Tom and Dave smiled at each other.
“Well, the best operator, anyway.”
“You’ve never watched Candellaria.”
“I’ve watched Cattie.”
“You don’t like her.”
“No, I do not.”
Syd said “I have her on machines.”
Dave said, “No.”
“I’m more ruthless stubborn and ornery.”
Alice said “You are not.”
“I’m sneakier.”
“What you have on Cattie,” Alice said, “is you are one hell of a lot better person. Dave is more sneaky.”
They went back to the train. A helicopter came in and landed beside it. The pilot got out.
“Syd, I’m sorry.”
“Now look, we can’t have a contest where we say we’re the worst and most obnoxious. Call it a draw, and secure your helicopter.”
Alice, Tom, Kevin and Annabel got in their railcar. Outside, they could hear.
“I thought we might just take it to your house.”
“Fine.”
“It’s not as high performance as you want, but I have a line on something much faster.”
“You flew it?”
“I’m a test pilot. Of course I flew it.”
“So we put this one on the train.”
“We could.”
“But I can’t have the other.”
“You can have it but you can’t say you have it.”
“What will it do flat out?”
The answer was unintelligible.
“So do I just swap birds?”
The answer was unintelligible.
Syd grabbed her duffle and the chopper took off.
Annabel asked Tom, “What will we say about all this if anyone asks?”
“We didn’t hear anything or see anything. We were not here, we don’t know anything. What are you talking about?”
“Someone might ask.”
Alice said, “The Senator who is really just a cat has told you we were not here. Get used to it.”
Kevin said “Hypothetically, what will it do flat out?”
“Kevin, since you are going to work for me again and just don’t know it yet, 490 knots.”
“Helicopters cannot fly at 490 knots.”
“That’s right. There is no way they could do that.”
* * *
Kevin and Annabel got up in the morning in Rabbit. They went to the café. They got eggs and muffins and all of that. Everyone wanted to talk to Kevin, so they did. He ran around on the tips, and by lunchtime, he had 4 suspects in custody. Annabel was at the house working on equipment. The way it was going, all the big stuff was leasing out, and the little bitties were staying home. One of Kevin’s favorites was a microscopic Kubota with a 1/4 yard bucket and a 6” backhoe. It was so little it could not even work on the completion of the quarry.
In the afternoon, one of the morning tips had ripened, and Kevin took some Rangers with him to bust a real bad guy. The bust went well, and nobody got hurt. A nice evening was had by all. A pig had a pretty bad day, but.
While the pig cooked, Tom pitched. “Quetzalcoatl. I need you again. I didn’t think this would happen, but it did. I need my best leaders one more time.”
“If it is that bad how do we fix it?”
“It isn’t crime. It is leadership failure, and we need the output. In the years to come, we will be able to do without a quarry. Right now, we cannot. We cannot do without rock. Quetzalcoatl is in the center of the problem. Quetzalcoatl has the rock, and we have to put it in railcars.”
Annabel said, “I hate this, but it is what we stand for. Some day the history books will remember what we did today. We’re in.”
When they arrived at Quetzalcoatl, they were greeted like conquering heroes. They laughed about that, and put the quarry to work. Kevin didn’t do anything much, as he could see it. He paid some bribes, fed the workers, and got them paid. He got fuel put in the equipment, and made sure there was oil, too. Annabel kept it all going, covering the details.
They loaded a lot of rock, and soon the problem was over with. They took the train home.
Chapter 14 Home Again
They got home in time for a barbecue, and had one set up, for sure. Cats on laps, Fidelis beside the chairs. The people of Rabbit were getting used to having the Chief coming and going. Most of the time, the Chief of police is not important to people, but in Rabbit, he was. They’d had a bad one, and still wondered about stability. People like to feel that tomorrow will not bring some ugly surprise. They felt in Rabbit, that it could, and they wanted Kevin to promise it would not.
Kevin told everyone at the barbecue that things would be all right. Alongside the pond, everything was fine. Hispanics were more nervous than Anglos, but it was everyone. The pig got eaten. Anita put the junk in the big pot.
Kevin talked about the problems in Mexico. Quetzalcoatl was an ongoing problem, but the rails were in. The belief was that the problems were not threatening now, so locally, they could hope for better, and not worry much about the problems of the outside world.
The perception of most people, even in the cartels, was that the railroad was everyone’s asset. Like the Anglos, it was here to stay, and maybe it brought some jobs and other economic opportunity.
They ate oysters and drank champagne. Around midnight, the train brought Tom, Alice, and Syd. Anita made some sandwiches and such. The train brought a Hobart slicer for her. Tom had gone all the way, and bought one that could slice automatically and all that. Anita would pay one cent per sandwich until she paid off the $1,670 cost of the slicer.
They put the slicer up on a table and put a piece of pork in it. It ran rapidly through the meat. They made some more lunchmeat, some of it to go in Kevin’s freezer.
Alice asked, “Do you eat that many sandwiches, Kevin?”
“Me, Annabel, the cats, Fidelis or Anita’s clients. It will not go to waste.”
Anita cleaned the slicer with the same sort of reverent care that Kevin worked on a piece of equipment. A nice machine matters to the people who know how to use it. That was what upset Kevin with the D6. That someone would damage a nice machine. To the Kevins and Anitas of the world, A D6 or a nice meat slicer is not simply an inanimate object. It is possibility, something that can make the world a little better.
Grey and Spots got on Kevin’s lap and worked their way up to purring in his ears.
Syd was similarly being climbed on by Ghost and Doc.
Anita took her knife, a Sani-Safe Russell Green River works, and cut some fat from the pig. She gave each cat a piece about half an ice cube sized. She gave Fidelis a huge piece of slimy disgusting fat, which, Fidelis, being a dog, swallowed whole. Anita came back to the cats with another dainty little piece each.
Kevin said, “Nice knife.”
Anita said, “Best on the planet.”
Syd flicked a knife into the pig. Your Sani-Safes are the standard of the food processing industry, but that is the best knife on the planet.”
Kevin took the knife in hand. It was a small stainless knife with no handle. Surgical stainless with lightening holes. Balanced for throwing. It was a Hartmann, made in Israel. Kevin threw it back, and Syd took it out of the air, and threw three of them into the pig. Kevin took them out. He tossed them back to Syd.
“Hartmanns. You’re right, Syd.”
Annabel asked, “What are they?”
“They are made for the Israeli Defense Force. Cold rolled 400 Series surgical Stainless, each one inspected by ultrasound. You can’t buy them.”
Annabel asked, “So how do you get them?”
Kevin said, “Well, you would ask.”
“Who would you ask?”
“You would have to know who to ask.”
“If I wanted one.”
“Syd will probably give you one.”
“I don’t want one.”
“Then why are you asking?”
“I want to know what is going on.”
Tom said, “Nobody ever tells you that.”
“Am I mixed up in some secret bullshit?”
“No.”
“Tom, would you know for sure?”
“No, and if I asked, you would likely be in it.”
“Kevin!”
“Don’t worry, Annabel. Everyone on the planet is in the databases.”
“I am in the KGB database. Or RIS or NKVD or whatever they are this week.”
“You have met Dave. For RIS not to know who you are would be malpractice. Of course they know.”
“The commies know my every move?”
Tom said, “No. They aren’t interested in you. And anyway, the Russians are not communists any more. What they have now is runaway capitalism.”
“How does that differ from communism?”
“Let me know when you find out.”
“Tom, you took all the equipment. How am I going to even crush and sort?”
“I bought you a 972 that is coming tomorrow.”
“What is that for?”
“It’s in the fine print. Annabel is getting a little sister for Heron. But I’m leasing Egret for 2 months.”
“I have a new crane, and it’s leased before I even see it?”
“It’s a cruel world.”
Kevin asked, “What is all this leasing about?”
“Changes in the tax code. I’m not taking my time to explain it to you. I will have a bean counter do that if you really want to know. You are not taking income because you acquire equipment. I’m writing off lease payments. So on and so on. We are going to have a crew here to cut down all the weeds. I will get a tax credit because I employ people who have been unemployed for a long time. Then you are getting one because you are buying private railcars, both of you. You get a little house, a little garage for your tax credit hybrid car, and some flatbed space for your toys.”
“Do we get asked?”
“This is crazy profitable. You should do it.”
“We’re taking money from the taxpayer?”
“Life goes on. Hire people who need work to reclaim the quarry, which Alice would do anyway. They will configure your railcars so the house parts are together. If you put the big draglines on railcars, the train has to go over grade because it is too tall for the underpasses, like at the Panama canal. So you take your little machines with you.”
Kevin, Annabel and Syd went to the pond. The cats and Fidelis followed. The moon shined on the pond, and the bug lights buzzed, dropping moths and such into the pond where the fishes nailed them. Two little kids fished from a tiny rowboat.
“Will we take the railcars, Kevin?”
“I guess. Is Syd going to get one?”
“Nope.”
Annabel asked, “Why is that, Syd?”
“Syd already has 47 railcars. 12’ gauge.”
“Where do you put them all?”
“I has some at the house on a comb siding like birds on a wire. Most of them are on intercontinental service. Tom thinks they make lots of money, and some kind of tax thing.”
Annabel asked, “What is a comb siding?”
“The new cars can turn. So you have a siding like a comb, and they can make sharp turns to go in there. The railcars sit alongside, not in line. So you can take one out.”
Kevin put in. “There are railcars that can turn themselves around like a roundtable, but they can do it on open track. There are flatcars that can make themselves four times as long, so they are cheap to park. Technology is in high gear.”
Syd said, “The superlocos can burn anything from gasoline to waste oil. General Electric is building a superloco that is quadruple articulated. It has almost a thousand times the drawbar horsepower of the most powerful loco ten years ago.”
The kids on the pond splashed with their oars, and minnows jumped like sprays of water.
Kevin looked at them. “They will grow up in a world so distant from our own.”
Syd said, “We will never have the energy to go to the stars, but we will do almost the same thing on Earth. I imagine half the people in the USA were born after the PCXT. People like Frank James are as remote to them as Davy Crockett. Not one in a million knows who Tim Paterson was.”
Syd got into a very frisky sparring match with Li Li.
Annabel said, “When was Future Shock written? 1965?”
Kevin nodded. “Around about then.”
She followed up. “So the Wright brothers flew about 100 years ago. 50 years ago, Alvin Toffler says we are living in our own future. 25 years after the Wright brothers, jets come out to fight a war already lost. 25 years later, Toffler tells us we are in future shock. We have landed on the moon. Roll on 25 more years, and IBM blows everyone’s minds with the microcomputer. 90K single sided floppy disks and a 4.77 megahertz processor, blowing the mainframes away. Half, perhaps, of the people of the world are born after that. Today, I have a computer in my pocket that has more processing power than all the computers in the world in 1972 and I can ship a bulldozer as big as a main battle tank 2,000 miles for (she looked at the palmtop) $645.92”
“Would have cost you ten times that five years ago.”
“The young people are not suffering future shock.”
Syd said, “They have no sense of history, either.” She egged Li Li on to spar some more. “They won’t know the world as it was. There was a time when we knew how to live in the natural world, but we don’t any more. Not even snake eaters, really. We are the first species to create a world for itself instead of living in the one nature made.”
Kevin asked, “Will it end in disaster?”
Syd said, “Of course. Most of the food in the system is centrally distributed. Frozen, canned and so on, depending on technology. Or look at transportation, generally. We depend on being able to travel in ways nobody could do 25 years ago.”
Li Li was clawing Syd’s hand viciously.
Kevin called Li Li off. Syd hit the cat in the nose with a knuckle to make her mad, and they went at it again “Don’t presume you know how rough we want to play.”
“You are pretty violent, Syd.”
“I’m extremely violent. I’m a warrior.”
“That’s my cat.”
“You can’t own a cat.”
Kevin went back in the house. He looked up the railcars, and found that his would be in at 0400. Annabel was not around, so he booked it over to the City and back.
Saint Vincent de Paul had led the world of thrift shops by being the first to have a siding for railcars. It sounded ridiculous until you found out that the railcars were getting along on about 15 miles to the gallon, and often burning garbage and other cheap fuels.
Kevin woke up at the siding at Vinnie’s paying 87¢ an hour for his spot. He went in the store, a warehouse that made a Super Wal Mart look like the general store at Nowhere, Texas without the character and the friendly owners. He bought all the clothes he thought he might wear. He bought lots of little appliances for his railcar. Lots of pots and pans, and silverware and china. He could always donate them back.
At the register, there was a problem because the cashier had quit, and the other guy who could do it was working on a plumbing leak, and his brother was coming to help if he could get the truck started. Kevin called a tow truck for the plumbing truck. The plumber’s brother checked him out at the register. Kevin took the manager to lunch with his car along with 4 people from the back room. Kevin’s car was possibly the most ridiculous looking thing Toyota had ever built. They were called bricks, because they were so like one in shape. They were 12.5 feet long, and basically vans. They fit in railcars. The Vinnie’s contingent considered the cost of different lunch places.
We slip aside for a little bit on prevarication. The master was General Barnes, who could out bullshit presidents and senators, and be hungry for lunch. He could appear before the Joint Chiefs of Staff or the National Security Council, and tell them nonsense your 8 year old daughter would not believe. General Barnes operated one of the most really secret agencies in the world right in the Pentagon. His office staff was stylishly dressed ladies who were in fact Bird Colonels.
General Barnes trained a new group of prevaricators, including Syd Silver and Dave Cale. Dave directed the training of East Los Angeles gang bangers in the arts of lying, stealing, burgling, and upscale dirty tricks, which were used against the Cuban and Russian forces from the Rio Grande south. Syd then trained Kevin, who was not a real operator, but an asset. Someone who could help out a little now and then. Relying on this training, Kevin told a story about expense accounts, and how they would be reduced if not used, and the need for his company to take someone to lunch. He then took the crew of the thrift shop to an expensive steak house, and fed them T bone steaks with fries and side orders. He ran the Vinnie’s crew back to the store. He called for his railcar to be taken home. When he got there, he got on the new 972 loader and got some rock done. Annabel told him on the radio that they would barbecue again that night. She knew where the railcar had been, so.
“Annabel, did you look at your railcar?”
“Not for long.”
“We can hook them up with the houses together. Look in mine. I went to the City and bought some stuff today. We have probably all we need to go on the road.”
“Busy Kevin. Do you like the 972?”
“It’s pretty nice. I’ll bring it in later so you can try it.”
“I want to see Egret.”
“Tom sent pix. Egret is in Peru.”
Annabel signed off. Connectivity meant she talked to her boyfriend on the radio when he was home.
Kevin worked the agate vein, and found it was played out. He put the last rock into the sorter. He surveyed Mary’s pile, and it looked like about 40 times what she sold in a year, with adjustments for percentage of salable stuff. He went to tell her.
“Mary, we have come to the bottom of the agate. There is no more.”
Mary was pretty upset, but she was a little better when Kevin promised her the rocks were all for her to sell, and they would probably take 40 years.
“I have to sell my rocks, Kevin.”
“I know that. Look at the pile you have. I’m not going to offer them to someone else. Those are for you to sell.”
Mary was selling about a ton a week, and there were 2,000 tons on the pile. Kevin could probably find some more agate anyway. He told Mary she would always have rocks to sell. Ralph Castaneda talked to his daughter, and explained that the business did not depend on the rock pile. Mary was selling rock tumblers and grit, and making out pretty well. That was money she did not see, though. She was well aware of the coins in her collection. You went through a vault door in the family house’s basement to the tornado shelter. Ralph’s guns were in there. There were also a huge collection of coins in jars, Rubbermaid plastic boxes and so on. They were organized in a system that made sense to Mary.
Kevin called Dave, and asked about how he could reassure Mary, who, with all the people watching out for her, was one of the safest people on the planet. Kevin’s own estate plan was a bewildering array of payable on death provisions, joint titles and such, which had Mary covered. Dave thought Mary would like to slab some of the big agate, and sent a diamond slab saw on the train. It was a 36” machine. Mary had to pay for it, but not out of money she paid attention to. A local rock hound, Mattie Estes, would teach Mary how to run it.
Slab saws usually charge by the square inch of sawed area. That was something Mary had completely figured. The easiest way to slab rocks is often to cast them in concrete blocks. Mary’s saw cut 16”, so she had little boxes that were 16” on a side, and 22” long, so the castings would fit in the saw. She cast her rocks into these boxes, and sawed until she reached the end of the rocks. Her concrete was made of the quarry’s junk. Each time she reached the end of a block, she got a sort of concrete brick. A lesser retailer would have thrown them in the crusher pile, but Mary sold them for 68¢ each. Sometimes she sold one, sometimes a thousand.
She offered collections of slabs in small flat rate Priority Mail boxes. Cabochon cutters bought them eagerly.
Before the barbecue, Kevin and Annabel watched a special about Frank James controls. They found it interesting partly because they had tripled their money on Frank James controls in the last 6 months. They were not really money people, so the technology interested them just as much. Frank and some engineers were explaining the works of a new system for handling cargo containers. 50 thousand pound cargo containers were being pulled and placed on railcars while the train went through at 14 miles an hour. Machines like conveyor belts with forklift forks sticking out of them grabbed the containers and sorted them, then loaded them on another train, without either train stopping.
A silly looking chick with an engineering degree explained that the Pan did not actually need anyone to drive the trains, although she drove them. She opined that the public would probably get a little bent out of shape if 265 mile an hour trains a mile long went across the country with ‘nobody driving.’ The crew was mainly there for emergencies. She encouraged viewers to consider careers on the Pan. She had found her Master of Train Operations license not any huge big deal to get, and much more interesting than driving supertankers, which she had done until she got ‘real tired of it.’
The special concluded with computer simulations of systems to come, which included a system to deliver emergency systems to major catastrophes. A huge three rotor twin turbine Sikorski helicopter (Syd wanted one), would pluck a 228 thousand pound emergency system off a train going over 200 miles an hour The system would have two operating rooms in it, and all the stuff to make an ER doctor cream his jeans. It would have its own feet, and self level. It would generate its own power, heating, air conditioning and all that sort of thing. This wasn’t something out of a science fiction story. Boeing was building the rail only version in Seattle already.
Just something to put on a ship, yeah? The Navy beat you to that idea, cowboy. The Marines were ready any time they could get the money.
When barbecue time came along, the turbine Sikorski made what Marines and SEALs call a landing, and Syd came to help eat a pig. She might have kissed and made up with her pilot. She hadn’t killed him, anyway. Syd, Annabel and Kevin went to a bench at the pond. Annabel and Kevin had a flask of Jack. Syd threw bread into the water until the cats came. Mauser got on her lap, and Spots went to Kevin. Marcie came, and delicately got on Annabel’s lap. Li Li came and disputed with Mauser. Both cats assaulted Syd.
One of the kids came to talk. “Tia Syd, do you remember me?”
“I remember you, Rodney.”
“I’m in college. Studying journalism. I want to do an interview with you.”
“Fine, then. Interview.” She took a Glock .40 out, and set it on the bench. She rubbed her back. She put the Glock back.
“I want to start with BUDS.”
“Ask a question, Mr. Journalist.”
“Would you tell me about your experience?”
“Yes.”
“What was it like?”
“It was cold and dirty.”
“I was hoping for a narrative.”
“You need to learn how to ask questions, Mr. Journalist.”
“I guess I am not that good yet.”
“Did your professor tell you you were? Why do you think you can do this? Are you just a wannabe? Do they pay you by the word? What use are you? Do you think an Admiral has all day for an interview? What do you want, for me to run down the Navy? Did you spend any research time on this story? Who the fuck do you think you are? You want me to throw you the pond, cause I cans.”
Kevin said, “Admiral Silver, what was BUDS like when you did it, in contrast with how it is today?”
“It was much harder back then. People wanted to see you fail. To prove, perhaps, that they were real good and nobody else was. Today, they want you to succeed. They see the job as trying to produce as many good people as they can. We don’t try to break anyone down any more. When you find someone who really belongs in the Marines or the SEALs, they are proud and tough. You don’t want to take that away, you want to use it.”
“What did they do to you when you went in?”
“Tried to force me out. They did not want women in the SEALs. So I did a Ralph Nader and sued them.”
“What came of it?”
“I wanted to stay in more than they wanted to get me out. I beat them because I wanted to win, and I never give up.”
“What did they do next?”
“Intimidation, sexual harassment, whatever they could think of. The best card they had was to make it look like I was letting the guys down. They would fail because they had me, and I was no good. I learned medic work, carried first aid gear, and had water and things. I can’t reach the telephone pole while the guys carry it. When they told us to pick it up, I jammed it on. The hardest part of the lift is the start. So I did that, and ran alongside my guys and told them they had better not quit. I had water for everyone. I broke all the rules. A guy who tried to dick one of my buddies, I caught him outside the NCO club and beat the piss out of him.” She pushed a laptop at him. “That’s us, finishing.”
The pic showed Syd standing on the telephone pole holding her hands up with V for victory. The guys do not seem to mind the weight.
“What is the most important thing in winning a war, Syd?”
“Wanting to win. Wanting to win much more than the other guy. That is why we lost in Vietnam, and why that will never happen on my watch.”
“Thank you, Admiral Silver.”
They went back to the tables, and got some oysters. There was a splash, and a yell, and a bigger splash. Syd came out of the pond with a snarling cat in hand.
Rod asked Kevin what had happened.
“Syd went in the water after a cat.”
“Why was the cat in the water in the first place?”
“Syd threw him in.”
“Can you explain that to me?”
“When someone tells me, I will tell you.”
Kevin ate a few more oysters and called it a night.
* * *
In the morning, Tom and Alice called. Alice wanted the reclamation pushed before it got too late. Tom wanted them back to Oregon to take down the rest of the scree slope. Annabel wanted to go back to sleep and smoke some good bush when she got up. The cats wanted to eat. Fidelis wanted something to do. The department wanted Kevin to come and do paperwork.
Kevin went to Oregon. He saw a place called Blue River where a picture postcard view had been marred by a huge clear cut. He went on to the scree slope quarry. He ran it as relentlessly as Alexander would have. At 24/365, the quarry sucked up the rock rapidly. Kevin put the rock in the railcars and put the equipment on the train. The crushed rock went right away to the Pan. The uncrushed went through a system in Nevada that surpassed Science Fiction. The cars were brought in one side of the super crusher facility, and went out the other. Two miles of train went through the facility and out in less than an hour, dumping rough rock and carrying away base without even stopping. The super crusher was steam powered, and fueled by garbage. The burned junk was magnetically separated and otherwise processed to recover materials, which went on the same train.
Kevin went to sleep, and woke up at Quetzalcoatl. Tom had a few little things that needed to be done. The Quetzalcoatl crew was pleased to see Kevin, and he was pleased to see them. The pit was already ‘beveled’ as Alice called it, the top of the pit sloped so that someone in the water could get out. You could do