"A laundry mark. You only saw the writing if you pulled the hood out of its pocket."

"How many people?"

"Six adults."

"Vehicles?"

"Three horse-drawn FlyWeight buggies and a U-Haul wagon and team. No-no sign of them."

"Were those the 'three' you were talking about?"

The colonel answered. "I wish. I meant three other incidents. The other two were both single peddlers hitting their suppliers at access control and then heading back out. We haven't seen any of their stuff show up, but they disappeared in roughly the same area. The most recent one happened after Lujan was airlifted out."

"Okay. Let's talk about Lujan."

"Lujan was following the merchandise. He was looking at the two merchants who had the water filters and the flea market vendor who was selling the coat. He'd been here a week and really had nothing to report, yet, but he said he'd been developing sources."

"Have you heard his status?"

"He's fine. They had to remove his spleen and he'll have to be careful about infections. No more unpasteurized milk and all that. Your boss says he really hadn't made any progress with the merchants."

"And the sources?"

"Some street vendors and beggars. Sort of a Baker Street Irregulars, I gather," the colonel said.

Hodges looked puzzled at the reference, and Kimble said, "People he could use for low-level surveillance, messages, etc." It took a conscious effort not to scream Sherlock Holmes, you illiterate idiot. "Where was he shot? And I don't mean the spleen."

The colonel gestured to Hodges, who answered, "We were supposed to meet south of the barracks at our regular rendezvous. There's a small seep coming out of a rocky outcropping overlooking the river valley where the farm road bends to the east. When I got there, Lujan's horse was cropping grass, but there was fresh blood on the saddle and down the side. I'm not much of a tracker but the blood trail was clear. He was only a hundred yards away. I got him back to the barracks. The unit medic put him on IV fluids, glued him shut, and prepped him for airlift."

Badly injured casualties were sky-hooked off the ground in padded capsules connected to balloon-lifted lines stretching above the bugosphere. Special aircraft hooked them and reeled them in, getting them to the outside trauma centers within an hour of pickup.

If you were important enough. Lujan was an undercover Ranger.

Ordinary people would've had to take their chances with a local surgeon using glass scalpels and composite needles. No X-rays. No CAT scans. Minimal lab work. Respiration and heartbeat monitored the old-fashioned way. That is, if they were anywhere near a local doctor.

"Did Lujan give Control any names?"

"Yes, but considering he was shot sometime after that, shouldn't they be avoided?"

The colonel and Kimble both stared at Hodges, whose eyes widened. "You think I blew his cover."

"Why not? You blew mine." But then Kimble shook his head. "I don't know that. It was probably the airlift that connected them to you in the first place. My money is on the merchants. Not that they shot him but that they probably talked to whoever supplied them with the filters. But rest assured, I'm not interested in being a target. Still, I want those names and anything else he had." Kimble stopped talking as the dialog from the stage stopped for a scene change. When the crowd began laughing a few minutes into the next scene, he asked, "Tell me why it wasn't a Ranger that shot Lujan."

Colonel Anson handled this one. "Didn't say it wasn't a Ranger. What we know is that it wasn't Ranger-issued ammo."

"But it was a gyro?"

"Oh, yeah. Same kind of ammo. But they're tagged, every one, and this serial number came out of a batch supposedly used at the factory test range."

"Where's that?"

"Geneseo, Illinois. Nowhere near the territory, if that's what you were wondering. The feds are checking that end."

"And the rifle?"

"That part's trickier. The rifles are really just graphite tubes with stocks and sights. The high-tech side is the self-stabilizing rockets. There's no rifling to mark the projectile. The friction tag is pulled by the firing mechanism and stays with the rifle and, even if we recovered it, the mark left by the mechanism is generic."

"Is this the only time you've detected unauthorized gyros in the territory?"

"So far. The bomb sniffers at access control have the rocket fuel's chemical fingerprint. There have been smuggling attempts before, and accidental carries-Rangers on leave with ammo in a uniform pocket-but this is the only one we know about." Colonel Anson sighed. "I'm wondering what we'll find, though, if we locate the missing parties."

The episode below ended to applause. One of the ingenues came out and sang a song for the closing act, accompanied by a nylon-strung guitar and a gut bass.

"Names from Lujan?"

Hodges gave Kimble a sheet of paper.

"Right. Let's limit further communication to message drops for now. There's a loose brick at knee level to the right of this theater's stage door. There's a little hollow behind it and I plugged the space below with mud to keep any messages from falling down into the wall. The brick has a spot of dried paint on the face at one end. If the spot is closer to the stage door, there's a message. If away-nothing. You leave a message, put the brick back in with the spot toward the door. You remove a message, leave it away. If I leave a message there will also be a piece of grass stuck in the cracks. That way you won't be checking your own messages. Got it?"

The colonel answered, "Sure. Toward the door and a piece of grass, 'Ding-we've got mail!' Toward the door and no grass-it's for you."

"Hodges is being watched, so he stays away. Better if you can get someone in mufti to carry the messages, but be sure of them, okay? Rangers on the whole aren't used to hiding things from normal citizens. They're not the enemy after all. They drink with them, they buy from them, and they sure as hell try to sleep with them, so pick someone who can keep his mouth shut." Kimble stopped talking abruptly and blushed. "Sorry, sir. Forgot who I was talking to."

The colonel laughed softly.

Kimble continued. "There are no windows in the alley and you can get out at either end. Anything else? I want to leave in the first rush."

Hodges said, "What code? For the messages?"

Reluctantly Kimble said, "Book code. You'll find a sealed envelope on your codes shelf-it's labeled L F underscore D D. Go ahead and open it."

Hodges repeated it. "Authorization?"

"All the world." Kimble repeated it slowly, making sure that Hodges was getting it. Colonel Quincy nodded, as well, so Kimble thought it would be all right.

He touched his palms together to the colonel, then crept out of the box and sat on the stairs. When the first wave started out of the seats below, he merged into the crowd, walking as if he belonged to a family group. He left them two blocks later, turning off into one of the unlit residential streets.

Five minutes later he was outside of town.

20.

Stolen Wagons and Bible Verses Kimble found Pierce in the shantytown south of Pecosito, sleeping under a length of plastic roofing material supported by two sticks and a cinder block. His mattress was scraps of cardboard and his blanket was knotted together burlap sacking. A spare shirt was draped over his face to keep the mosquitoes away.

"Wake up, Sleeping Beauty. I'll buy you breakfast."

Pierce thrashed out, startled, and knocked out one of the supports of his lean-to, dropping the roof onto him.

"It's not the first time," he said later. He'd washed his head and torso in the river, put on his cleanest shirt, and now they were walking to town.

"That your lean-to fell over?"

"Two days ago it was the deputies and vigilantes from town, riding through like the Cossacks riding through Anatevka. Bastards. I mean, it's out of city limits. They have no right."

"What did you do outside, Pierce?"

Pierce peered at him sideways. "This and that."

"White collar?"

Pierce drew himself up. "If you must know, I was a financial advisor."

"Ah."

"What do you mean, 'Ah'?"

"Just that you didn't deal with the law much. Other than the one time, of course."

Pierce's eyes looked haunted. "What do you mean?"

Kimble shrugged. "You're not in the territory for your health."

Pierce shook his head angrily.

"I could talk to the Rangers about it," Kimble said. "I still have your fingerprints on that cup you used." This was a gross prevarication. He'd washed it several times since their encounter. "I'm thinkin'... embezzlement."

"Shut up!" Pierce stared around. They were on the river road and the only other person in sight was a man on horseback several hundred yards away.

"Hit a nerve, did I? Didn't think it was anything violent."

"What do you want, dammit!"

"Got a job for you. Easy work. Not illegal. Give you a chance to buy some clean clothes, maybe get a job and stop sleeping in the dirt."

Pierce calmed down. Kimble heard his stomach rumble.

"Why don't we discuss it over breakfast?"

PIERCE had been in Pecosito only a little longer than Kimble, having snagged a ride with a ranch family traveling south to the Soccoro area, then freighters traveling east through Pecosito on their way to the Clovis territorial access point. He'd spent that brief time, though, among the kind of people that Kimble was looking for.

Pierce already knew two of the people on the list. Kimble wrote down the names of the others and what particulars Lujan had recorded. "Begs at the theaters evenings" or "turns tricks behind the Dog and Trumpet" or, in one case, "Catholic Aid."

"Just identify as many as you can. Try not to be obvious about it, okay? If anyone asks, say you're collecting hard luck stories for an article." He caught Pierce's eye. "Don't talk about me. You do, I'll turn you in to the Rangers."

"You don't have anything on me!"

"Assault with a deadly weapon, remember? What happened to that crossbow, by the way?"

Pierce glared at him for a moment before saying, "I traded it for a meal."

Kimble raised his eyebrows. "Really? Wouldn't it have been more cost effective to keep it and hunt?"

"Look, it's pathetic, I know it, but you don't have to rub it in. I lost all the quarrels and I never hit a single animal. And I broke the string."

Kimble raised his eyebrows. "And I shall call you ... animal lover. Have you considered a career in middle management?"

"HE had me follow Deacon Rappaport."

Alvarez was a part-time day laborer, mostly garden work and pumping the used sludge and slurry out of people's biogas tanks. He was fastidiously clean. Pierce had brought Kimble to Alvarez behind the Pecos Hotel's stables, introduced him, and then vanished, with cash, toward the nearest pub.

Kimble raised his eyebrows. "Deacon? Which church?"

"New Paradise. He runs the Public Action Committee."

"What does the Public Action Committee do?"

"They're assholes."

Kimble raised his eyebrows.

"They're into 'civic improvement.' That is, they rip through the shantytown every week or so. They beat up drunks. They chase migrant workers out of town 'cause they prefer to steer any daywork toward their newest members. 'Believe and thou shall prosper.'"

"Rappaport's first name wouldn't be David, would it?"

Alvarez looked surprised. "Verdad. You know him?"

Kimble shook his head. The men he'd interrupted at night above the Zen Center had mentioned a Deacon Dave.

"So, did you follow him around town?"

"No. I was doing some work for the widow who lives next to the Rappaport place. The peddler wanted me to follow the Deacon if he left on horseback. I only did it the once. They almost caught me."

"They?"

"It was some of his 'pack.' That's what they called themselves-Public Action Committee, P.A.C. It was the top guys: Steve Bickle, the Ronson brothers, and Pudge Moorecock. They went out with draft horses, harnessed for wagon work, though they didn't take a wagon with them."

The Ronson brothers could be the ranchers who'd disputed their father's will over the Zen Center. The last name Alvarez mentioned also tickled a memory. "What does Moorecock do?"