evergreen and hardwood forest was disputed territory, and dangerous. On the Indian side, technically at least, this area still belonged to the Iroquois-speaking Six Nations — the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca, and Tuscarora — but there was a Chippewa camp not far away, parties of Delaware passing through now and then, even some Ottawa in the area, supposedly. A white man clad in buckskins prowling in any of their territories uninvited might be viewed with a certain amount of hostility; better that nobody saw him.
The deer trail wound serpentinely through the forest, wide enough for a man to traverse, but a bit low in spots, causing Jay to duck overhanging tree branches. The smell of fir was strong, and his own sweat added a sour note to it. He carried a long rifle, a flintlock as tall as he was, a powder horn, lead balls and patches, a single shot pistol of a matching caliber, a sheath knife, and a tomahawk, much as any frontiersman of the era might. No coonskin cap, though — the idea of a dead raccoon on his head seemed ghoulish, even in VR. Instead, he wore a plain leather cap. Maybe there wasn’t any real difference between cowhide and small furry animal skin, but everybody drew the line somewhere.
The mosquitoes were bad, but as long as he kept moving they didn’t settle too thickly on his exposed face and hands; they couldn’t penetrate the thick buckskin shirt and pants, nor what he wore under them. A few big wood spiders had spun card-table-sized webs here and there, and he avoided those when he saw them.
A bird called out ahead of him, a cheerful whistle he didn’t recognize. A man couldn’t know everything.
He came to a small clearing in the forest, a place where a couple of huge old-growth conifers had fallen and flattened a dozen smaller trees. The big trunks had mostly rotted away under sun and wind and rain, turning to reddish brown, pulpy food for termites, and fertilizer for the new growth that wiggled and broke through their corpses. There were also sedge grasses here, many of which had been nibbled short by the deer. It was maybe thirty meters across, the clearing, and the sun shined down upon it through the rent in the forest’s thick canopy.
He waited a few seconds, listening, looking, sniffing the air. Everything seemed okay.
He started across the clearing. Halfway to the other side, he heard something behind him. A startled animal, perhaps?
He looked over his shoulder in time to see a Native American warrior step out of the brush. The man had an iron-tipped lance, and from his dress Jay realized he was a Shawnee. He had forgotten about them — they were a Johnny-come-lately tribe in Pennsylvania, having arrived here only around the end of the 1600s.
Another warrior stepped into view, also armed with a long lance. A third slipped from the brush, and he had a rifle much like Jay’s, though the stock of his was decorated with a pattern of brass nail heads. They weren’t wearing feathers or war paint, but they weren’t smiling at him, either.
One of the Shawnee chanted something. Probably something like, “Say your prayers, round eyes, you’re a dead man!” but Jay shook his head.
“Not this time, pal,” he said.
He dropped his long rifle, tore open his buckskin shirt to reveal a Kevlar and spider silk vest, along with an Uzi slung from a strap under his armpit. He pulled the black subgun out and pointed it at the three Shawnee in front of him. “Rock ’n’ roll!” he yelled. “Rock ’n’ roll—!”
He pulled the Uzi’s trigger. Thirty-odd rounds of jacketed 9mm bullets spewed. The air filled with smoke and noise. At this range, it was hard to miss. He waved the gun like a water hose—
The soft lead bullet from the Shawnee’s rifle whacked him square in the middle of his back. He felt it flatten against the vest, sting, but do no damage—
By the time he spun to attend to the other three, the extra-long fifty-round magazine was running low, so he limited himself to five-round bursts:
He held the final burst down, and stitched the sixth very surprised Indian across the thighs. The last ambusher fell; unlike the other five, he was down, but not dead.
The woods got very quiet after the angry roar of the submachine gun.
God bless the Israelis and their dependable technology.
He held the muzzle of the subgun up in front of his face and blew away the thin tendril of smoke rising from the hot barrel.
“How’d you like
He moved toward the wounded Shawnee. He had a few questions to ask him, and if he hurried he might get an answer before his opponent realized what was going on…
“Son of a bitch,” Jackson Keller said. He grinned. “So you haven’t lost all your moves after all, Jay. Good for you.”
He looked at the holoprojic recording floating above his console. The packet Jay had managed to snag wasn’t going to take him anywhere useful, but it was surprising he had managed to avoid the scenario-destroying trap like that.
Well. Maybe it shouldn’t have been so surprising. At his peak, back in their college days, Jay had been sharp, as sharp as anybody. They had run with CIT’s and MIT’s best. It wasn’t unreasonable that some small part of his edge wasn’t completely dull. That just made it more interesting, didn’t it?
So he avoided a trap. No big deal. The next one would be better. He reached for his sensor set.
His com chirped. He was tempted to ignore it and jack back into VR, but he glanced at the ID sig. Better get that.
“Hey,” he said.
Jasmine said, “Hey. Listen, there’s something you ought to know, just FYI.”
“Sure, shoot.”
“It seems that Roberto has, ah… found out that you and I have been… intimate.”
Keller both felt and heard himself take a deep breath. And his belly knotted as if somebody had stabbed him in it with a shard of dry ice. “Excuse me? How did that happen?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t say anything.”
“Well, I sure as hell didn’t.”
“It’s not anything to worry about.”
He knew it had been a mistake to sleep with her. Good as she was, it had been a mistake.
He tried to keep his voice calm. He should have expected this. It was a big boat, but not that big. They weren’t invisible. “Oh. Really.”
“He’s part of the team. He doesn’t want to screw that up, he’s making way too much money — he knows I’d fire him if he hurt you.”
He didn’t say anything.
“Anyway, that’s it. I’ll be sending him on a little chore later today. We can… talk about it more when he’s gone.”
He blinked at the frozen holoproj over his computer. Was she saying what he thought she was saying? That once Santos was off the ship, they’d get back into the sack together? Was she that stupid?
Was he?
He mumbled something, and she discommed.
His heart was definitely beating faster, and his breathing was rapid and unsteady, too. All of a sudden, this
