The Fear In Yesterday's rings

a live lobox for show-and-tell, the entire Zelezian weapons empire could fall apart; Switzerland will turn a blind eye to a lot of things involving money, but not for a resident or citizen who embarrasses them by running a Swiss company that would turn a savage, wild beast loose on innocent people just to see what will happen. Interpol would probably get involved, and in this country, congressional committees will probably be falling all over themselves trying to find out who's responsible for the fact that a band of foreign assassins slipped into this country so easily and then had virtual free rein of the place. If it turns out that the CIA is involved, which it probably is, all hell will break loose. For those people, an awful lot depends on getting that lobox back and seeing us dead. Which leaves us with the problem of finding someplace safe to hide with an elephant, and doing it quickly.'

Garth asked, 'What about those grain elevators over there?'

'I've been looking at those,' I replied, giving a noncommittal shrug. 'An empty grain elevator, or maybe some other building in a grain storage complex, could certainly solve our problems, at least for a while. But what about the people there?'

'Don't you think somebody would call the police if they saw three people riding around on the back of an elephant?' Harper asked. 'That's what we want, isn't it?'

'Sure,' I said, reaching behind me to squeeze her thigh. 'But more innocent people could die if we go over there. So far, the lobox only seems interested in me, but that could change. Nobody really knows what a lobox will do. This one's been out of the barn a long time now, and Nate Button said that its natural instinct is to kill people. If it gets bored hanging around waiting for me to get down, and there are other people around, it might just start ripping them up. As far as we know it hasn't eaten for a couple of days, so it's got to be hungry. I don't see how we can take a chance with other people's lives.'

'Agreed,' Garth said. 'But I'd say there's a better than even chance there's nobody there. You don't come home to these parts as often as I do, Mongo. Farms are in bad shape. I'll bet that half those farmhouses we passed during the night are abandoned. There are a lot of empty grain elevators in the Midwest, so that complex we're looking at may not even be in use. By the time we're within a mile or so, we should be able to see if there's anybody around. If there is, then we turn Mabel around and ride away. The way that lobox has been dogging you, there's no reason to believe it will run off now. If the silos are empty, we take up residence in one; if there are people around, at least somebody may call the police. It seems like a reasonable course of action. We're going to have to do something quick, Mongo, because we're running out of time.'

'Right,' I said, and tapped Mabel low on the forehead with the end of the hickory trapeze bar.

Mabel still seemed to be enjoying her strange outing and feeling cooperative, because she unhesitatingly lumbered forward into the river. The water in the middle reached her chest, but then began to grow shallower. It was the deepest body of water we had forded, and it certainly would have been a pleasure to discover that loboxes couldn't swim, or positively hated water, but there was no such luck; when I leaned out and looked back, I could see that the creature was still tracking us at a distance of fifteen yards, swimming through the water with powerful strokes.

'It looks like loboxes are good swimmers,' Garth said wryly. 'You might want to write that down in your notebook.'

'If I did have a notebook, I'd probably throw it at you. If and when we do find a safe place to hole up before the bad guys come and shoot us all, we have to start giving some serious thought to what we're going to do about that damned thing behind us.'

Harper yawned, then once again wrapped her arms around my waist and rested her head on my back. 'Make him yours, Robby,' she mumbled sleepily.

'Say what?'

'Make him yours; take control away from Luther. Tame him.'

'You've got to be kidding me.'

I could feel her shaking her head. 'You know I'm not.'

'That sounds like a hell of a good idea to me, Mongo,' Garth said.

'Hey, brother, are you still enjoying your elephant ride? Anyone who ever met the Fredericksons always said you were the biggest kid in the family, always making jokes like that. I was always too busy being a dwarf to have any fun.'

Harper laughed. 'Do you two always go at it like this?'

Garth said, 'Mongo always acts like this when he thinks there's some beastie that wants to eat him. He can't take pressure.' He paused, then added seriously: 'I do think it sounds like a good idea, Mongo.'

'That's because she didn't suggest that you tame him.'

Naturally, Garth paid no attention to me. 'Now, that would really be something, you managing to put that thing on a leash. It would also solve a lot of our problems. Can it be done?'

'No,' I said curtly. 'It already has a master. I'm just a meal to it, and it has to be getting very hungry by now.'

'Yes,' Harper said in her dreamy voice. 'Robby could do it if he really put his mind to the problem, Garth. You've never seen him work with animals; I have. I've seen him work tigers, bears, elephants-you've seen what he managed to do with this big thing that's our current mode of transportation.'

'I didn't work them,' I said tersely, glancing up at the sky for signs of a plane or helicopter, 'I played with them. It was just a hobby, Harper. They were dangerous, sure, but their primary instinct wasn't to look on me as an entree. Those animals hadn't been trained to kill, and they certainly hadn't been specifically primed to kill me.'

'My money's on you, Mongo,' Garth said, and I didn't have to look around to see the grin on his face; it was in his voice. 'The more I think about it, the more I like the idea. I'd love to see the look on Luther's face if you brought his pet back to him. The son-of-a-bitch would probably have a stroke.'

'I'd love to see the look on his face just before the lobox he trained bites his face off. Harper said. She no longer sounded sleepy.

'I don't have the time or inclination to explain to you people the dozen or so good reasons why it can't be done,' I said impatiently. 'You're both out of your minds.'

Garth had been right about the grain elevators. When we were still at least two miles away, it was possible to see not only that the complex was abandoned but that it hadn't been used in years. Half of the enormous silos were crumbling or had holes in them. All the windows in the various buildings had been boarded up.

We came out of a field onto what had once been the main access road to the complex; it was now mostly washed out and filled with potholes. Mabel rambled up the road, and we entered the complex at almost the same time as a black speck that was a small airplane appeared on the horizon, to the south. The plane could have been a crop duster, but somehow I doubted it.

We moved around a network of dirt roads through the complex, past broken ramps and conveyor belts leading into broken silos, rotting buildings, rusting equipment, enormous chutes hanging uselessly in space. It was beginning to look as if the grain elevator complex, which looked so promising from a distance, was a false Eden. It would, of course, be rather foolish to try to hole up in a building pocked with holes that the lobox could come through anytime it chose.

Mabel seemed to be having some racial memory of her own working for her; she apparently sensed that the lobox was an enemy. The lobox, for his part, seemed to be suffering from hubris; it had been following us at an ever-decreasing distance throughout the night; since there had been no consequences, it had decided to close that distance even further. It was now trotting alongside Mabel's left flank, occasionally looking up at me as it raised its ruff and bared its teeth. It's a mistake to threaten an elephant's mahout; without warning, Mabel abruptly stopped, pivoted to her left, swinging her trunk and murderous tusks around. The lobox, despite its lightning reflexes, was caught off guard. First, Mabel's trunk whacked the creature hard on the right shoulder, and then one of her capped tusks caught the lobox in the ribs, the force of impact lifting it off its feet and hurling it through the air. It landed hard on its side, twenty feet away. It immediately got to its feet, but it swayed unsteadily for a few moments. I hoped to see it start coughing blood from a punctured lung and go down, but it didn't happen; the lobox was shaken, but not severely hurt. It shook itself, moved off even further, then raised its head and screamed in fury and pain. When it looked at me, I thought I detected something new in its expressive, golden eyes-fear. The lobox wasn't going to come too close to Mabel again, and that was to our advantage.

But that was all the good news there was.

We could survive without food for a few days, but lack of water was entirely another matter. Mabel could