Systemic Shock

resumed his train of thought. 'I thought Sonora was in Mexico.'

'Bite your tongue,' Bernie glowered, and winked. 'We're still a little edgy about bein' confused with Mexico.' He went on to explain that Sonora, Texas, was suitably isolated for immunological work, with natural caves and facilities for researchers dating back many years. 'There's Aggie research stations all over. I grant there ain't much to see but you're welcome to come cuss it with me.' Bernie held the shackle fitting by the rope; nodded.

'Bernie, where'd you learn your trade?'

'Rice University.' Sigh: 'Gone with the rest of Houston, I reckon. I was a basketball jock, but they had good courses in Aerospace structures. I got along.'

'Personal question; okay?'

'Flog it by me.'

'Why does everybody in Texas talk like old cowboy movies?'

Bernie Grey threw his head back and guffawed, then mimed a mystified fool. “Beats hell outa me, Ted.' Sobering, still amused: 'We don't all do it, and I don't do it all the time. You can't run a high-tech cargo system with cowpoke's lingo. Call it a linguistic badge; it tells folks you won't have no truck with eastern shuck.'

Quantrill found himself smiling for the first time in a week. 'But it is a shuck. Isn't it?'

'Yup. One you could stand to learn if you're here long. Just don't pile it on too deep 'til you learn how to spread it. And don't feel obliged. It ain't your fault if you can't carry the tune.'

Quantrill followed Bernie to the great dome where deltas underwent refitting, watched the rope terminal pass a tensile test, listened while his friend rhapsodized on the favorite topic of Texans: Texas. Despite the leveling influence of media, a state the size of Texas had plenty of room for subcultures. A Beaumont Cajun's dialect might be barely intelligible to an Odessa roughneck unless one of them had traveled a bit. Geography had something to do with it, but much of it was a matter of choice. Only half joking, Bernie argued that air conditioning had nearly destroyed the urban Texan's identity, his acceptance of occasional hard times and determination to survive them with good humor.

'Wouldn't be a bit surprised,' said Bernie, 'if the war brought back the old frontier in some parts. There's fellers in Fort Stockton still packin' Colts to use on rattlers and road-signs. And the weather drives the sissies out; in Sonora the sun'll melt the fillin's outa your teeth.'

Quantrill assumed a slightly bowlegged slouch. 'Purely makes a feller mean, don't it?'

Bernie cocked his head, fighting a grin, and nodded. “Too many sharps and flats, pard, but you got a good ear fer-bullshit. You'll do,' he added, letting the grin come, ruffling Quantrill's hair. 'Now let's get this shackle on the Norway. We'll be liftin' about three ayem; put us over Sonora by breakfast.'

Quantrill groaned. 'Doesn't anything start in broad daylight?'

'You bet it does.' Lowering his voice as they passed an Aggie undergrad in the tunnel, Bernie continued. 'Cap'n says we shot down an Indian photorecon job near Lake Charles today. You can bet it didn't fly from New Delhi.'

'Mexico? Jeez, I thought they were on our side.'

'They were 'til they joined OPEC and didn't need us anymore. If you know any history, you can't blame 'em. But cap'n thinks that recon ship came from somewhere off the gulf coast. If there's more, — well, we'd be sugar candy for some fuckin' Injun on a long sortie. So we're goin' tonight. We don't make much of a signature for night fighters.'

'Boy, that's a weird idea,' Quantrill said.

'What?'

'One of those guys shooting us down.'

'Weird ain't exactly how I'd put it.'

'It is if you think about it. Here we go again: cowboys and Indians.'

Bernie Grey paused with his hand on a mooring strut of the Norway; shook his head. 'I swan if this kid ain't one for the books.' In mock dejection, he climbed into the airship.

Quantrill followed, now familiar with the handholds, and let the radiation monitor read him. Campus klaxons had whonnnnked their warnings only once during their stay at College Station; ground winds from the Austin area, someone said. But the campus background count was rising, as it had nearly everywhere else, and the few who traveled aboveground usually did so under wraps or in electrabouts.

Quantrill waited while Bernie used the airhose, a jury rig with filtered air and fans to vent the dust overboard. Then he played the hose on himself, returned to the monitor. “Now I see why captain Chartrand insists we get a burr haircut,' he said.

'It's that or a shower cap,' Bernie shrugged, 'or fried brains over the long haul. Shoot, you just try and park a

Texan under a shower cap! Instead, we're all gonna look like Army recruits. But better that than be one,' he laughed.

Quantrill had seen the inductees, some of them looking no older than he, doing close-order drill in the hangar and gym. He felt no shame that he was one of fortune's few; by now he was accepted as an apprentice by the Norway's usual eight-man crew, and was learning how to laugh again. Some things he worried about: he still had learned nothing about either of his parents. Some things he refused to think about. His will commanded that it was better to focus on a sense of belonging than on the hopeless sense of all that he had lost.

Shortly before three a.m. on Saturday morning, the Norway, her cargo of supplies and small live animals distributed by Bernie Grey for optimum trim, slid up over the Brazos ^: River in a northerly arc to bypass the Austin desolation. Quantrill had been slapped on the shoulder by the cap'n, called 'son'; told that he would awaken over Edwards Plateau. His freshly-cut hair and an innocent anticipation had kept him awake for an hour, savoring the voyage like a child. But he was asleep on his aircouch when the Norway lifted.

Chapter Thirty-Nine

From six thousand meters, the dry ravines serrating Edwards Plateau were thrown into sharp relief by the dawn sun. Slender, sure-fingered Blythe Rogers, inevitably nicknamed 'co-cap'n Bly, pointed out salient features to the alert green-eyed youth who leaned over Rogers's shoulder. 'Sometimes you see deer under those low cliffs,' he said. ”More likely along the Llano River ahead to portside, which isn't much of a river but wherever you see pecan trees fifty meters high, there's water and game—'

Quantrill's arm shot out, pointing at a ridge to starboard. 'What's that?'

Rogers squinted, staring past the outstretched finger. Far below, a dark speck raced into the ridge shadow at an unlikely pace. 'Must be a stray calf — but Gawd, he's traveling!' Without speaking, Chartrand gestured at the display, then studied his instrument panel again. “Why not,' Rogers asked himself aloud, and flicked on the image enhancer.

By now they were almost over the animal and Rogers swept the ridge at low magnification. Briefly then, their quarry could be seen standing motionless. Rogers increased the magnification.

'God a 'mighty,' Rogers breathed, before they slid past the ridge. 'Cap'n, did you see that peccary?'

A nod. 'Glad I could see it from up here — only that was no peccary, Ely.'

'You ever see tusks like that on a cow?'

Chartrand smiled and shook his head. 'No, and I never saw a peccary the size of a Shetland pony. Gentlemen, you have just met an Aggie russian boar. Damn' if I know what it's doing out of the Aggie pens, but they were breeding some there. Working on a big low-aggression strain. I just hope that one's had his lobotomy, or whatever it takes.'

Quantrill felt a prickling along his arms. The beast had been clear on the display for only a moment; huge shoulders innocent of fat, sharply ridged back tapering to muscular haunches, tiny hooves. But more awesome than the upward-curving tusks that flanked the snout like ivory goalposts was the fact that the great animal stood on