Текст книги "Dreadnought"

Автор книги: Cherie Priest

Соавторы: Cherie Priest
сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 12 (всего у книги 24 страниц)

“Aunt Norene, you must tell us-what’s happening?”

“Rebs! Filthy stinking raiders. Leftovers of Bloody Bill, I bet you-nasty things, and brutish! They came riding up and firing, right into the cabins!” she blustered.

Mercy looked around and didn’t see any windows shot out, but for all she knew, they’d been playing target practice with them in the cars up ahead. “Is anyone hurt?” she asked, already guessing the answer but not knowing what else to say on the subject.

“In here? Heavens, dear girl. I couldn’t say. I should think not, though.”

Gunfire came closer this time, and a bullet ricocheted with a startling ping, though Mercy couldn’t gather where it’d started or where it’d ended up. She heard it tearing through metal and bouncing, landing with a plop.

Someone in the next car up screamed, and she heard the sound of glass being broken yet again, then the sound of return fire coming from inside the train.

Leaning out her own window this time, Mercy saw more horses and more men-at least half a dozen on her side of the train alone-so she skedaddled across the aisle and pushed past the girl who was sitting there already, lying across the seat with her head covered. On that side, she could almost see . . . but not quite.

She reached for the window’s latch, flipped it, and yanked it up so she could get a better look. Craning her face into the wind, Mercy narrowed her eyes against the gusts, and the fierce, cold hurricane of the train’s swift passage. On that side of the train she counted six-no, seven-men on horseback, for a total of maybe fifteen.

She let go of the window and it fell with a sliding snick back into place.

Back on her side of the car, Miss Clay was trying to calm her aunt and urge the woman into a position on the floor. “I’ll pull down the bags,” she was saying. “We’ll use them for cover-I’ll put them between you and the car’s wall, in case of stray bullets.”

Mercy thought this was an eminently sensible plan, and if she’d had any suitcases of her own, she would’ve promptly contributed to the makeshift barricade. In lieu of hard-shelled luggage, she rifled through her bag and felt the chilly heft of the guns. She hesitated, and while she made up her mind, the train picked up speed with a heave. She swayed on her feet and watched out the window as one of the masked men in gray was outpaced. His horse’s legs churned, pumping like the engine’s pistons, but the beast was losing ground.

He looked up into the window, a rifle slung over his shoulder and a six-shooter bouncing roughly in one of his hands. He pointed it up at her, or at the window, or at the train in general-she had no way of knowing what he saw as he peered up from the rollicking back of his frothing horse. Maybe he saw nothing but a reflection of the sky, or the passing trees. But for a moment she could’ve sworn they made eye contact. He lowered the gun and flipped it into his holster, while drawing up hard on his horse’s reins and letting it veer off with a bucking skid.

Mercy realized she had been holding her breath. She released it, and she released her grip on her own chest.

Sensing someone standing nearby, she spun about and found herself face-to-face with Horatio Korman, who was standing so close, he might’ve been sniffing at her hair. The thought fired through her head– So, I’m not the only one the bushwhacker saw in the window-and she said breathlessly, “Mr. Korman! You’ve startled me!”

The ranger said, “You need to get down. Take some cover like a sane woman, Mrs. Lynch.”

“Mr. Korman, tell me what’s going on!”

“How should I know?” he asked without a shrug. “I’m just a passenger here, myself.”

“Guess,”she ordered him.

“All right, I’d guess raiders, then. They look like Rebs to me, so it’s safe to say they’re sworn enemies of yours, and all that.” If there was an accusation buried there, he let it lie deep, and left the surface of the statement sounding blank. “I’m sure the militia boys on board will make short work of them.”

From up front, a riotous wave of artillery cut through the popping blips of gunfire. The difference between the Dreadnought’s cannon and the bushwhacker rifles sounded like the difference between a lone whistler and a church choir.

The engine kicked and leaned, whipping the cars behind it so they swayed on their tracks, back and forth, harder than before, more violently than normal.

“They’ll be blown to bits!” Mrs. Butterfield declared with naked glee.

But the ranger said, “I wouldn’t bet on it. Look at that, can you see? They’re peeling away, heading back into the woods.”

“Maybe they know what’s good for them after all,” the old woman said smugly.

“I reckon they’ve got a pretty fair idea,” said Horatio Korman. “That was just about the fastest raid I ever saw in my life. Look. It’s already over.”

A final spray of Gatling-string bullets spit across the scenery, chasing after the men and horses that Mercy could no longer see through her window. “Wasn’t much of a attack,” she observed.

Mrs. Butterfield said, “Of course not. Weak and cowardly, the lot of them. But I suppose this will give me something to write letters about. We’ve certainly had a bit of excitement already!”

“Excitement?” The ranger snorted softly. “They didn’t even make it on board.” He looked down at the woman, still being squeezed tightly in her niece’s arms.

She scowled up at him. “And who are you to comment on the matter? I know by your voice, if not by your rough demeanor, that you must be a Republican, and I daresay it’s a shame and a mockery for you to board this vessel, given your near-certainsympathies.”

He retorted, “My sympathies are none of your goddamn business. Right now they lean toward getting safe and sound to Utah, and I can assure you I don’t have any desire to get blown up between here and there. So if they got chased off, good. It’s all the same to me.” He flashed Mercy a look that said he’d like to say more, maybe to her, maybe in private someplace.

As if the ranger had not just spoken so harshly, he tipped the brim of his hat to them in turn and said, “Ladies,” as a means of excusing himself and calling the strained conversation to a close.

When he was gone, Miss Clay’s frigid glare settled on Mercy. She asked the nurse, “You know that revolting man?”

“I . . .” She shook her head and took her seat slowly. “He was on the ship I rode to St. Louis. He was a passenger, that’s all.”

“He surely has taken an interest in you.”

“We ain’t friends.”

“Did I hear you tell Captain MacGruder that your husband was from Lexington?”

Mercy told her, “You heard right. And in case you didn’t hear the rest, he died down in Plains, at the camp there. I only found out last week.”

“I’m not strictly certain I believe you.”

“I’m not strictly certain I give a shit,” Mercy said, though she was angry with herself for getting angry at this woman, when she had a story handy that was good enough to cover any suspicious guesses. “But if it makes you feel better . . .” She reached for the satchel again, and pushed past the guns into the wad of papers. She pulled out the sheet that Clara Barton had given her and shoved it under Miss Clay’s nose. “You like to read? Read that. And keep your accusations to yourself.”

Theodora Clay’s eyes skimmed the lines, noted the official stationery, and read enough to satisfy her curiosity. She did not exactly soften, but the rigid lines across her forehead faded. “All right, then. I guess that means I owe you an apology,” she said, but then she didn’t offer one.

Mercy retrieved the paper and lovingly put it back into her bag, next to the note from Captain Sally. “Maybe you owe one to Mr. Korman, too, since he didn’t do anything except tell you the coast was clear.”

Just then, the captain came bursting back through the passenger car with several of his men, including Mr. Purdue and the two blonds who’d first delivered the bad news, who were helping to support an unknown fellow who was bleeding from the shoulder. The captain stopped at Mercy and said, “Mrs. Lynch, you’re a nurse, aren’t you?”

“That’s right. Who told you?”

“A big Texian in the next car up.”

She reached for her bag. “But haven’t you got a doctor on board?”

“We were supposed to,” he said with a note of complaint. “But we don’t, and we’re not picking one up until the next stop. So for now I’ve got a man who could use a little attention, if you’d be so kind as to help us wrap him up.”

“Of course,” she said, happy for the excuse to conclude her awkward talk with Miss Clay.

“Do you have anything useful in that bag of yours?”

“It’s all loaded up with useful things,” she said, and stepped into the aisle behind them. She could tell at a glance that the man wasn’t mortally injured, though his eyes were frantic, like he’d never been hurt this bad before in all his life. But there’s a first time for everything, and this first event was scaring him more than it was hurting him. “Where are you taking him?”

“Back to the last passenger car. It’s only half full, and we can set him down there.”

Mercy followed the small crew back, across the blizzard-wild interchanges between the cars, and into the last compartment of the last passenger sleeper. There, they tried to lay the man down, but he wouldn’t have it. He sat up, protesting, until Mercy had shooed all but the white-haired captain away. The car’s few occupants were just beginning to rise off the floor and reclaim their seats, as the captain told them, “It’s fine, everyone. You can come out again. It was just a weak little attempt at a raid, and it’s over now.”

So while they rose from their hiding places, they watched curiously as Mercy removed the injured man’s shirt down to his waist. The captain took a seat on the other side of the compartment so he could watch the proceedings.

He told the patient, “This is Mrs. Lynch. Her husband died in a camp in Georgia not too long ago. She’s a nurse.”

“I gathered that last part,” the man said. It came out of his chest in a soft gust.

“She’s from Kentucky.”

She smiled politely as if to confirm this, and prodded at the injury. “Captain, could you scare up some clean rags for me, and some water? I bet they’ll have some back in the caboose.”

“I’ll just be a moment,” he said, practically clicking his heels.

The man with the now-naked torso leaned his head against the seat’s high back and asked, “Where’re you from in Kentucky, Mrs. Lynch? And might I ask, where’re you going?”

She didn’t mind answering, if for no other reason than it’d take his mind off the wound. “I’m from Lexington. And I’m headed west to meet up with my daddy. He got hurt not so long ago himself. It’s a long story. What’s your name, sweetheart?”

The loud clap and unclap of the car door announced Captain MacGruder’s return. “Here you go, ma’am,” he said, handing her a bundle of washrags made for dishes and a pitcher full of water. “I hope these’ll work.”

“They’ll work just fine.” She took one of the rags and dunked it into the pitcher, then proceeded to dab away the blood.

“Morris,” he answered her question belatedly. “It’s Private First Class Morris Comstock.”

“Nice to meet you,” she said. “Now, lean forward for me, if you would, please.”

“Yes ma’am,” he said, and struggled to accommodate her.

She wiped the back of his shoulder, too, and said, “Well, Private First Class Morris Comstock, I do believe you’ll live to see another day.”

“How do you figure that?”

“If it’d stuck you any lower, you’d be losing a lung right now, and if it was any higher, it would’ve broken your collarbone all to pieces. But as it stands, unless it takes to festering, I think you’re going to be just fine.” She gave him an honest smile that was a little brighter than her professional version, if for no other reason than his own relief was contagious.

“You mean it?”

“I mean it. Let me clean it up and cover it, and we’ll call you all set. This your first time taking lead?”

“Yes ma’am.”

She handed him a clean rag and said, “Here. Hold this up against it so it stops bleeding. Now lean forward again”-she shoved another rag behind him-“and we’ll plug you up coming and going.” She unrolled some bandages and said to the captain, “I hope nobody else was hurt,” which was her way of asking if anybody was dead. If anyone else had been hurt, they’d be sitting beside Morris Comstock.

“No ma’am,” he answered her. “It was a funny little raid. Didn’t get much accomplished.”

While the injured soldier was still leaning forward, his face closer to Mercy’s, he said quietly, “You know what? I don’t think it was really a raid.”

“You don’t?” she responded quietly in kind.

“I don’t.” When the rear wound was staunched, he leaned back again. “I think they were just taking a look-just checking us out, to see what the engine could do, and how many men we had in the cars. They didn’t even try to board or nothing. They just rode up, fired their guns-mostly into the air, except when they saw fellas in uniform like me-and got a good eyeful.”

Mercy said, still softly, since other passengers were watching, “You think they’ll be back.”

“I sure do. They’ll be back-and let ’em come, that’s what I say. They may’ve gotten an idea of how many men we’ve got, but they didn’t even get a tasteof what we can do.”

Twelve

A follow-up raid did not come, not immediately and not even soon. For the next few days, all the soldiers were in the very highest state of tense alertness, jumping at each click in the tracks, and leaping into readiness any time the whistle blew. Mercy became almost accustomed to it, as she became accustomed to her seatmates-even as Miss Clay continued to be both aloof to her and, in the nurse’s estimation, a tad too friendly with the young soldiers, if friendlywas the right word. She tolerated their company better than anyone else’s, at least, and much to her aunt’s glee, she spent a fair bit of time being escorted to and from the dining car by whoever was on duty, or passing through.

“You never know,” burbled Mrs. Butterfield. “She might take to a husband yet! It’s not too late for her, after all. There’s still time for a few children, if the Lord sees fit to have her matched.”

Mercy nodded like always. And when Mrs. Butterfield nodded off, and Miss Clay had wandered back to the caboose (or wherever it was she went when she was gone), Mercy fondled the guns she now wore underneath her cloak. They fit there quite nicely, and no one noticed so long as she didn’t do too much wiggling around. Though the cars were heated by steam heat siphoned off the boilers, the windows were thin and they sometimes rattled, and the cars were never quite so toasty as she would’ve liked. So it wasn’t strange that she wore the concealing cloak almost all the time. She rather doubted that anyone would notice or care, even if she was spotted sporting weapons; but she enjoyed keeping them a secret, close and unseen up against her body.

At night she settled into the seat that transformed to a bed, nestling into her semi-private space with the divider separating her from even her compartment-mates, for all the difference it made. The divider stifled nothing, and every noise of the train’s daily and nightly motion filtered into the strained sleep she managed to catch. But by the end of the first week, she had a system down: She excused herself to the washroom to unfasten her day corset and remove her shoes, then, covered by her ever-present cloak, returned to the compartment to coil beneath a blanket in her narrow sleeping space, where she listened to Mrs. Butterfield snore and to the nocturnal comings and goings of Miss Clay, who slept even more infrequently than Mercy.

In the mornings, she repeated the system in reverse, beginning in the wash area once more and reassuming her personal attire for daylight hours. She also washed her face, brushed her teeth, and combed her hair back into a bun-or sometimes, if she felt particularly inspired, into braids that she pinned into a more elaborate and secure updo. The braids held their position better when she stepped back and forth between the cars-a procedure that was becoming almost unremarkable, though the February wind still clapped her in the face with the force of an irate schoolmarm every time she flipped a lever to let herself out of the Pullman.

She wondered after the men who conducted the train, and wondered how they slept-in shifts, she assumed-and how odd it must be to live and work in constant motion. She supposed that eventually they must become accustomed to it, just as she’d become accustomed to the smell of the Robertson Hospital; and she came to trust them as they kept the train moving, always moving, through daylight and darkness, and save for the occasional short stop that never lasted longer than an hour or two, however long it took the boilers to be refilled and the stash of diesel and coal to be replenished.

Until Kansas City.

Shortly before the Kansas City stop, which was meant to be an all-afternoon intermission from the grind of the tracks, the coupler that connected the fifth and sixth passenger cars broke as they whipped around a bend.

It was reported almost immediately, and there were few ways to handle it other than to force a stop and let the disconnected cars catch up. This maneuver was undertaken with no small degree of trepidation from the passengers and crew. In addition to the general suspense of being halted on the tracks and waiting for the train’s rear compartments to roll up and collide, there was also a terrific sense of vulnerability. Only a few miles outside the station, the Dreadnoughtsat parked on its track as if waiting for a wayward duckling to retrieve its position in line. All the passengers, crew, and soldiers sat or stood at attention, watching every window for a hint of danger. No one had forgotten the abortive raid, and no one wanted to see it repeated while they were sitting like those aforementioned ducks.

Miss Clay clutched at her portmanteau and Mrs. Butterfield sat rigid, upright, and propped into a position of defiance as the now-slowed rear cars caught up foot by foot, unstoppable even in their tedious approach.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” announced one of the blond soldiers, whose name had turned out to be Cyrus Berry. “Kindly brace yourselves,” he urged. “The back cars are going to bump us any second-”

And indeed, soon enough on the heel of those words that it almost interrupted them, the back cars collided with the front cars, smacking together in the place where the coupler had failed, and battering against the forward spaces so that luggage toppled down from storage, hats were knocked off of heads, and more than a few people were thrown to their hands and knees on the floor.

Pierce Tankersly, the other blond soldier, came through the front door, asking, “Is everyone all right?” His query was a bit premature, for no one was yet certain of personal allrightness, and the two little boys by the front window had only just begun to cry.

Mrs. Butterfield answered for the group. “I believe we’ll all survive. But tell me, dear lad, what happens now?”

“Now, we fix it,” he said firmly and with a determined expression that told everyone he didn’t have the slightest idea how this might be accomplished, but he had every faith that someone, somewhere, had a handle on the situation.

True to his assumptions, a pair of porters and one of the conductor’s men came along shortly, and while the nervous soldiers kept their arms at the ready and their eyes on the windows, the rail men began a hasty job of affixing the cars together in a temporary manner. Mercy didn’t see the whole of their endeavors, but she gathered it had something to do with bolting a new joint into place and praying it’d hold until Kansas City. In order to better guarantee this outcome, the Dreadnoughtpulled rather slowly into town.

Almost immediately after their arrival, Cyrus Berry departed the car and returned to it, passing along a message that was undoubtedly running the length of the train. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he began again, his arms held out in a bid to command the whole car’s attention. “Due to the coupler issues between the fifth and sixth car, we’re going to be spending the night here in town. To make up for the inconvenience and delay, the Union will provide everyone with money enough for a hotel room and supper here in town while repairs are being made. Please see the conductor or one of the porters for details and information about the hotel in question, and how to collect your fees. We’ll be leaving the West Bottoms Station tomorrow morning at ten o’clock, or that’s the plan as it stands right now.”

Then he tipped his hat to the passengers and moved on to the next car.

Mrs. Butterfield was delighted, and even Theodora Clay seemed pleased. “I’m forced to admit, I like the sound of a proper bed. These folding jobbies are hard on the neck, don’t you think?” she asked no one in particular.

Her aunt made murmuring noises of assent.

“Absolutely. And to think, it’s only been a week. Maybe we’ll get lucky and something else will break along the way,” Mercy suggested as she gathered her satchel and slipped her head through the strap, so it would hang across her chest.

“I don’t know if we should hope for that,” Miss Clay said. “We were fortunate to see the coupler fail so close to town. I don’t know about you, but I’d be immensely nervous if the train were to limp much farther. We were only going a quarter of our usual speed, these last few miles. Unless, of course, you aren’t particularly worried about meeting any southern raiders.”

Mercy pretended not to hear the implication and said primly, “I’m certainly not looking forward to any such thing.” Then, upon seeing Pierce Tankersly helping the widower and his children find their way to the door, she added a bit more loudly, “Though we’ve got plenty of good company on this train, and I’m pretty confident that the boys on board will hold ’em off just fine, if they do come sniffing back around. Now, if you’ll excuse me,” she said to her seatmates. She stepped out into the aisle behind the two little boys, who were thrilled silly at the prospect of getting off the train, even if only for the night.

She made her way to the exit with baby steps, halting occasionally to allow others to slip in front of her, and finally descended the short iron stairs onto terra firma once more. She bounced on her heels to stretch her legs, and turned her head hard left to right, which resulted in a satisfying crack.

Upon locating the conductor, she collected an envelope that contained an address and some Union bills to cover the afternoon and evening. A porter from the West Bottoms Station pointed her and a few of the other passengers to a nearby street, and they found their way to an unornamented brick establishment in the city’s heart as a small herd. The smell of stockyards wafted on every breeze, accompanied by the scent of oil, burning coal, and the hot stink of steel being soldered and pounded.

Mercy looked around and did not see Mrs. Butterfield or Miss Clay, but she smirked to imagine their reaction to the lowbrow quarters they’d be directed to. While she was taking visual stock of her fellow travelers, she spied the back end of Horatio Korman slinking away from the crowd and into a side street. Her eyes followed him around a corner until they could track him no farther.

Wondering what he was up to, she decided to follow him.

The neighborhood smelled no worse than the hospital, and this was only the stench of animals, after all: sheep, cattle, and hogs being shuffled about between markets before they headed for plates. Mercy had grown up around these smells, and could effortlessly ignore them. She walked past the Kansas City Live Stock Exchange with its immense gates and ranch-style signs, back around the station, and then past another stockyard she’d somehow missed on the first pass. Much like Fort Chattanooga, most of the people she saw on the street were men, but here and there she saw station passengers or debarkers like herself-mostly in working-class clothing, and mostly white. In fact, that was one of the first things she noticed about the passersby: She didn’t see half so many colored people as she did back East.

She spotted one or two, dressed in standard cowboy style with canvas pants, linen shirts, and boots; and she saw one porter on some sort of break from the train station; but that amounted to the whole of the population within her range of vision.

And where had the ranger gone, anyway? Suddenly, she didn’t see him.

A hand settled on the small of her back and pushed her forward firmly, but without any violence. “A word with you, ma’am.”

“Oh. Mr. Korman, thereyou are. This is getting downright unseemly,” she complained as he led her off the main walkway, away from the road, and toward a small sign advertising barbecue that was supplemented by the aroma halo of roast pork and beef.

“It’s nothing of the kind. This is just two passengers getting acquainted over supper,” he said as he urged her up the step and inside the clapboard structure called the Bar None Saloon and Grill. Just then his hand brushed her waist and found something hard. He paused and looked her in the eye, and for a moment Mercy could’ve sworn that he almost smiled. “Nice guns,” he said, even though he couldn’t see them.

She allowed herself to be ushered inside the grill, which was dark and smoky, but so thickly packed with the sweet and sharp aura of simmering food that the stockyards might have been a hundred miles away. They took a seat toward the rear, and Korman positioned himself so his back was to the kitchen wall and he faced the front door. Mercy sat in front of him, and as she adjusted herself on the bench, she realized how cold she’d become as she’d walked the West Bottoms. She peeled off her gloves and felt for her nearly numb ears, then blew into her hands.

“Cold out there,” she said, more for the act of saying something than to tell him what he already knew.

“Yup,” he agreed, and extracted himself from his overcoat, which he slapped over the back of an unoccupied chair. “You’re not lost, are you? You got yourself checked into the Prairie Dog?”

“Not yet. I wanted to stretch my legs.”

“You could pick a nicer part of town to do it in.”

“This is the only part of town with which I’m acquainted, and nobody’s bothered me yet except for you.”

“Yeah, and I’m about to bother you some more.”

“How’s that?”

He might’ve answered, but someone came over and took their order for a pair of sandwiches and home fries, so the conversation stalled briefly, then came back to life. He continued, “A few days ago-that incident with the Rebs.”

“The raiders?”

“Raiders,” he snorted. “They weren’t raiding shit.” He drawled out the word until it sounded like sheet.

She said, “That one man-on the horse, right before they left. I thought he was looking at me, through the window. But he wasn’t, was he? He was looking at you,behind me. Do you know him? Did you know about the raid?”

The ranger sniffed, a gesture that lifted and tilted one wing of his mustache. “I was pretty sure from the start that they must be some of Bloody Bill’s old boys; and when I set eyes on Jesse, that just about cinched it.”

“But he was wearing a bandanna over his face.”

“Aw, I’d know him anyplace.”

Mercy wasn’t sure what to make of this information, so she said, “But Bill’s dead, ain’t he? He’s been dead for years.”

“And it’s never stopped his bushwhackers from chasing blue all over Missouri, has it? That was his old band. And though I called ’em boys, Jesse’s a little older than me. The rest of them, though. They’re probably just backwoods kids with nothing better to do, and no intention of wearing a uniform or following orders.”

“Sounds like you think real highly of them.”

“The James brothers aren’t too bad, if you get to know them. But that’s beside the point. It wasn’t a raid, because Jesse and Frank are too damn smart to run up against something like the Dreadnoughtwith a handful of horses, a hoot, and a holler. They’re looking for something.”

Mercy shook her head. “Lord knows what. Ain’t it enough that the thing’s a big ol’ Union machine? Can’t blame them if they want to take it down.”

“They can’t take it down,” he insisted. “They aren’t dogs chasing a wagon, though they wouldn’t know what to do if they caught it.”

“But if you know some of them raiders, can’t you ask them?”

He let go of the tiny waxed point of his mustache and asked, “How exactly would you recommend I go about doing that? I can’t just hold up the train for a few days and wait on ’em to catch up, now, can I?”

“I don’t know. If you were determinedenough . . .”

“Oh, don’t go on like that. I need to get west of here, still-it’s my duty and my job to find out what’s going on for my own country. That doesn’t leave me a fat lot of time to be dickering around in Kansas, just to see what your grays think they require of a Union engine. All I can figure,” he continued, “is that there must be something on board that’s sparked their interest.”

“Like what?”

He shrugged and leaned back against the wall. “I was hoping maybe you had some idea. What do you know about what they’re carrying in those extra cars?”

“The one behind the caboose, you mean?”

“That one, sure. And the two behind the engine. Can’t be plain old fuel in those two; even a juggernaut like that damn engine don’t need half so much to propel it. No, I’m thinking they’re bringing something else along.”

A pair of sandwiches on hammered metal plates were slapped down in front of them, delaying Mercy’s response a few moments more. But when she spoke, after swallowing a mouthful of a very fine barbecue sandwich that was almost too spicy for her taste, she said, “Bodies.”

“What?”

“They’re carrying bodies-in that back car, anyhow.”

Horatio Korman licked his upper lip, which did not remove the full spectrum of sauce that was accumulating on the underside of his facial hair. “Well, sure,” he told her. “That’s the officialstory.”

“You don’t believe it?”

“No, I don’t believe it. And I don’t think your Rebs believe it, either-and I wonder what they know that makes them think chasing the Dreadnought’s worth their time and trouble.”