I hadn’t much in the way of furniture; and once Angel had occupied two-thirds of the sofa, there was less of it to go around. Lyle, being slightly built, perched himself on the table, while Jimmy raided my kitchen and passed out bottles of Skull Mountain before squatting cross-legged on the floor. We all said what a coincidence, and long time no see, and what’ve you been up to.

It wasn’t quite like old times. A few years had gone by between us. They were long years; it didn’t seem possible they’d held only three-hundred-odd days each. The four of us had been different places, seen different sights; and so we had become different men than the ones who had known each other at camp. But also there was a curtain between me and the three of them. Every now and then, in the midst of some tale or other, they would share a look; or they would fall silent and they’d say, well, you had to be there. You see, they’d been Inside and I hadn’t; and that marks a man.

Angel had served with the 82nd against the Snakes; and Lyle had seen action against both the Crips and the Yoopers. Jimmy allowed as he’d tangoed in the high country, where the bandits had secret refuges among the twisting canyons; but he said very little else. Only he drank two beers for every one the others put down, and Jimmy had never been a drinking man.

They asked politely what I’d been up to and pretended great interest in my stories and news dispatches. They swore they read all of my pieces on the ©-Net, and maybe they did.

They didn’t blame me for it. They knew I’d as soon be Inside with them, suited-up and popping Joeys. The four of us had been commissioned power suit lieutenants together; had gone through the grueling training side by side. I still had the bars. I still looked at them some nights when the hurt wasn’t so bad, when I could think about what might have been without feeling the need for chems.

Talk detoured through the winter crop of Hollywood morphies and whether American could take Congress from Liberty next year, and how the Air Cav had collared El Muerte down in the panhandle, and have you seen Chica Domosan’s latest virtcheo. Angel and Lyle practically drooled when I told them I had the uncensored seedy; and they insisted on viewing it right then and there. I only had the one virtch hat, so they had to take turns watching. With the stereo earphones and the wrap-around goggs enclosing your head it was just like she was dancing and singing and peeling right there in front of you.

Afterwards, we talked Grand Strategy, shifting troops all over the continent, free of all political constraints and certain we would never hash it the way the Pentagon had. Doubt flowers from seeds that spend decades germinating; confidence is a weed that springs up overnight. And so youth gains in certitude what it lacks in prudence. It was no different back then; only, the stakes were higher.

Eventually, we spoke of our own personal plans. Lyle went how he was angling for an assignment down in the Frontera—“because that’s where the next big yee-haw’s going to be”—and Angel wanted nothing more than to hunt Joeys up in the Nations. White teeth split his broad, dark face. The rest of us counted the Nations as a nest of traitors and secessionists; but with Angel it was personal. Then Jimmy said, in that quiet voice of his, that he’d put in for a hoofer. We grinned and waited for the punch line, and when it didn’t come our smiles slowly faded. “I’m serious,” he said. “I won’t go Inside again.”

Angel looked shocked and Lyle’s face stiffened in disapproval; but I was the one who spoke up. “How can you say that, Jimmy? After what we went through together in camp? You’re a suit lieutenant, goddamn it!” Dismay pried me from the chair behind my cluttered workstation; or rather, it tried to. My legs betrayed me and I nearly cracked my head on the edge of the desk as I toppled.

The others were all around me, to lift me back up again. I swatted Jimmy’s hand away and let the Angel bear me up and set me back in my accustomed place. “Why’d you do that, man?” Lyle asked as he fussed the blanket around my waist. “You shouldn’t oughta do that.” Jimmy wouldn’t meet my eyes. Jimmy always blamed himself, but it was my idea. We’d just gotten our bars, we were celebrating, and that hog of Jimmy’s looked phatter and stoopider the more I drank. So what the hell. That was then.

“I get around all right,” I said to excuse myself. I could function. Most days, I could even walk. “Sometimes, the spasms—You know.”

They all said they knew; but how could they? You dream and you train for months and months and then in one drunken moment you throw it all away for a goddamned motorcycle ride. Power suits amplify the suit louie’s every move. A man can’t wear it if he suffers unpredictable seizures. As if to underscore my thoughts, my left leg began to spasm. If I’d been suited up, my walker would have toppled. Stress, the doctors all said. It was stress that brought it on; but what did they know?

I was barred by circumstance; but Jimmy planned to walk away. That made no sense. Who would give up a power suit if he didn’t have to? Angel was puzzled, too; and Lyle said, “Sometimes a guy gets syndrome and he just can’t take being Inside no more.” He was so damned understanding that Jimmy flushed and said how it wasn’t that at all; or at least, not exactly.

“You know how things stand up in the mountains,” Jimmy said. “I don’t suppose it’s much different with the Yoopers or the others, except maybe the terrain’s rougher. Straight up or down as often as not, and canyons pinched as tight as a preacher’s wife on Sunday. Officially, the whole area’s pacified; only someone forgot to tell the militias.”

“They are not ‘militias,’ suit lieutenant,” said Angel in a mock-official voice. “They are ‘bandits.’ ”

“I know that,” Jimmy told him. “We only call ’em ‘militias.’ Like you say ‘gangs’ when you pull urban duty.” He swigged his Skull and sat with the bottle dangling by its neck between his knees while he scowled at nothing. “The war’s platoon-size up there,” he said at last. “The regiment’s scattered in firebases all across God’s Country—only God ain’t home. The only time I ever saw my colonel was over the Lynx. We got our orders—when we got any orders at all—from the twenty-four. Otherwise, we were on our own.” He shook his head. “Pacified…”

“Who was your colonel?” Lyle asked.

“Mandlebrot. He was a sumbitch. Worried more about the cost of patrolling than whether Joey walked the line. When I took the platoon out, I used to sling the word off the twenty-four, then put my dish tech on arrest so I could say I never got the bounce-back telling me to stay put.”

Angel laughed. “That’s good. That’s bean. Wish I’d thought of that.”

That was the sort of hack Jimmy used to pull. Always by the book, but sometimes he wrote notes in the margins. “How long did you fool him?” I asked.

“Oh, not long,” Jimmy admitted. “I said he was a sumbitch. Never said he was stupid. So sometimes I would go out unofficial-like with the reg’lar militia—the sheriff’s posse. They had their own ATVs. Horses, too. Some places hooves’ll take you where tires won’t go. They were locals, and knew the country just as well as the bandits. I mean they knew it close up, like you know your girlfriend, not just from the up-and-down.”

“You were too far north for the twenty-fours?” asked Angel.

Jimmy shrugged. “Nah, but the twenty-fours can’t give you terrain detail the way a LEO sat’ can. Sometimes a little sliver between canyon walls was all the sky we could dish. There’s always something up there but you have to code dance, depending on what sat’ your dish can catch. Well, that sheriff was a clever pud. Didn’t need an eye in the sky, because he had eyes and ears all over ground level—and kept his county in pretty good law ‘n’ order, considering. But he knew when he needed extra weenie, so he was happy enough when I tagged along. Not happy, you understand; but happy enough. The irregulars don’t much like us; but they hate the bandits worse—‘cause it’s their brothers and cousins and all getting kneecapped and necklaced.”

“An’ half the time,” said Angel, “it’s their brothers and cousins and all that’re doing the kneecaps and necklaces.”

“Word up,” said Lyle. “Neighbors huntin’ neighbors. No wonder they ain’t happy campers.”

“Folks back here don’t always draw a line between bandits and friend-lies,” I said, thinking about my ©-Net story, “The Loyalist.” “So your possemen feel they have to prove their loyalty.”

“Righteous beans,” said Angel. “Hey. You hear what happened to the 7th down in the live oak country? ‘Rooster’ McGregor—you ever meet ’im? Skinny guy with teeth out to here?—he was doing just what you were, Jimmy. Riding with the posse when he couldn’t take his platoon out. Only it turns out the possemen were the bandits. Deputy Dawgs by day; camos and piano wire by night. Rooster, he got his ticket stripped over it, but he accidentally hung the sheriff before the court martial took his bars.”

Jimmy hadn’t been listening. “They don’t respect us,” he said. “Never understood that ’til the last time I was Inside. Now…” He voice trailed off and his eyes took on a distant look. I traded glances with Lyle and Angel, and waited.

“We called him ‘Wild Bob,’ ” Jimmy said finally. “I suppose he had his own name for himself and some mumbo-jumbo, self-important rank. Generalissimo. Grand Kleagle. Lord High Naff-naff. Maybe he called himself The Bald Eagle, cause he sure as shit had no hair; but he could’ve called himself Winnie the Pooh, for all I cared. ‘Cause what he was was a murderer and a rapist and an armed robber, and he probably picked his nose in public. What he’d do every now and then—just to let us know he was still around—he’d send a body floating down the river from the high country. One of our agents or a friendly or maybe just someone looked at him cross-eyed. Or he’d throw a roadblock up and collect ‘tolls’ from everybody passing through. Or he’d yee-haw a firebase and pick off a freshie or two.

“Yeah, he was a piece of work, all right,” Jimmy said. “And he knew to the corpse just how far he could push it before the higher-ups would scratch their balls and wonder how ‘pacified’ the area really was. So Badger Stoltz—that was the sheriff—he developed a keen interest in learning Wild Bob’s whereabouts. One day, word came in that Bob was holed up in an old mining town, name of Spruce Creek. The silver gave out way back when, but no one had the heart to close it up. I seen the place, and I can’t say I blame ’em. It’s a spot worth stayin’ in, just to open your eyes to it in the morning. It sets in a high, isolated meadow, with peaks on every side and four passes leading out. A spruce forest surrounds it and climbs halfway up the mountain flanks before giving way to krummholz and bare, gray rocks. The state road follows the creek through the center of town; but the Joeys have watchtowers on both east and west passes and it wouldn’t take ’em more’n ten minutes to turn either one into a deathtrap if anybody tried to come in that way. The townies either support Wild Bob or they’re too scared not to. Or both. Hell, like I said, even the friendlies don’t much like us. And I can’t say they weren’t given cause in the old days.”

“Don’t mean nothin’,” Angel said. “Don’t excuse what they done. Don’t excuse collaborating, neither.”

Jimmy just shook his head. “It’s a damn shame what things have come to. Gimme another Skull, would you.”

Lyle handed him the bottle. “So what about this Wild Bob?”

“I’m comin’ to it.” He popped the cap and tipped the neck toward us in salute. “In and Out,” he said.

“Yeah.” That was Lyle. “Except you want Out.”

Jimmy darkened. “I said I was cornin’ to that. I just gotta give you the topo. There’s another road. A county road. Packed dirt and gravel, mostly. Comes in from the south, gives the townies something they can call an intersection, and meanders out over the north pass. At that point whoever put the road in, must’ve figgered out there wasn’t any place to go over on the other side; so it just fizzles out in the rocks and tundra. The Joey’s keep an eye on the south pass, but don’t pay much mind to the north.”

Angel spoke. “I sense a plan,” he said clapping his hands together. “A Strategy.”

“Four suit louies,” I said. “Two to keep ’em interested in the state road; one to block their retreat over the south pass; and one to sneak in through the bathroom window.”

“Sure,” said Jimmy, “except I didn’t have no four suit louies at the fire-base. Just me and Maria Serena—and one of us had to stay Out if the other went In, in case Joey yee-hawed the firebase. Wild Bob had maybe twenty, twenty-five bandits with him—he ran the town like a damn safe house, and every terrorist in three states could put up there for a week or two. I had the sheriff’s posse—Badger Stoltz and ten whipcord guys who took their tin stars serious—and I had my power suit. So I figured the odds at better’n even. Plan was, the sheriff would waltz with our boy on the county road, draw ’em south a ways, while I took the walker in from the north.”

“Couldn’t use a floater, then?” Angel asked.

Jimmy shook his head. “Too steep. Ground effect don’t work too good when the ground is vertical. I’d have to do finger and toe climbing the last stretch. There’s a reason that road don’t go nowhere. Sheriff sent one of his guys with me—a cute little bit named Natalie who just happens to be his daughter—to show me the way. I had the photos from the up-and-down, but like I said, things can look real different on the ground. Me and Stoltz worked it out and didn’t say beans to nobody until the day I went In—’cause, you know, someone might have a cousin or talk in his sleep or something. So the day comes and Stoltz rides his ten guys south—they got the most ground to cover before they get in position—and Natalie waits while I go into the teep room and wriggle into my power suit—”

“Duck into a phone booth!” said Lyle. “Put on your cape and Spandex!”

“Superman!” said Angel. “Ta da-daah!”

“—Fiber ops and hydros hooked up—”

“—Leap tall buildings—”

“—Set my virtch hat—”

“—Faster than a speeding bullet—”

“—Power up the suit and—”

“Oh, man, I know that feeling—”

“—Ain’t nothing like it—”

They bubbled, their words tumbling one atop the other, a glow spreading across their faces. I remained quiet and stared into my beer. I could remember what it felt like. Infinite power. You could dribble the world and shoot hoops. My fingers cramped into a sudden ball and I hid the rebellious limb under the desk.

“I took the walker out to the fire-base perimeter and leaped over the wall right beside Natalie.”

“Yee-haw!” said Lyle.

“It scared her. She hadn’t been expecting it, and her horse reared up and near threw her. I told her I was ready-Freddy; and she just looks in my optics and says, let’s not waste any more time, and she yanks on her bridle and heads off toward Spruce Creek.” Jimmy drained his bottle and tossed it to Angel, who placed it carefully in the growing architectural wonder our empties were creating.

“The town wasn’t too far, as the bullet flies; but you couldn’t rightly get there going straight. Still, her dad and the others needed time to get in position, so Natalie set off at an easy canter with me loping along beside her. You know what it’s like in those walkers. You want to leap and soar. And of course it’s scaled about twice the human body, so you have to get used to the difference in stride and reach and squeeze. So I’d stretch my arms and the walker’s manipulators would reach out and tear a limb off a cottonwood. Or I’d take a couple giant steps, just for the hell of it; then wait for Natalie to catch up. Third or fourth time I did that, she told me I was scaring her horse and please stop; so I had to plod the rest of the way. It was like being hamstrung.”

“Hang a handicap sign on your back,” Lyle agreed. “Get prime parking.”

“Tell it, Brother Lyle!” said Angel. They tossed the thoughtless jape from one to the other.

“Satellite recon is a wonderful thing; but even the up-and-down can’t see through trees or overhangs or pick fine details from a shadow-black canyon. Natalie led me the last part of the way. Took me down game paths, along a creek bed, through stands of Douglas fir that looked like they’d been there since God spread his tarp. She knew her horses, that Natalie. Couldn’t have been more’n nineteen, twenty; but she sat in the saddle like she’d been born there. Well, in that country, maybe she had. She never said more’n two dozen words to me the whole trip; and those were mostly ‘this way’ or ‘over there.’

“Finally, we come to the base of a sheer cliff. There was three canyons cut into it. No, not even canyons. More like cracks. Recon barely showed ’em, but Badger Stoltz and his daughter swore there was one of ’em led to the top. Natalie rode along the base of the mountain and ducked a little ways into each. Then she come out and said, ‘The right one. It slopes up real sharp, then goes vertical into a chimney that opens out on the high tundra. From there, your GPS should show you the way.’ ”

“Wasn’t she going with you?” asked Angel.

I snorted. “Weren’t you listening? Take a horse up a fissure like that?”

Jimmy rubbed his palms together. “I said, ‘Wish me luck?’ and she just yanked on her horse’s reins. ‘You don’t need luck when you’ve got that,’ she said. I knew she meant the walker, so I come back and said, ‘I ain’t no Imperial Storm Trooper and Wild Bob ain’t the Rebel Alliance. I’m on your side. We’re the good guys.’

“ ‘The good guys,’ she said. And, oh, she was pissed. Angry and afraid all at once. ‘Was your government ragged on folks until bandits like your Wild Bob could play the hero? And now my daddy has to ride out and maybe take a splash of flechettes in his belly, ‘steada ticketing speeders along the state road.’

“ ‘He ain’t my Wild Bob,’ I said. ‘I come to take him down.’

“Her lips curled. Full, soft lips. Oh, they were lips for kissing. And here I was a young suit louie going off to do battle. I deserved a kiss. But I was suited up, teeping a walker, and there was more than telemetry and digital screens between us. Instead of a kiss, I got a kiss-off. ‘You come to take him down?’ she said, and she leaned forward over her horse’s head and pointed a finger into my optics. ‘You listen to me, mister “suit louie.” If my daddy even gets wounded bad, you’ll have one more militia in the high country to worry about, and that’ll be me!’

“Hoo!” said Angel. “And she’d be a bad un, too.”

“She was just worried about her Pa,” I suggested. Jimmy looked at me, then shrugged.

“Maybe. I couldn’t let it bother me, though. I had a job to do; and if I didn’t get up that cut, her daddy probably would take a slug. Without me, the possemen were outnumbered and outgunned.”

“So how’d you do it?” Lyle asked. “Sounds like you’d be out of line o’ sight in that fissure.”

“Oh, I had an aerostat hovering at the relay point, and Lieutenant Serena kept it on station. But you’re right. Inside that chimney, the microwave beam would be blocked. So I asked Natalie to handle the little dish. You know, stake a repeater at the entrance, then crawl after me with the parabolic until I got up to where I could bounce sky again.”

“Helluva thing to ask a girl,” said Angel.

“Did you trust her?” I asked.

“You don’t get it, Angel,” Jimmy said. “She was a posseman, not just the Badger’s daughter. She packed a nine and a railgun and there was a street sweeper in her saddle scabbard. Oh, mano a mano, any one of us could have taken her down; but we’d be walking funny for a long time after.

“Well, I took that walker into the cleft and it was like someone drew a window shade, you know what I mean? All the I/O was juiced into the walker’s receptors by that little, handheld parabolic that Natalie Stoltz held. All she had to do was toss it aside, or even drop it accidentally, and that walker would be nothing but a pile of armor and circuitry stuck inside some rocks.

“I can’t say I didn’t think about that while I climbed that chimney; and what the colonel would say if I got stuck while I was on an unofficial outing. What I didn’t think about until later was Natalie. My walker depended on the power beam she was aiming, and the farther up the cleft I climbed, the harder it was to keep the beam targeted. She had to stand right underneath the walker and aim straight up. So if anything happened, that’d be a couple tons of composite armor and metalocene plastic come tumbling down on her head.”

“Takes balls,” Angel agreed. “I wouldn’t care to do it.”

“Almost made me wish the walker was self-powered.”

Lyle hooted. “Yeah, right. Carry a honking fuel cell around.”

“Said ‘almost,’ ” Jimmy told him. “The climb was the sort of workaround any good suit louie could pull off. Maybe a little closer to the edge, is all. Took me maybe half an hour to reach the top. I looked down over the edge to maybe wave Natalie my thanks, but all I seen was her riding off a-horseback without so much as a glance back.”

“Not very grateful for your help, was she?” Angel said.

“Found out later she went ’round the long way to hook up with her dad. Can’t fault her—her place was with him. Got there too late for the action, but then old Badger might’ve have that in mind when he assigned her to guide me.”

“That must have been some climb,” I said, “teep shadow, and all.” I tried to keep my voice professional; but some of the envy must have come through, because Jimmy winced and wouldn’t meet my eyes.

“Yeah, some climb,” he said, and gave no more details.

Lyle leaned forward. “But once you were out of the cleft, you could bounce…”

“Yeah. Got my bearings from the GPS, shook hands again with the aerostat, checked in with Serena and Stoltz. Gauged the distance and told Stoltz I’d call him when it was time to open the dance. Serena said there was no movement on the up-and-down; but hell, those bandits know how to get around without smiling for the sat’-cams. Anything worth noticing would have been under trees or camo overhangs or down in the bunkers. You know how it is.”

Lyle and Angel said they knew how it was. I chimed in, too; but for me it was more a theoretical knowledge, cadged from recon photos, official briefings, or picking the brains of Insiders. I’d written about it in “The Ambush.” People tell me how my stories make everything come alive for them—a funny expression to use about stories of combat—but only I knew how dead the words felt under my fingertips.

“There was this one building, though, seemed to have a lot of in-and-out. The Artificial Stupid thought it was either a headquarters, an entrance to the bunker system, a whorehouse, or a public library.”

Angel shook his head. “Jesus. No wonder they call ’em Stupids—”

“You put up any bumblebees?” asked Lyle.

“About two hives, all slaved into the aerostat relay. Gave me a good, close-in aerial of the town, so I knew right where the action was. I figured folks’d come pouring out of that building when the Badger opened the dance, and I wanted to know if they came out waving Kalashnikovs or library cards.”

“Shoot ’em if they have the cards,” said Lyle. “It’s the shit they read drives ’em to it.”

“You don’t believe that, Lyle,” I said.

He stuck his chin out. “You’re the writer,” he said. “Either you move people or you don’t. And if you don’t, why bother writing? Maybe there’d be fewer murdering rebel scumbags if we’d put some of those books and websites off-limits.”

“No,” said Jimmy. “I’d rather shoot a man dead because he’s a murdering rebel scumbag than treat him and everyone else like children who’re told what they can read or listen to.”

Lyle was unconvinced. “Yeah? What do you owe Joey Sixpack?”

Jimmy said, “I’m coming to that part.” He leaned forward and rubbed his palms against his lap. We had run out of beer already—not unusual when the four of us gathered in those days—but no one volunteered to make a run, which was unusual.

“I walked my machine to a low ridge overlooking the town and scanned the target with my high-rezz ’nocs. It was just like the Badger figured. No one was watching the north. Just to be on the safe side, though, I turned on my pixelflage.”

“Me,” said Angel, “I just boogie right on up.”

I didn’t think there was any imputation of cowardice in what Angel said, but I pointed out that pixelflage could help the suit louie round up more Joeys because the bandits wouldn’t know how close he actually was. “Yeah, I read that story,” Angel said. “ ‘Invisible Avenger.’ Pretty good. ’Cept it’s not like you’re really invisible.”

And there it was again. That curtain. “I know that,” I growled. “I juice it a little for the civilians, is all.”

“All it does is duplicate the landscape on your pixel array, so—”

My right arm twitched and knocked over an empty bottle. “I said, I know that. I went through the training with you. Got higher scores, too. If it hadn’t been for the accident—”

Lyle looked at me. “An’ we know that. Sure, you woulda been good. You woulda been hell on wheels. You woulda been the next Lieutenant Bellcampo, with medals down to your crotch, if you hadn’t spilled on Jimmy’s bike that night. But you did; so you’re not; and it’s over. We love you, man. You know that. We’re the ‘Fantastic Four,’ right? But you can’t change what happened. You just got to go on from where you are.”

Jimmy reached out and touched me on the arm. “It’s over for me, too,” he said, but I jerked my arm away. Blame it on a spasm.

“I still don’t understand that,” I said.

Jimmy and I locked eyes for a moment. “I don’t know if I can explain,” he told me quietly, “if you never been Inside.” I looked away and he touched my arm again. This time, I did not pull back. “No diss, man,” he said. “Just word. I really don’t know if I can make you feel what I felt.” He looked at the others. “Don’t know if I can make them feel it, either.”

“Try us,” said Lyle. “But the beer’s gone; so—”

Jimmy shrugged. “Yeah. We’re just swapping Inside stories, right? No big deal.” He made a fist of his right hand and rubbed it with his left. “OK, so it goes down like this.

“I get as far as the spruce on the north edge of town, just where it gives way to open meadow around the creek. That puts me three jumps from the center of town and one jump from a herd of cows. There’s a cowboy out with them. Don’t know if he was a bandit or one of the regular townsfolk. Never did find out, and it didn’t matter in the end. You lie down with dogs; you wake up with fleas.

“I put the walker on stand-by, so nothing moves. The pixels is all green and brown and black, so I blend into the forest behind me. The cowboy looks my way once or twice, puzzled-like, like he ain’t sure he’s seen something or not. Me, I got my ’nocs locked in on the big building, waiting for Badger to call the dance.

“I didn’t have long to wait before I hear gunshots over my channel to Stoltz. Maybe they were loud enough to carry by air, because my cowboy, he frowns and peers south. Wild Bob’s pickets call in for help and my Artificial Stupid locks in on their freq. Can’t make heads or tails of the traffic, though, because it’s all black…”

“Shoulda kept that kind of encryption illegal,” Lyle said.

“Oh, yeah,” I said. “Illegal. That would have stopped the likes of Wild Bob. Codes don’t make conspiracies; conspirators do. Besides, PGE and other black codes were all over the Net. Might as well’ve made the wind illegal.”

“And besides,” Angel said, “the big corporations didn’t like the idea of the government holding keys to all their codes. And they’re the ones that call the shots.”

Jimmy looked at him. “Yeah? That’s what Wild Bob always said. Big corporations, Wall Street, the Jews. Besides, what do I care what Joey’s saying, coded or not? It wasn’t more’n fifteen seconds after Badger started the music that they come pouring out of that big building. They all have ’sault rifles and bags full of bananas. Two of ’em are lugging a mortar and some shells. I give Badger a heads-up over the aerostat relay and tell him what’s coming his way.

“The cowboy decides either to join the fun or to head for home. He spurs his horse and goes galloping across the meadow. I take that as my cue and go into leaper mode. Anyone hears a noise, they look over and see that cowboy easier than they can see me. That gives me maybe another jump or two before the balloon goes up. Last jump put me right in front of the main building. The bandits usually don’t post guards—they own the town’s soul—but all the shooting has got them nervous. So there’s a Joey standing around the front door with one thumb on his rifle’s safety and the other’n up his ass. When I come down on the street behind him, he jumps like Old Shaq’ in his glory days, and I chop him up before he even hits ground.”

“What’d you use,” Lyle asked. “Finger gun?”

Jimmy ignored him. “I bust through the front door and bounce from office to office, leaving little calling cards in each. The radio was in the third room. Some old bat was on the horn, hollering. When she sees me, she reaches in her desk drawer and pulls a .38.1 don’t have time for that crap, so I give her a spray and then shred the radio set.”

“Think she got the warning out?”

“I know she did. But a suit louie never figures to go unnoticed when he’s Inside. I work my way through the building—and pop a few more Joeys who want to field test their ammo. By the time I bust out the back wall, my little presents start going off and pretty soon the whole building’s in flames. So you see, what did I care about the radio? I was the one sending the message. If she hadn’t gone for the gun, she could’ve run with the others.”

“Generous,” said Lyle.

“Those were the Rules of Engagement, Style. Remember, the area was officially ‘pacified.’ I could shoot whoever came at me armed; but anyone else, I had to tranq, smoke, strobe, or leave alone.”

“And decide which is which on a moment’s notice,” Angel commented bitterly. “All Joey has to do is not go for his gun and he’s a peaceable citizen.”

“So I guess I lucked out, because I don’t think there were more’n two dozen folks there who weren’t potting at me. Some heavy rounds. Armor piercing. One cholo had ramjet rounds. You know, with the discarding sabot and the jet core through its middle? They hit with a couple of Mach. My walker took some damage; and the blowback…”

“Oh, yeah,” said Lyle, rubbing his arm. “The blowback.”

“I had bruises for a week where the walker got knocked around. I mean, I know you gotta have feedback through your suit pads, otherwise you got no ‘touch,’ but I wish the dampers would react faster than the blowback from impacts.”

“Better’n being hit by a round direct,” I said.

Angel went, “Word up. Sprained my wrist one time when a mortar shell wrenched the manipulator arm on my floater.”

“It’s like having a spasm.” Lyle looked at me. “You remember what it was like during live round training. Must be a lot like what you got now, right?”

I went “right” and didn’t try to fine-tune his opinion. He wouldn’t have believed me anyway. People have a need to reduce things to what they think they understand.

“I whipped that town’s butt good,” Jimmy went on. “Pretty soon, though, Wild Bob figures out that the possemen were just a decoy so’s I could yee-haw, and the ‘away team’ come streaming back from the south pass on their ATVs and dirt bikes. Well, I’d already gotten the range for a couple of landmarks along the county road, and my submunitions were already in place. I watch my heads-up until the column reaches the right point, then I trigger my subs and let loose. Ducks in a barrel. I couldn’t have done better if they’d all held still and said ‘cheese.’ ”

Angel pumped his fist and went yee-haw.

“Pretty,” said Lyle. Jimmy shook his head.

“It’s never pretty. I went in to break them; so of course that’s what I did. But it was a dirty business and I hate those sumbitches for making me do it. Wild Bob himself, he was still functional. He’d been bringing up the rear, in case Badger tried following him to town, and he hadn’t taken a hit. My sensors spotted his bald dome flashing in the afternoon sun and I high-leaped right over to him. I bet that was one day in his life when he wished he had all his hair back. He sees me land and his face twists into a sneer. He’s got a grenade launcher in his hands and the devil in his eyes.

“Now, he knows the Rules of Engagement like he wrote ’em his own self. And who knows? They way they tie us in knots, maybe he did have a hand in the drafting. So he knows if he drops the grenade launcher, I got to switch to non-lethal.”

Angel shrugged. “Me, I got slow reflexes.”

“Yeah, well, it didn’t matter, ‘cause he didn’t drop nothing except another grenade in the chamber. I opened a channel and give him his chance, saying, ‘Bob, I come to take you in.’ But he just curls his lip and goes how I ain’t come anywhere and lobs a grenade at my optics.”

“Hell,” said Lyle, “that ain’t nothing to swat away. Artificial Stupid can handle it on automatic.”

“Sure, but the arm swing puts you off balance for a second because it’s automatic; and that’s the second when Wild Bob melts into the rocks. That forces me to run the instant replay so I can see where he went and follow him.

“We played peek-a-boo all across those rocks. He’d pop up and try another round, always going for the optics or the ee-em arrays. Oh, he knew power suits and where the weak points were. Then he’d scurry off to some new position.” Jimmy shook his head and he looked at the wall, except he wasn’t seeing the wall. “I’ll give old Bob this much. He had sand. Not many folks’d buck a suit louie that way. Deep down, he believed in his cause. Had to, to do the things he did. He knew all along this day would come and he sort of looked forward to it, if you know what I mean. Maybe he even welcomed it. I thought about saving the county the expense of a trial—I had some HE in reserve and could have made some mighty fine rubble out of those rocks; but, strictly speaking, this was a police action, not military, and Badger hankered for a trial. He wanted the public to know how Bob wasn’t some damned Robin Hood, but a murdering, thieving traitor. Last thing he wanted was a martyr and a folk-song.

“So Bob and me, we play cat and banjo for maybe fifteen, twenty minutes; and the more Bob backs away from me, the closer he gets to Badger and his posse. I thought maybe he didn’t realize that because a firefight concentrates your attention, you know what I mean? But he knew exactly what he was doing. I call on him once more to surrender, and he goes, ‘not to the likes of you.’ And then, I swear, he hollered for Badger.

“ ‘What do you want, Bob?’ Badger asks him from behind the next rim; and he says, ‘I want it to be you, not him,’ and Badger goes, ‘You sure you want it that way?’ and Bob said he was sure. ‘If a man gotta go down, it oughta be to another man. And Badger, you may suck the gummint tit; but you are, by God, man enough to come for me your own self.’

“So Badger he tells Bob to step out where he can be seen and hold his hands up. Maybe ten, fifteen seconds go by; then Wild Bob steps out from behind a finger of rock—which surprised me, because I had him pegged a couple meters the other way. He’s still holding that grenade launcher. Badger—I can see him now, skylined on the rimrock twenty meters past Bob—he’s got the high ground and a ‘sault rifle. He says, Bob, throw down the launcher,’ and Bob says, ‘Now, Badger, you know I can’t do that,’ and the sheriff goes, Throw it down now, Bob!’ and Bob doesn’t say anything except he works the pump to chamber another round. Badger goes, ‘I don’t want it to end this way,’ and Bob goes, ‘Only way it could. Tell Ma and Natalie good-bye.’ Then he raises the launcher to his shoulder and Badger sprays him with a cloud of flechettes, which rip him up something bad, so I think he was dead before he knew it.”

Lyle the Style shook his head and said, “Jesus.” Angel crossed himself. Jimmy ground his fist into his palm, like a mortar and pestle, and didn’t say anything for a long time. Finally, I spoke.

“They were brothers, Wild Bob and the Badger?” Oh, what a story that would make! If I could only find the right words to tell it. Duty versus fanaticism—with love ground to powder in the middle.

“I leaped on over,” Jimmy said, “and grounded next to Badger where he stooped over Wild Bob. Badger looks up at me and says, ‘It was empty.’ ”

“What was?” asked Angel.

“The grenade launcher,” I said. “That’s right, Jimmy, isn’t it? Bob’s weapon was empty.”

Jimmy nodded. “I told Badger I’d carry the body back to town if he wanted. You know those walkers; they can carry a lot in their cradles. A single body wouldn’t be much. But Badger just gives me a look and says if I want so bad to carry the body, I could damn well come up to Spruce Creek and pick it up my own self.”

“Oh, man,” said Angel. “Diss.”

“What did you say to him?” I asked.

Jimmy shook his head. “I didn’t say nothing. I yanked off my virtch hat and threw it to the floor. Lieutenant Serena asked me what I was doing, but I didn’t pay her no mind. I just stared at the walls of the teep room, thinking.”

“Thinking,” said Lyle. That’s always a mistake.”

Jimmy gave him a look, as if he were a stranger. “I left the teep room and checked an ATV from the motor pool. I know I left the walker out there untended—and the colonel chewed me a new asshole over that later on—but I had to go to Spruce Creek. Not just be telepresent. You understand? I had to be there myself.”

“Dumb move,” said Angel. “It’s telepresent fighting waldoes helps keep down body-bag expenses.”

“Our body bags,” I pointed out.

Lyle shrugged. “Those are the only ones that matter to me.”

Jimmy shook his head. “You’re right, Angel. It was a dumb move. By the time I reached Spruce Creek, they were all gone. Badger and his posse. The bandits. Most of the townsfolk. Shit, most of the town was gone. Even the walker. Lieutenant. Serena had teeped it after I went Outside. So I got out of the ATV and retraced the path of the firefight, walking from rock to rim. I had cornered Wild Bob there. He fired his last grenade there. Badger shot him there. The rocks were all splashed red; there were shell casings and sabots all over. I don’t know how long I crouched where Badger had crouched. If any of Wild Bob’s friends had still been around, I would have been easy pickings. Finally, a squall blew up and I hiked back to my vehicle and pulled up the clamshell. I sat there for a while listening to the high country wind. After a while, I drove back down to the firebase.”

“And after that,” I said, “you put in your papers.”

Jimmy nodded.

“For the ATV/horse cavalry.”

Another nod.

Angel said, “I still don’t get why.”

I leaned forward in my chair. My arms on the armrests barely trembled. “It’s because it wasn’t a fair fight.”

Lyle grunted. “It wasn’t supposed to be.”

Jimmy raised his head and looked at me. “It’s not that.”

“Then what?” I asked.

Lyle laughed. “It’s because he wants the respect of that hick sheriff. Or his daughter.”

Jimmy rose from the floor. “I didn’t think you’d understand.” He looked at me. “Though I hoped you would.”

We locked eyes for a moment. Then he turned to go. When he got to the door, I blurted out. “Oh, Jesus. It’s Wild Bob’s respect you want.”

Angel scowled. “That hemorrhoid? What’s bis respect worth?”

Jimmy paused with his hand over the doorplate. “What he believed in was all wrong and twisted,” he said. “But he was willing to die for it. If what we’re fighting for is right, shouldn’t we be willing to risk something besides equipment damage and feedback bruises?”

When he had gone, there was silence in the room. Lyle and Angel and I looked at one another. Finally, Angel said, “He’s nuts. You don’t fight snakes by wriggling in the dirt and trying to bite ’em first. That doesn’t make you brave, just stupid. You stand back and blow ’em away with a sweeper. Only one way to end this fighting. Stomp hard and stomp fast.”

Lyle shook his head and said, “He’ll get over it. It’s just syndrome.”

“Well,” said Angel, “he’ll find out there’s a hell of a difference between teep fighting and fighting in person.”

“Maybe,” I said, “he already found that out.”