Heavy Weather

"What's it all about?"

"Livestock smugglers," the Ranger told her. "They got those pharm goats hot-wired to do all kinds of weird shit nowadays.....un 'em up backroads by night, mix ~em up with meat goats, and you can't tell no difference without a DNA scan.... That was a pretty tough outfit you met, we been watchin' out for 'em awhile, y'all was lucky."

"What kind of 'weird shit' do you get from illegal goats?" Jeff asked.

"Plastic explosive, for one thing. Strain it out of the milk, make cheese out of it, put a fuse in it, and structure-hit the hell right out of anything."

"Explosive goat's milk," Jane said slowly.

"You're kidding, right?" Jeff said.

The Ranger smiled broadly. "Yeah, folks, I'm kidding, sorry.

Jane stared at him. The Ranger stared back. There was no expression in his reflective shades. "What are you go

"Find the contact point, I'll track 'em through the brush.... We'll catch 'em by morning. Maybe noon. Cap'n Gault likes to go by the book, he'll give 'em a chance to throw down their guns and come quiet. Thanks for the water, ma'am. Y'all take care now." The Ranger trotted off.

Jeff waited until the Ranger was out of earshot. Then he spoke with hushed amazement and respect. "Janey, they're go

"Yeah," Jane said. "I know."

VIOLENT, DEADLY STORMS broke Out in profusion in the last two weeks of May 2031. Unfortunately they were in Kansas, Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska, and Arkansas. A minor front swept Tornado Alley on May 27, ardently pursued by the Troupe, but it yielded no spikes.

Statistically, this was not unusual. However, the statistics themselves had become pretty damned unusual as the century had progressed. Before heavy weather, there had been about nine hundred tornadoes every year in the United States. Nowadays, there were about four thousand. Before heavy weather, a year's worth of tornadoes killed about a hundred people and caused about $200 million (constant 1975 dollars) in damage. Now, despite vastly better warning systems, tornadoes killed about a thousand people a year, and the damage was impossible to estimate accurately because the basic economic nature of both "value" and "currency" had gone nonlinear.

Tornadoes were, for obvious reasons, easier to find nowadays. But most storms, even violent storms with good indicators, never spawned tornadoes. Many hunts were simply bound to turn up dry, even with excellent weather monitoring and rapid all-terrain deployment. And even the much-ravaged Texas-Oklahoma Tornado Alley, the planet's premier spawning ground for twisters, had to get some peace and quiet sometimes.

The dry spell visibly affected the Troupe's morale. Alex saw that they were still on their best behavior around Mulcahey, but Mulcahey himself became withdrawn, wrapping himself in marathon simulation sessions. The Troupe got bored, then petulant. Carol and Greg, whose relationship seemed unstable at the best of times, started openly sniping at one another. Peter and Rick took a motorcycle and sidecar into Amarillo "to get laid," and came back hung over and beaten up. Rudy Martinez went to San Antonio for a week to visit his ex-wife and his kids. Martha and Buzzard, who found one another physically repulsive but couldn't seem to let one another alone, got into a mean, extensive quarrel over minor damage to one of the ultralights. And Juanita spent a lot of her time tearing around uselessly in the dune buggy, ostensibly to give its new, improved interface a shakedown, but more, Alex suspected, for the sake of her own nerves than anything to do with the car.

The High Plains down around Big Spring and Odessa had gotten generous rains this year, but the Troupe had since moved far north, near Palo Duro Canyon. Up here, the grasslands had gotten a good start for spring and then stalled. The u

Alex had a high tolerance for boredom. True restlessness required a level of animal energy that he simply didn't possess. Unlike the Troupers, he didn't fidget or complain. Given working lungs, a screen to look at, and a place to sleep, Alex felt basically content. He hadn't asked to join a group of touchy thrill freaks as their unpaid amateur goat-herd, and he recognized the true absurdity of his situation, but he didn't actually mind it much. The weather was lovely, the air was clear, his health was good, and he was being left alone all day with some goats and the Library of Congress and a smart rope.

This suited him. The goats were an appreciative audience for his growing repertoire of rope tricks, and they made excellent targets for the new, wicked noose he had installed at the rope's end. As a bonus, now that he had his big leather boots from Matamoros, Alex no longer fretted much about thorns, spines, stinging nettles, and big slithering venomous rattlesnakes. The main inconvenience of his existence was the three meals a day, when he had to deal face-to-face with the Troupers. Besides, the food was awful.

Being shot at for the cause had very much helped Alex's social position in camp. Not many of the Troupers had actually been shot at under any circumstances. Except for Ellen Mae several times, and Peter once, and Rudy on a couple of occasions in civilian life, and Greg "lots of times." Surviving gunfire was an experience the Troupers valued highly, and being shot at in the actual service of the Troupe itself brought Alex a certain cachet. He'd gotten a few grudging, snotty remarks about his new clothes, but the clothes didn't stay new for long. Alex never changed them, rarely washed, and had stopped shaving. His jeans and embroidered shirt were soon filthy, and the paper sombrero, which never left his head, grew steadily more wadded and hideous. Plus, he grew a patchy blond beard. After that, nobody paid him much attention. He'd gotten his wish, and become a cipher.

As tension mounted in the camp, though, Alex decided that his situation had become solid enough for him to take a few useful steps. He quietly approached Joe Brasseur about his legal and financial situation.

Alex was used to lawyers. He'd grown up in the company of his father's numerous hired attorneys. Brasseur was a bent attorney-that odd and highly exceptional kind of lawyer who wasn't personally well-to-do. Alex strongly suspected that Brasseur had been on the wrong side of politics during the State of Emergency.

Most people had gotten over that period of history and managed to or et the peculiar way they'd been behaving at the time, but Joe Brasseur, like other Troupers, was pretty clearly not most people.

Alex knew that it was useless talking to lawyers unless you were willing to tell them a lot of embarrassing things. He felt pretty sure that Brasseur was not a narc or some cop's little finger, so he told Brasseur in detail about his financial arrangements with the clinica in Nuevo Laredo.

Most people went through life without ever using a private currency. Most~ people were, of course, poor. They didn't have enough wealth to buy into the private-money system, or enough contacts or market smarts to use private currencies effectively. Except, of course, during the State of Emergency, when every American, rich and poor alike, had been forced to use a private currency because the Regime had privatized the U.S. dollar.

Alex wasn't exactly sure how "currency privatization" had been accomplished, back at the time. He was similarly vague about the Regime's massive "data nationalizations.~~ Joe Brasseur, however, seemed to have an excellent grasp of these principles. Brasseur was in charge of the Troupe's financial books, and they were a rat nest of private currencies.