“You have a good reason?”
It clearly wasn’t the comeback he had been expecting.
“Not the first question people usually ask.”
“Normally it wouldn’t be the first one I’d ask, either, Marcus. But you came back to help me, back at the racetrack. Something about you doesn’t add up, doesn’t make sense. I can’t figure it, and so I can’t figure you. One thing I do know: you saw those three nomads and they didn’t see you. There was nothing to stop you from slipping away into the night and leaving me to have to deal with them. You could simply have left.”
“Thought about it,” he told her with brutal honesty.
“But you didn’t,” she hastened to point out. “You came back to help me, a stranger, at considerable risk to yourself.”
“Not so much risk.” The way he said it made it sound like the most normal assessment in the world, devoid of even a hint of bluster.
“You came back,” she reiterated, “when most people in your position would not have done so. People are different now, Marcus. In case you hadn’t noticed, the world is a little different now, too. Just to give you one example, I sure as hell never thought I’d be a fighter pilot.” She contemplated what had become of her life.
