[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
Pride, Aeneas thought. They have pride in what they are building. The nation
has pride and so do these craftsmen; and we've lost all that.
They went upstairs and through one of the unmarked doors that seem to be
standard features at airports. Suddenly they were in a luxurious VIP lounge:
and she was there.
Aeneas stood silently looking at her. Her hair was red now; it had been red
when he knew her before, but most of her recent pictures showed her as a
blonde. Not terribly pretty, but yes, more beautiful than she'd been when he
knew her. Filled out. She'd always been very thin. She still was, but it was
graceful now, and more feminine. Proper exercises and the most expensive
clothes in the world wouldn't make a plain girl beautiful, but there were few
women who wouldn't be improved by them.
He knew she was only two years younger than he was, but she looked ten years
younger. Money had done that.
His guide stood embarrassed as they looked wordlessly at each other. "Senor
MacKenzie, Dona Laura.
Or-he led me to believe he was the Senor MacKenzie." He put his hand very
close to his pistol, and he eyed Aeneas warily.
Her laugh was as fresh as when they'd come out of the waters of Bahia
Concepcion to lie on the beach. " 'Sta bien, Miguel. Gracias."
Miguel looked from Aeneas to his patrona, and backed toward the door. "Con su
permission, Dona
Laura."
She nodded, and he left them alone in the elegant room. A jet thundered off
the runway outside, but there was no sound here. There was nothing he could
hear except his own heart, and the memory of her laugh erased sixteen years of
defenses. The heart pounded loudly, and hearts can break, despite what
surgeons say. Aeneas knew.
"Hello, Laurie Jo."
She moved toward him, and he hoped she would come to him; yet he prayed that
she wouldn't-not again. It was long forgotten, and better so. "You wanted me
Dona Hansen?"
"I've always wanted you with me, Aeneas. I thought this time you'd burned so
many bridges you'd have to come."
"And you were right. I've no place left."
"You should have stayed with me. What have you accomplished with your
crusades?" She saw the pain in his eyes. "No. I didn't mean that. Will you
believe me when I say that I wish I'd been wrong?
I've always wished I'd been wrong about Greg Tolland." She turned and swept a
hand around the paneled room. "I'm forgetting my manners. Is there anything I
can get you? A drink? You-I wish you wouldn't stand there with that suitcase."
So she remembered that too. That was how he'd stood the last time; but it
hadn't been in an ornately paneled room with deep carpets, only the cheap
student apartment in Los Angeles that
file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Jerry%20Pournelle%20-%20High%20Justi
ce.txt (35 of 94) [11/1/2004 12:18:01 AM]
file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Jerry%20Pournelle%20-%20High%20Justi
ce.txt they'd shared. And how does she remember those days, when she wasn't
Page 49
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
Dona Laura Hansen, and we sang and made love and hitchhiked around the
country? . . . "What did you have in mind, Laurie Jo?
What does Hansen Enterprises have for me?"
"Anything, Aeneas. Anything you'll take."
And she meant it, he knew. But the offer wasn't as generous as it seemed: she
wouldn't attach any strings, but his daemon would. It was the only public
story about him that was completely true:
Aeneas MacKenzie, the man who never accepted a job he wouldn't do, the
single-minded robot who'd sacrifice everything to duty. . . .
"If you don't want a drink, we should be leaving." she said. "We're due in
Cabo San Lucas in three hours, and that's two hundred kilometers . . . but you
know that."
"I know that."
It was all changed. There had been a paved road south from La Paz to Cabo San
Lucas for as long as
Aeneas could remember, but it had been the only one in lower Baja; now there
were dozens. The city of Todos Santos was sending out tentacles onto the
surrounding hills, and there were no longer burros on dirt roads; now, huge
trucks loaded with agricultural products roared past.
"But there are still horses," Laurie Jo told him. "Horses with great leather
saddles and silver trim, and the vaqueros ride them proudly. . . . Remember
when we thought how grand it would be if every rancher had a fine horse and
saddle? Now they all do."
"And you did that."
"And I did that."
But at what a cost, Aeneas said silently. What price a proud and honest
culture? A way of life?
But it was a way of life that included disease and early death, children
carrying well water in buckets because there wasn't enough money for piping
and pumps, and the withe and mud houses with palm thatch roofs were very
quaint and kind to the ecology, but they didn't keep the bugs from gnawing the
children at night. . . .
Now those were gone. Concrete block, poured concrete, aluminum roofs, floors
of concrete and not dirt, screen doors-they had come to Baja. And the children
sang in schoolyards, and they were healthy, and the land was dying as land
always dies when desert is irrigated.
"They're mining the soil, Laurie Jo. It can't last, and you know it."
She nodded. They drove smoothly on black pavement past straight green furrows
of cotton and soybeans; once they had come here in a Jeep, and the land had
been chaparral and sentinel cactus and incredibly thin cattle whose bones
jutted out as if they were dying, but they weren't, they were a hardy breed
who could live on the scrub brush. . . . "It can't last, but something can.
We've brought hope and progress, and we'll see that-" but she couldn't finish
and he knew why.
There was no cure for dead soil but time; and these people's grandchildren
would live among strangers. Not even Hansen Enterprises could keep Baja
fertile for more than a few generations.
"Remember this grade?" she asked. Miguel drove the big Cadillac smoothly so
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]