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"No, I'll help," Ahn-Kha said, sliding down the tapered tail. He lifted an arm to Duvalier. "Here."
Valentine jumped down, as did Bee and Price.
"Why not just jump?" Valentine asked Duvalier quietly. "I've seen you dive headfirst from two stories."
"Just a helpless lil' ol' thing without a big man around, Val," Duvalier said. "No harm in having them think that, anyway."
They got out of the lane and made a pile of their weapons and packs.
"Coffee's by the fire pit. Toilet holes are up in the old house," Zak said. "There's a lime barrel, so send down a chaser. Let me know when you're ready to see the Dispatcher."
"Bee-guard!" Price said to his assistant.
"Doesn't she have to use the toilet pits?" Duvalier asked.
"She's not shy," Price said. "And she always buries."
"I would just as soon not scoot my hindquarters on the grass," Ahn-Kha said.
Cookie stretched. "There's plenty of New Universal Church Improved Testaments up there. Help yourself."
Valentine wanted coffee more than anything. Duvalier took her walking stick and headed for the rubbled house.
They'd missed dinner, but a line of stretchers propped up on barrels still held bread and roast squash. Sweating teenage girls washed utensils in boiling water as a gray-haired old couple supervised from behind glowing pipes.
"Coffee?" Valentine asked.
"That pot, stranger," one of the girls said, tucking stray hair into a babushka. Valentine took a tin cup out of the hot wash water, choosing a mild scalding over the used cups tossed on the litters and plywood panels, and shook it dry.
It was real coffee. Not the Jamaican variety he'd grown regrettably used to while with Malia at Jayport, but real beans nonetheless. He liked the Bulletproofs even better.
The surge of caffeine brought its own requirements. He remembered to chase it down the hole leading to the unimaginable basement chamber with a ladle of lime.
McDonald R. Dalian, Dispatcher for the Bulletproof, was viewing babies he hadn't met yet when the Price-Valentine mission entered his barn.
The barn was a modern, cavernous structure that had survived its half century of inattention in remarkably good shape, thanks to its concrete foundation and aluminum construction. Small chemical lightsticks Valentine had heard called Threedayers in the Trans-Mississippi Combat Corps hung from the rafter network above.
Men, women, and children of the Bulletproof, most in their black leathers or denim, sat atop defunct, stripped farm machinery to watch Dispatcher Dalian hold court.
A half-dozen guitars, two banjos, and a dulcimer provided music from one corner. Another end of the bar had been turned into a food storage area; shelves had been cleared of odds and ends and replaced by sacks of corn and barrels of flour. A laundry also seemed to be in operation, with clothes and diapers drying on lines strung between stripped combines and the wall.
The Dispatcher had indeterminate features-a little Asian, and maybe a dash of Irish or African for curly hair, and a great high prow of a nose. Except for the curly hair, he reminded Valentine of his father, especially around the protruding ears and out-thrust jaw. He cooed over a sleeping baby as the proud mother and father looked on.
"She's grabbing my finger even while she's sleeping," the Dispatcher said. "Don't tell me she won't be a lead high rider some day."
The Dispatcher and the father of the child bumped their fists, knuckle to knuckle.
The flying buttress nose went up and turned. "Air strike! Only one living thing on the planet smells like that." He handed the baby back and turned. "Hoffman Z. Price has returned."
Price had his usual six-foot circle of solitude around him, even in the busy barn. "And grateful for the generosity of the Bulletproof, Dispatcher."
The Dispatcher opened a tin. "Tobacco?"
Price extracted his pipe and the Dispatcher took a pinch. "You picked your moment. We've got the better part of the tribe together."
"Is worm meat still profitable in Lexington?" Price asked.
"You're innocent of the ways of the trading pits as well as soap, brother. That den of moneychangers and Pharisees takes my meat and my belief in human goodness. I kid, I kid. But if it weren't for the Grogs in Saint Louis I'd be bankrupt. So I hope you're feeling generous. If I have another fugitive in my tribe I'll drive a harder bargain."
