IGMS - Issue 18 Read online

  Table of Contents - Issue 18 - August 2010

  Trinity County, CA

  by Peter S. Beagle

  The Mystery of Miranda

  by David A. Simons

  Forcing Coin

  by William T. Vandemark

  The Quanta of Art

  by Adam Colston

  How about it, Roomie?

  by Chase Guymon

  Eye For Eye - Part 2

  by Orson Scott Card

  InterGalactic Interview With Richard A. Lupoff

  by Darrell Schweitzer

  Trinity County, CA

  by Peter S. Beagle

  Artwork by Tomislav Tikulin

  "This stuff stinks," Connie Laminack complained. She and Gruber were dressing for work in the yard's cramped and makeshift locker room which, thanks to budget cuts, was also the building's only functional toilet. To get to the dingy aluminum sink, she had to step around the urinal, then dodge under Gruber's left arm as he forced it up into the sleeve of his bright yellow outer coverall.

  "You get used to it."

  "No, I won't. They let me use my Lancome in school. That smells human."

  "And has an FPF rating that's totally bogus," Gruber said. "Anything you can buy retail is for posers and pet shop owners. Won't cut it out here."

  Laminack unscrewed the top from the plain white plastic jar on the shelf below the mirror, and squinted in disgust at the gray gloop inside. "I'm just saying. Gack."

  Gruber smiled. Stuck with a newbie, you could still get some fun out of it. Sometimes. "Make sure you get it every damn place you can reach. Really rub it in. State only pays quarter disability if you come home Extra Crispy."

  "Nice try, but some of us actually do read the HR paperwork we sign."

  "Oh, right," Gruber said. "College grad." She gave him a hard look in the mirror, but dutifully started rubbing the D-schmear on her hands and arms anyway, then rolled up her pants legs to get at her calves.

  "Face, too. Especially your face, and an inch or two into the hairline. Helps with the helmet seal."

  "Just saving the worst for last."

  Gruber laughed wryly. "It's all the worst."

  "You'd be the one to know, wouldn't you?"

  "Got that right, trainee."

  By the time they headed out to the Heap he was throwing questions at her, per the standard training drill, but not enjoying it the way he usually did. For one thing, she'd actually done a good job with the D-schmear, even getting it up into her nostrils, which first-timers almost never did. For another, she seemed to truly know her shit. Book shit, to be sure, not the real world shit she was here to start learning . . . but Gruber was used to catching new kids in some tiny mistake, then pile-driving in to widen the gap, until they were panicked and stammering. Only Laminack wasn't tripping up.

  It had begun to bug him. That, and the fact that she bounced. Like he needed perky to deal with, on top of everything else.

  He waved back to Manny Portola, the shift dispatcher, who always stood in the doorway to see the different county crews off. It was one of Manny's pet superstitions, and in time it had become Gruber's as well, though he told himself he was just keeping the old guy happy.

  Laminack waved to the dispatcher as well, which irritated Gruber, even though he knew it shouldn't. He slapped the day-log clipboard against his leg.

  "Next! Name the three worst invasives in Trinity."

  "Trick question."

  "Maybe, maybe not."

  "No," she insisted. "Definitely. You didn't define your terms." Her bland smile didn't change, but Gruber thought he heard a tiny flicker of anger. Maybe he was finally getting to her. "Are we talking plants or animals here? 'Cause Yellow Star Thistle and Dalmatian Toadflax and Kamathweed are hella invasive, even if the tourists do like the pretty yellow flowers. And if we are talking animals, not plants, do you want me to stick to the D's, or do you want me to rattle off the three worst things that have ever crawled or flown or swum in here from somewhere they shouldn't? Which I could. And what do you mean by 'worst,' anyway? Because for my money jet slugs are about as yucky as it gets, and there are a lot more of them up here now than there are China longs. So yeah, I call trick question."

  Gruber definitely wasn't ready for two weeks of this. "Nobody likes a show-off, Laminack."

  "No, sir."

  "We're not County Animal Control, and we're damn well not the State Department of Food and Agriculture or the California Invasive Plant Council. So what do you think I wanted to hear when I asked that question?"

  Reaching the Heap. Laminack opened the driver-side door for him and stepped back. She didn't exactly stand at attention, but near enough.

  "I think you wanted me to tell you that last year's baseline survey put quetzals, China longs, and Welsh reds at the top of the list in Trinity, but winter was rough, so it's too early to know yet what we'll be dealing with this season. Especially with the pot growers and meth labs upping their black market firepower."

  "Hunh." Without meaning to, he found himself nodding. "Not bad, Laminack."

  "Call me Connie, okay? My last name sounds like a duck call."

  Great, Gruber thought. She even bounces standing still.

  First scheduled stop of the day was more than thirty miles out of Weaverville, up 299 into the deep woods of Trinity National Forest, almost all the way to Burnt Ranch. Despite everything eating at him, Gruber always found the views in this corner of the county restful, an ease to the soul, and he enjoyed watching Connie begin to get clear on just how big the place was, even in this first tiny taste: 3,200 square miles by outline, same size as Vermont on the map -- or all of Texas, if ever God came along and stomped the Trinity Alps out flat -- and only 13,000 people to get in the way, the majority of whom lived in Weaverville and Lewiston and Hayfork. The rest were so spread out that words like "sparse" and "isolated" didn't do the situation justice. Gruber had been on the job for sixteen years, and he knew there were people living in corners of these woods so deep he still hadn't been there yet.

  They turned off onto a tributary road that wasn't shown on the state-supplied map, and wound uphill for five snaky miles before Gruber stopped the Heap and killed the engine.

  "Welcome to your first block party. Another mile or so up we're going to do a little Easter egg hunt. You want to guess what kind?"

  For the first time this morning, Connie hesitated. Then she caught herself and said, firmly, "Belgian wyverns. I thought maybe doublebacks, for a minute, but that would have been a couple of weeks ago at this latitude. Right?"

  Gruber nodded. "Almost all the other D's are late summer, early autumn layers, but wyverns and doublebacks -- and Nicaraguan charlies, only we don't have those up here, not yet, thank God -- they lay their eggs in the spring, so they'll hatch and be ready in time to eat the other D's eggs. Just this side of parasites, you ask me. But some elements of the Asian community think ground-up prepubescent wyvern bones are an aphrodisiac, so there's always some idiot in the woods willing to try and raise the little bastards. We got an anonymous tip on this place a week ago."

  "So let's go. I'm ready."

  Gruber shook his head. "Ground rules, first. And fair warning: say anything but yes -- and I do mean anything -- and we're home in Weaverville before lunch, with your ass planted firmly on the next bus back to UC Davis. This is not a joke up here. This isn't the classroom. Mostly we don't run into trouble, but that's mostly, and you can't let that get in the way of being ready for everything else."

  Connie didn't say a word. She looked at Gruber for a moment, and then nodded.

  "First rule," Gruber continued. "What I tell you to do, you do. If I say 'run,' you damn well sprint, and you don't look back. If I shout 'Get back in the Heap,' you jump in here and hit the autolock, e
ven if I'm still outside."

  "Yes," Connie said.

  "Second rule. If you're in here and I'm in trouble, you hit the screechers."

  "Yes."

  "Third rule. If that doesn't help, then you drive the hell out of sight as fast as you can, and you keep calling in to the sheriff's office for backup until you finally reach a live zone and get through. Then you sit and wait for somebody to show up. This is not -- I repeat not -- some reality TV show. There are reasons Manny's got that NO HEROES sign on his desk."

  "Got it." She blinked and corrected herself. "Yes."

  "Fourth rule, you see even a hint of a gun, you don't wait for me to yell. You get your butt back in the Heap and duck down. The plate on this thing can handle pretty much anything one of the locals is likely to be carrying." He didn't wait for her to respond before he went on. "And finally, fifth rule, today you don't say anything to anybody without checking with me first. Walk straight, stand tall, and make like you're Clint Eastwood with laryngitis. Got that?"

  She nodded once.

  Not so bouncy now. Good.

  "Helmet and gloves on, then. Let's go."

  The road wound on a while longer, then turned left over a ridge and started down. As it did the landscape changed, the usual Trinity mix of tall oak, pine, and fir trees giving way to high pasture and orchards, green and peaceful as a children's book.

  The farmhouse wasn't out of a picture book, but a new coat of paint masked its aged and fraying condition. An old woman in a sun hat was down on both knees, pruning roses and humming to herself, not even looking at the Heap as it pulled in. There was a one-gallon lawn and garden sprayer sitting next to her.

  "Deaf or on guard," Gruber said. "And you know how I vote. Keep your tapper handy, but stay behind me."

  The old woman only looked up when he opened the Heap's door and stepped out, his coverall a bright yellow blotch in the middle of a bright blue day. Gruber checked her out. Pure Grandma. Straw hat, pink cheeks, worn old flannel shirt, muddy-kneed jeans . . . no jury would convict her of stealing cookies, let alone raising D's.

  "Can I help you?" she asked.

  Gruber turned on the big bland smile that came packaged with the uniform and started forward, nice and easy. He heard Connie fall into line.

  "Ma'am, good morning. My name is Mike Gruber, and this is my partner, Connie Laminack. We're D Patrol for the county." He pointed at the big agency patch on the front of his coverall, the one just below the California state seal, then made a show of checking his clipboard. "Are you Mrs. Johanna Watkins?"

  The woman leaned back on her haunches, shading her eyes with one hand, even though the sun was behind her.

  "That's me. Beautiful day, isn't it?"

  "Yes, ma'am. Surely is."

  "Nice to be outside. Have to spray these roses every day, you know, or else the deer eat them. What can I do for you?"

  "Well . . ." Gruber paused. "The thing of it is, Mrs. Watkins, Johanna, we have reliable information that you and Mr. Watkins have been breeding wyverns -- Belgian wyverns, to be precise -- and selling the younglings to a crew down in Douglas City. Now, as I'm sure you know, there are both state and Federal statutes against wyvern trafficking of any kind: live or dead, eggs, skins, organs, you name it. It's illegal."

  The Watkins woman was good: Gruber had to give her that. She flashed a crinkly smile straight out of a biscuit mix commercial, and said, "Oh, but everyone does it, surely -- that's just one of those laws, you know, like they say, more honored in the breach than the observance --"

  Gruber interrupted her. "Well, actually no, ma'am, everybody doesn't do it, whatever you've been told. And the laws are enforced, as I'm afraid you're about to find out. Now I'm going to need to speak to your husband -- and then, if you two could give us a brief walking tour of your operation --"

  Johanna Watkins was on her feet, periwinkle-blue eyes wide, moving smoothly into Plan B: shocked and trembling innocence. "Officer, we really didn't . . . I mean, Eddie, my husband, Eddie and I, we're just two old people living on a fixed income, and it seemed . . . I mean, nobody really told us, and we were just trying . . . we didn't want to be a burden on our son --"

  Gruber stopped her, as courteously as he could, keeping one eye on the garden shears dangling in her left hand. He had once been attacked by an old man swinging a fan belt studded with bits of broken glass, and the event had left him with a certain wariness regarding senior citizens. "Well, ma'am, all I'm required to do is write you up a citation, like a traffic ticket -- the rest'll be up to Sheriff Trager's discretion. So if Mr. Watkins is home . . ." He had always found it better -- and often safer -- to leave commands implied.

  "Yes," Mrs. Watkins stammered, letting her voice tremble affectingly. "Yes, yes, of course. If you'll just wait here, I'll be, I'll get . . ." She too left the sentence unfinished, dropping the shears and wandering towards the house in a seeming daze.

  Behind him, Connie murmured, "Permission to speak, sir?"

  "Only till Sweetie Bat gets back." He took a few steps and craned his neck to observe the surprisingly large stretch of tightly-fenced paddock that was located south and downslope from the house. Several rough-hewn wooden poles sporting a makeshift power line ran between the two. Beyond the paddock, the woods began.

  Connie said, "I know it's silly -- I guess -- but she does look like my grandmother. She really does."

  Gruber shrugged. "She's somebody's grandmother. Retirement, kids gone, a little problem with cash flow . . . we see a lot of that. Sometimes they're just bored, you'd be surprised."

  "She looked so scared," Connie sighed. "I just wanted to tell her, it's okay, it'll be all right --"

  She was interrupted by the sound of a slamming door at the back of the house, followed immediately by a stumbling clatter and scraps of a shrill and breathless quarrel -- then the unmistakable growl of a two-stroke engine. Gruber said mildly, "Well, shit." Loping around the corner of the old farmhouse, he saw Johanna Watkins and a lanky old man wearing checked pants and a yellow sweater racing toward the tree line on a metallic green minibike. Gruber halted, scratching his head, and began to laugh.

  Connie came up beside him, staring after the sputtering little bike as it vanished into the trees. "Shouldn't we go after them, or something?"

  "Not our job, I'm happy to inform you. We're contraband, not perps. Trager's boys can track them later, or maybe nab them when they sneak back to the house, likely tonight. They weren't carrying anything, and it gets cold up here after sunset."

  He flipped his tapper to trank and started toward the paddock, saying over his shoulder, "Stay back till I call you." The gate was clearly meant to be opened by a remote switch -- probably in the kitchen, right next to the cookie jar -- but the lock was cheap, and Gruber forced it easily. The two wyverns came out of hiding as soon as he opened the gate, bounding toward him like little kangaroos on their powerful hind legs. Red, with dark-gold chests and bellies, they stood just under three feet high; three-foot-six was a King Kong among wyverns. "Geese with teeth," Manny called them, but for all that they could do damage. The wings -- a much deeper red, almost black -- were useless for flying, but tipped with sharp, curving claws. Gruber had always considered them more dangerous than the fangs, which were just as sharp, and more numerous, but easier to keep track of.

  He let the wyverns get close, having no illusions regarding his own ability with hand-held weapons, but then he dropped them with one dart apiece. They were out before they hit the ground, and would stay that way for eight, maybe ten hours: the current generation of tranquilizers was a lot more reliable than what he'd started the job with, and good for a wider range of D's, no matter how many hearts they had, or whether their blood was acid or base. Gruber had no nostalgia for the old days, except as they involved long-gone movies and breweries.

  "Easter Bunny time," he called over his shoulder. Connie approached the paddock slowly, casting a wary eye toward the sedated wyverns. Watching her, Gruber said, "No, I take it back, it's Ma
y. Time to go gathering nuts."

  "They actually do look like nuts, don't they?" Connie frowned, remembering. "We had a whole extra series on protective coloration just in eggs."

  "Yeah, they look like nuts," Gruber said. "Except for the ones that don't. Belgian wyverns can be weird. So you watch where you're putting your feet." Remembering altogether too well how long it had taken him to get the knack, he kept a close eye on Connie as they worked through the paddock together, never letting her get too far from him. What worried him more, as they loaded the eggs into the standard McNaughton keeper -- clumsier to carry than the old Dorchester, but it could hold up to six dozen eggs in perfect thermal stasis as long as its battery pack held out -- was feeling their rising warmth in his palms, and realizing just how close they had been to hatching.

  When a third pass didn't turn up anything new, he had Connie drive the Heap down to the paddock while he tagged and chipped the wyverns, then bound their wings and legs with thermo-kevlar banding. It took a shared effort to get the sleeping creatures locked away in the back, him lifting and her pushing. The male was particularly troublesome: its head and neck kept flopping in the wrong direction as they tried to angle it into the Heap's fireproofed main containment module. After they finally managed the trick, Gruber took Connie with him to the farm house. He showed her how to fill out the official citation form, and had her tape it to the front door with four strips of bright orange waterproof tape, one strip per side.

  Back in the Heap he took the wheel while Connie stored the McNaughton under her seat. Gruber would have sworn that he saw her pat it once, quickly and shyly.

  As they headed out, Connie asked, "Where do you suppose the proud parents went?"

  "Hiding out with family, maybe. Calling lawyers. Not a lot of options when it gets to this point. When we hit a place where my cell works I'll call Manny. Trager's people will make things plain to them, one way or another." The Watkins farm disappeared from the rear-view mirror as he spoke. "How you liking it so far?"

  "Is that another trick question?" Her voice was quiet and subdued, all the early-morning attitude gone. She said, "They were little, but they were scary. The way they went straight for you . . ."