Joe Haldeman - Work Done for Hire

Even if they, the menacing “they,” were hooked up with the government, they didn’t necessarily know that we’d gone to see Blackstone. But it would be prudent to assume that they did know, as soon as the agent filed a report. They might have known as soon as his secretary typed in my name—or maybe even as soon as we rolled into the parking lot. Where some scanner evidently noted that we had a gun in the trunk. That might ring a few alarm bells even if I were just a forgetful hunter.

Her bronze car rolled up and I pushed SEND. Anybody who really wanted to know could find out that I was in the public library in Litchfield, Illinois, at 12:39 on May eighteenth. Just passing through, though. Leaving behind some cybernetic spoor.

She had the radio playing loud. Taped on the dash over it, where we both could see it, our complex route to Baton Rouge, which we’d researched and printed out in the library. It was “blue highways” all the way, a slow crawl but one that ought to avoid stoplight cameras and toll booths. Getting off the grid by burrowing under it.

We were plainly in no hurry. No real destination. Baton Rouge was big enough to hide in, and dodgy enough that we wouldn’t have any trouble finding odd jobs that wouldn’t require ID.

But we weren’t really going there. It was a feint.

Without saying a word about it, we drove straight into St. Louis and left the car in a low-rent long-term parking lot outside the airport. Took the airport shuttle to the East Terminal and transferred to one of the hotel shuttles headed into downtown St. Louis. Ninety minutes after we ditched the car, we were in the Greyhound station with tickets south, bought from a machine with cash, no IDs.

We had about $9,000 in cash, split evenly. We were taking different busses—hers direct to New Orleans and mine via Joplin. We would meet in two days in the line waiting for breakfast at Brennan’s—and then go someplace more reasonable for a meal and planning session.

If they managed to follow us through that maze, it was hopeless. Maybe learn Chinese and go join their space program. No way Homeland Security, or the nameless “they,” could follow us to the moon.

Of course they might already be there, hiding behind some fucking crater.

I hoped the clue we left in the Litchfield library was subtle enough not to look planted. I’d noticed that the connection between the computer and printer was wireless, so any cloak-and-dagger types who’d followed us there could pick it up from the parking lot. We talked about going to California while Kit typed up unrelated directions to Baton Rouge.

Of course they would eventually find the car in the long-term parking lot outside of the airport, the gun still in the trunk. Whether they were the government or some more sinister “they,” we knew the car was bugged. We would probably be caught on camera outside the airport if they were the government, but even so, we might lose them between the airport and the bus station. When did a self-respecting spy or terrorist ever go Greyhound?

Before her bus left, she downloaded her e-mail and mine. Blackstone had sent a pro forma “thank you for cooperating with Homeland Security” message, and there was a note from my father asking why I wasn’t picking up the phone.

And Hollywood raised its ugly head. A note from Ronald Duquest’s office reminded me that the next chapter was due yesterday. Golly, slipped my mind.

I would normally e-mail the manuscript to myself, as I always do at the end of the writing day. Kit was taking the iPak with her, of course. I could write the next chapter out by hand and type it in later, but there was a Woolworth’s down the street. So I went in and bought a kids’ laptop for $99, bright red with big rubbery keys. An economy-sized twelve-pack of batteries, enough to get me to New Orleans.

The first thing I wrote on it was an e-mail to Dad, copied to Mother, explaining that I’d been accepted to a special writers’ retreat at a Trappist monastery. Total silence for a month, no street mail or e-mail, complete isolation from the modern world. By the time I’d written out a description of it, I wanted to sign up. Just write for a month, no guns or spies. Not sure about “plain food cooked by nuns.” Kit was confident I could find the one nun who was a gourmet cook, and maybe a closet nymphomaniac, besides.

Anybody who was really interested would be able to figure out that the message came from St. Louis, but in a couple of minutes I’d be headed south in anonymity. I clicked on SEND and kissed Kit and got on the bus. Waved to her as it pulled out, and then opened up the file with Duquest’s story line and my minim opus.

Hunter slept for ten hours, woke up famished, and microwaved the heart and kidneys. They were not tender but juicy and tangy. He drank a pint of whiskey and a gallon of water and slept again.

When he awoke, he hacked the remaining leg into two pieces, and put the foot half into a big pan with onions and a handful of wild rosemary. He stabbed it a dozen times and pushed garlic cloves deep into the muscle. He opened a can of camper’s bacon and draped it all over the leg and put it in a slow oven.

He sat on the trailer stairs for exactly one hour, listening intently. Two cars and a motorcycle went by, and as he was rising to go back in, he heard the whir and labored breathing of a bicyclist slowly climbing the slight grade.

It would not be smart to hunt so close to home. But just for practice he slipped quietly through the underbrush and crouched down behind a dense thicket of bramble. He nibbled on some berries and watched.

He would be a beautiful catch, young and plump. He must be local, since he couldn’t have pedaled very far on the old Schwinn, fat patched tires and faded blue paint held together with skeins of rust.

Hunter’s stomach made a noise and the boy heard it. He stopped and looked around wildly, and Hunter tensed to attack. But then he turned the bike around and fled downhill.

Some ancient instinct urged him to bound after the quarry and bring it down, and something like saliva squirted into his mouth in anticipation. His long muscles tensed to spring, but the brain interfered and he relaxed.

There would be another day.

He would be cautious, as usual. He sat unmoving long after the sound of the bike receded into nothing. The clock in his brain ticked off an hour, and then another hour.

No villagers with torches and pitchforks. No steady-eyed deputy adjusting his Stetson and saying, “Maybe the boy did hear somethin’, Sheriff.” No rumble of tanks and scream of jets converging on the invader from another world.

But he was not an invader, he thought; he belonged here as surely as a shark belongs in the sea.

A rabbit advanced slowly, almost invisible against the dun mat of humus, and sniffed Hunter’s bare foot. He snatched it and crushed out its life before it could even squeak, and nibbled at its twitching body as he watched the sun set.

Not a bad planet at all.

When I turned eighteen, my mother took me down to New Orleans to celebrate my birthday with Aunt Helen. Eighteen was the legal drinking age in New Orleans, and I was ready. Aunt Helen lived there, and knew all the watering holes, and the three of us had walked up and down Bourbon Street and Decatur and St. Charles, comparing the quality of mint juleps in various places. I probably lost track after three or four.

Brennan’s is the place where I learned about treating a hangover with booze, their traditional champagne breakfast. It was a strange medicinal compound of champagne and Pernod, with orange juice on the side, and it worked so well we kept drinking champagne for a while, even after the hangovers were buried.