Heavy Weather

He was carrying a large double-headed digging pick.

She'd never seen anyone carry a pick with less enthusiasm- Alex was lugging it clumsily, thigh-high, at the end of his outstretched arms, as if it were some kind of barbell.

He trudged slowly out of the camp. Jane called out to him, waved, then jogged over and caught up to him just past one of the camp's perimeter posts.

"What's on your mind?" he muttered.

"Just wanted to see how you're doing," she sai4. She looked into his pale, squinting eyes. "You mind taking off that mask for a second?"

Alex pulled his mask down, with bad grace. The mask's thin elastic straps had left four little stripes of pale skin across his sunburned cheeks. "Ellen Mae wants me to dig up a root."

"Oh." Jane thought that Alex looked shaky, and she was pretty sure he'd never touched a pickax in his life. "Are you up to that kind of labor? You just got out of a hospital.

"I'm not go

"You got along all right with Ellen Mae?"

"I can get along.' Alex sighed. "These people of yours are really something. They remind me of some Santeria people I used to know, in a rancho outside Matamoros. Kind of survivalist compound thing? They had the bunkers, y'know, and the security systems and stuff... . Of course, those dope vaqueros were a much heavier outfit than these jokers." Alex thumped the broadside of the pick against the base of one of the perimeter posts. "This thing can't listen to us talking, can it?"

"Well, yeah, it can," Jane admitted, "but we never record any speech with it. It's just an intruder alarm, with some tasers and pellets and stuff. We can talk."

"No problem," Alex muttered, watching- a pack of Troupers strip the paper walls from the hangar yurt. "Well, you don't have to worry about me. Run along and go do something useful."

"Is anybody bugging you, Alex? Rick or Peter or anybody?"

Alex shrugged. "You're bugging me."

"Don't be that way. I just want to help you fit in."

Alex laughed. "Look! You kidnapped me here, I didn't ask to come. I'm sunburned and covered with mosquito bites, and I'm really dirty. The food stinks here. There's not enough water. There's no privacy. It's dangerous! I'm wearing clothes made of paper. Your friends are a pack of hicks and loans, except for your boyfriend, who's a big cigar-store Indian. Under the circumstances, I'm being a really good sport about this."

Jane said nothing.

He looked her in the eye. "Stop worrying so much. I'm not go

"Thanks a lot," she grated.

He smiled at her. "You're really happy here, aren't you?"

She was surprised.

"I've seen you act really crazy sometimes, Janey. And I still think you're acting pretty strange. But I've never seen you act so happy before." He smiled again. "You're chasing tornadoes in a wasteland! But you're waltzin' around here with a smile on your lips, and a song in your heart, and your little bouquet of fresh wildflowers. -...t's kind of sweet, actually."

Jane straightened to her full height and looked down at him. "Yes, Alex, I'm happy here. About everything but you, basically."

"You really belong with these people. You really like them."

"That's right. They're my people."

Alex narrowed his eyes. "And this guy you're with. He treats you all right? He wasn't beating you or anything really sick and twisted, was he?"

Jane looked around for eavesdroppers, smoldering with rage, then centered her eyes on him. "No. He doesn't beat me. I was fucking him. I like to flick him. Hard! Loud! A lot! I'm not ashamed about it, and you can't make me ashamed!" There was a hot flush in her cheeks and ears.

"Get this through your head! That is the man in my life!

He is my grand passion." She stared hard at Alex, until he dropped his gaze.

"I never thought I was go

Alex took a step back. "Okay, okay."

"It's him and me till theaky falls in!"

Alex nodded quickly, his eyes wide. "Okay, I get it, Janey. Calm down."

"I am calm, you little creep. And it's no joke. You can't ever make it a joke, because you don't know one thing about it. I love him, and I'm happy with him, and we do what we do, and we are what we are, and you just better live with that! And you bettet never forget what I just told you.

Alex nodded. She could tell from the way he bit his lip that her words had sunk in-for better or worse, she'd co

"You're go

"I oughta make you take me home right away." He balanced the pick handle on his collarbone, clumsy and restless. "But I got no home to go to at the moment. Mexico is out, for obvious reasons. I'm sure not going back home to Papa in Houston. Pa p a acts even stranger than you do, and those clinic people might be lookin' for me there.... And anyway, there are possibilities in a setup like this. It's stupid for me to stay here, but I think I might do okay for awhile, if I can get everybody to mostly ignore me. Especially you." He turned away.

"Alex," she said.

He looked over his shoulder. "What?"

"Learn to hack something. Like everybody else does. Just so you can get along better."

He nodded. "Okay, Juanita. Have it your way."

ALEX FOLLOWED ELLEN Mae's precise but extremely confusing directions, got turned around several times, and finally found the paper-tagged stick she had driven into the earth to mark the spot. The fluttering paper tag marked a low trailing vine on the ground. The vine was about two meters long, with hairy, pointed, conical leaves, and it smelled rank and fetid. It harbored a large population of small black-and-orange beetles. It was called a buffalo gourd.

Alex scraped the vine aside with the flat blade of the pick, got a two-handed choke-up grip on the shaft, and started to chop at the yellow earth. He was impressed with the pick. The tool was well-balanced, sharp, and in good condition. Unfortunately he was nowhere near strong enough to use it properly.

Alex chipped, gnawed, and scraped his way several centimeters down into the miserable, unforgiving soil, until the sweat stood out all over his ribs and his pipe-stem arms trembled.

When he spotted the buried root of a buffalo gourd, he stared at it in amazement for some time, then left the pick beside the hole and walked slowly back to camp.

Carol Cooper had pulled a pair of lattices from the wall of the garage yurt. The highway maintenance hulk rolled out through the big new gap.

Carol watched the machine lumber downhill while she folded and tied the wooden lattices. Alex joined her, tugging down his mask.