Heavy Weather

The machine hit the highway, hesitated, and began creeping along south at ten klicks an hour.

"Well, let's hope the poor damn thing gets to paint a few road stripes before they shoot it to hell and gone again," Carol said, stacking the lattices in the back of a truck. "What's the deal, dude? I'm busy."

"Carol, what's the weirdest thing you've got around here?"

"What in hell are you talking about?"

"What have you got, that's really strange, only nobody else ever hacks with it?"

"Oh," Carol said. "I get your drift." She gri

"I'd like to," Alex lied, "but I got another assignment."

"Well, I'm go

One end of the cord ended in a flat battery unit, with a belt attachment, a small readout screen, and a control glove.

"Ever seen one of these before?"

"Well, I've certainly seen a battery and a control glove," Alex said.

She handed him the works. "Yeah, that's a damn good battery! Superconductive. You could drive a motorbike with that battery. And here I am, keeping that sucker charged up to no good end-nobody ever uses this damn thing!" She frowned. "Of course, if you work that battery down, kid, you're go

CHAPTER 6

"I'm pulling, I'm pulling," Alex told her. "My people in Matamoros have got that shipment ready, they're just waiting for us to give them the coordinates."

"Standard satellite global-position coordinates?"

"That's what they use, all right," he said. "Just like the Troupe, like the army, just like everybody."

"I can give you those anytime, it's no big secret where we're pitching camp."

"That's good. I'll try and phone 'em in, if I can still get that encrypted line."

'No problema," Carol said, bored. She watched as• Alex hefted the cable, then slid the whole coil of it over his right shoulder. It rested there easily. The cable weighed only a couple of kilos, but it felt bizarrely serpentine and supple, somehow dry and greasy at the same time. It was as thick as his little finger, and maybe twenty meters long. "What is this thing exactly?"

"Smart rope."

"What's smart about it?"

"Well, there's this chip in the battery box that understands knot topology. You know what topology is?"

"It's a kind of math about deforming the geometry of space."

"Great."

"Anyhow, that rope is braided from a lot of different cabling. Got sensor cable, power cable, and this is the tricky part, electric reactive fiber. Okay? It'll stretch, it'll contract-hard and fast-it can bend and wiggle anywhere along the length. The damn thing can tie itself in knots."

"Like the smart cloth in kites," Alex said, "except it's a line, not a sheet."

"That's right."

"Why'd you try to spook me with that topology crap, then? You just use the damned glove, right?"

"Right," she said. "Except technically, you won't understand what you're actually doing."

"So what? Who cares?"

Carol sighed. "Look, just take the damn thing out of here, and try not to hurt yourself. I don't wa

"Okay!" said Alex cheerfully. This last little speech had sent his morale soaring. He liked the smart rope already. He was glad to have it. He was kinda sorry he didn't have two of them. "I'll take real good care of it. Don't forget about the phone. Hasta Ia uista."

Alex left the tent and shuffled out of camp again, back to the root from hell. He scraped and chipped and dug at the root for a while, until he was Out of breath again. Then he stretched the rope out to its full twenty-pace length across the weedy earth. He turned the power switch on.

The rope lay there, totally inert. The little readout screen suggested: INPUT PARAMETERS FOR HYPERBOLIC CURVATURE.

He tried on the power glove. It had the usual knuckle sensors along the back and a thousand little beaded pressure cells across the palms and the fingers. It was a right-hand glove, and the fit was pretty good. The fingertips were free, and the glove slid very nicely along the rope, a " mix of grip and slickness.

Alex punched a few numbers at random into the readout box, then flopped the rope around with the glove. Nothing much happened. He put the rope aside and wore the glove to dig with the pick. The glove had a good grip and helped quite a bit with the incipient blisters.

Along about sundown, Peter and Rick showed up. They were wearing paper gear fresh off the roll, and they'd been bathed and their hair was combed.

"You'd better come on in, Medicine Boy," said Peter. "They're wasbin' the clothes, everybody's takin' a bath, we're all go

"I'm still busy," Alex said.

Rick laughed. "Busy with what?"

"Pretty big job," Alex said. "A buffalo gourd. Ellen Mae said the root weighs thirty kilos."

"You can't have a root that weighs thirty kilos, man," said Rick. "Look, trees don't have roots that weigh thirty kilos."

"Where's the plant?" Peter said.

Alex pointed to the severed gourd vine, which he had cast aside. The vine had shriveled badly in the sunlight.

"Hell," said Rick, contemptuous. "Look, it's a matter of simple physics. It takes a lot of energy to grow a root- starches and cellulose and stuff. Look at the photosynthetic area on those vine leaves. You can't grow something that weighs thirty kilos off a plant with no more solar-collecting area than that!"

Peter stared into the shallow hole and laughed. "Ellen Mae sent you on a snipe hunt, dude. She's had you diggin' all day for nothin'. Man, that's cold."

"Well, he hasn't been digging very hard," Rick judged, kicking the small heap of calichelike soil with the toe of his boot. "I've seen a prairie dog turn more earth than this."

"What's with the rope?" Peter said.

"I thought it might help me haul the root out," Alex lied glibly. "I can't even lift thirty kilos."

Peter laughed again. "This is pathetic! Look, we're outta here, right after sundown. You better get back to camp and figure out how you're go

"How are you riding?" Alex asked.

"Me?" Peter said. "I'm riding the ultralight! I'm ridin' escort duty."

"Me too," Rick said. "With a rifle. There are bandits out on these highways, sometimes. Structure-hit people, bushwhackers. Most folks in a convoy like ours, with all this fine equipment, they might run a pretty big risk. But not the Troupe. The Troupe's got air support!"

"You're not go

"Exactly," Rick said. "You're flying up there in the dark, no lights, silent, with the infrared helmet and a laser-sighted silent rifle-if it should ever come to that, you are death from above."