Pennsylvania Omnibus (15 page)

He had never asked for either the
office or the power. Both had been thrust on him against his will, and he was
not ignorant of the fact that in everything he did, he was watched—studied—on
every side. And now, everyone was looking to see how he handled this business
with his brother. They expected a miracle. Or they expected him to sacrifice
his brother for the greater good—something horrific to imagine, but glorious
and selfless just the same. Or they expected him to magically save his brother
while using the opportunity to deal a crushing blow to the enemy. They all just
expected these things, although no one offered him any comfort or solace—or
advice as to how such miracles might come to pass.

He was an old man now, and tired.
He’d tried to resign several times, but the council would never accept his
resignation again while the war with Transport raged. Abdication? He’d tried
that too, only to watch as the resistance faltered, headless and unable to
maintain and extend the victories he’d given them over the many decades of
battle. His retirement had lasted all of a month before he’d been re-drafted by
universal mandate and forced back into power.

An ensign, a recruit, young and
without any of the physical or mental scars of war, walked up to the SOMA and
snapped to attention. “A moment, sir?”

“Go ahead.”

“A report on Jedediah Troyer,
sir.”

“I said go ahead.”

A slight nod. “According to
intercepted signals coming from Transport, he is on the verge of being captured
at any moment.”

The SOMA flinched.
“Captured?”

“The TRACE team has been
unsuccessful in getting him to the Amish Zone, and they’ve been engaged by a
superior force in the No Man’s Land west of the City.”

“Do we have any larger units nearby
that can engage?”

Now it was the young soldier’s turn
to grimace. “Yes… sir, we have.”

The SOMA stared at the young
recruit. “And why haven’t they been activated?”

“Based on the situation on the
ground, they wouldn’t be able to guarantee the safety of your brother,
sir.”

Jedediah Troyer screwed up his face
in disgust. His sense of decency rebelled against the foulness of this man
who’d captured him, this salvager who had dragged him from the wreckage of the
airbus. The savage was chewing on some greenish vegetative concoction, and
slobber ran down his beard and clumped in slobbery globules near the bottom of
his lip.

“What the—”

The salvager cut Jed off before he
could get the question out. “Being shut yourself, boy.”

More thick, mucusy goo dripped from
the man’s beard as he earnestly chewed the wad of greenery.

Jed inhaled carefully, hissing,
hoping not to catch a whiff of anything floating his way from the wild
Englischer. “I just have to know what you’re chewing and why.”

“Shutting yourself.”

“That’s just not right,” Jed said,
“and you’re making me sick having to watch you.”

“Don’t watching me then.”

Jed tried to look away, but he
couldn’t for long. “Seriously, what are you chewing?”

The salvager glanced at Jed and
exhaled in frustration. A large quantity of greenish viscous material flew out
in various directions with his breath.

“Tobac.”

Jed furrowed his brow.
“Tobacco?”

“Yes. Tobac.”

Again, Jed tried to look away, but
it was like trying to not watch when his father had to pull a calf from a
heifer giving birth for the first time. “Sir, you’re doing it all wrong,” Jed
said.

“Shutting yourself. Being chew the
tobac, and you shutting. That is all.”

“Listen, you. Whatever your name
is…”

“Goa Eeguls.”

Jed hesitated. He stared at the
salvager, expecting the man to explain, or at least repeat himself. The chewing
had stopped for a moment. “Your… your name is Boll Weevils?”

“No. Not being boll weevils,
stinking cronad. Name being Goa Eeguls. GOA. EEGULS.” He paused for effect.
“Goa. Eeguls.” Pause. “Goa. Eeguls. Being understood?”

Jed narrowed his eyes and tried it.
“Goa Eeguls.”

The salvager nodded his head and
pointed at himself. “Goa Eeguls.”

“Is this name from your own
language?” Jed asked. “Because you almost speak English, albeit poorly. Is
Goa Eeguls
a family name or something?”

The salvager shook his head and
reached into his rough tunic—a filthy, handmade overcoat consisting of animal
skins from indeterminate creatures mended here and there by reclaimed patchwork
cloth. Withdrawing his hand, he produced an ancient green hand towel, and on it
Jed could see a picture and some faded words. The picture he recognized. He’d
seen it before, on the shirts and coats of some of the English tourists who
would stop in front of the farm in airbuses and buy the Troyers’ baskets,
vegetables, and furniture. The image on the towel was of something called a
“football helmet.”

Football, like all major sports, was
a game played at one time by the English in large stadiums all across the land.
That was before the wars came and changed the world. After the wars, private
travel was banned and large gatherings of people became magnets for terrorist
bombs. Eventually—according to what Jed had learned from the elders and by
rumor—the sporting events became available only via television, with the games
and players manufactured artificially by computers. According to the English,
the winners were supposedly determined secretly and fairly by private
accounting firms using complicated data modeling. According to the elders, the
whole thing was a sham, with the games being created and distributed by big
entertainment corporations in order to keep the sheep occupied while they were
being sheared. Bread and circuses.

Jed had seen a football once when he
and his father took an airbus to Cruville to bid on some farmland. English
children had been throwing the oblong ball back and forth in the park. One of
the children would catch the ball and take off running, and all the other
children would chase him and wrestle him to the ground and pounce up and down
on him like wild beasts. To Jed, as a boy, it all looked like great
fun.

The helmet on the towel was printed
in white on faded green, and the cloth was marked with stains and a few rips
here and there, but Jed could still see the stylized wings wrapping from the
front of the helmet toward the rear. Under the helmet were the words
GO
EAGLES!
Apparently the towel was a relic of some football
competition.

“So you took the name ‘Go Eagles’
because it was written on that towel?”

The salvager nodded his head. “Name
being Goa Eeguls. Being my name.”

“Can I just call you
Eagle?”

The salvager gave Jed a look of
irritation, and spat a huge amount of greenish goo in a disgusting pile between
himself and Jed. “Yes. Being Eeguls.” The salvager emphasized the “s” at the
end of the name. “Eegul
sss
. Now shutting yourself.”

Jed pointed at Eagles’s face. “You
shouldn’t chew that tobacco while it’s green, Eagles. It’s loaded with bad
poisons that are only eliminated by aging and curing.”

Eagles stood up and glared at Jed
for a moment, then stomped off a couple of paces. “Boy need shutting himself!”
Eagles spat and then, after a few seconds of preparation, began urinating on a
bush.

Jed looked away and shook his head.
His nerves were still on edge and his hands still shook when he rubbed his
face. He’d been clean-shaven when he left the Amish Zone back home. They told
him his hair wouldn’t grow while he was in suspended animation, but apparently
it had started again. Now, for the first time since he’d left on the trip, he
noticed that he had the beginnings of a beard. He stretched his fingers out in
front of his face and tried to will his hand to stop shaking. Only twenty
minutes had passed since his airbus had been shot out of the sky—with him in
it. He’d barely escaped death, and now here he was with this wild man named
Eagles who chewed toxic green tobacco and hated to talk.

Where are Pook and his team? Is Dawn
out looking for me?

In his post-crash confusion he’d
momentarily forgotten that the team would be searching for him and that his job
was to delay so that the TRACE unit could locate and rescue him. He reached
down and unlaced his boot, and started to pull it off. Any minute now Eagles
would want to move on. Removing his shoes was the only thing Jed could think to
do as a means of delaying.

Eagles turned around and held up his
hand before pointing at Jed. “No! Doing not that!” The salvager grimaced.
“Shoes on, boy!”

“I have a stone in there I need to
remove.”

“Shoes on, boy! Going.”

Jed ignored Eagles and finished
unlacing his boot. He pulled it off and slowly shook it, looked down into it,
and then reached deep into the toe area as if searching for the non-existent
pebble. After a few seconds, he began feeling on the ground, as if the pebble
had come out and now he was trying to find it.

Eagles spat and chewed and then spat
again, his jaw working furiously. “Hurry, boy.”

Jed straightened his sock and then,
as slowly as he could manage without enraging the salvager even more, he began
putting his boot back on. He tried not to look up at the wild man for a full
minute, but when he did, he saw that Eagles was lifting his rifle very slowly,
and crouching down at the same time. The rifle came up and Jed could see all
the way down the barrel. Thinking that Eagles was about to shoot him, he dove
to the ground and put his hands over his head.

Eagles whispered. “Stopping that,
boy. Friends being near. Making the noise too muches.”

“Your friends?” Jed asked.

“Shhh… No. Being not mine. Being
yours. Stupid cronads.” Eagles looked down at Jed and spat. The green saliva
landed a foot from Jed’s head. “Getting up, boy!”

Crawling to his knees, Jed felt the
rifle barrel pressed against his temple.

Eagles shouted, and the sudden,
scary holler drove Jed back to the ground.

“Getting out the open, Pook! Eeguls
knowing you being out there!”

Jed turned his head, but couldn’t
see anything. He couldn’t hear anything moving at all.

“Getting out the open, Pook! Or
Eeguls shooting boy!”

Jed heard a snapping of twigs and a
shuffling of feet before Pook—and about ten others, including Ducky, Jerry,
Jeff, and Dawn—appeared from out of the heavy brush.

“Don’t shoot him, you old nasty
bastard,” Pook said.

Ducky made a hand signal and the
rest of Pook’s team lowered their weapons.

“Give him to us, Eagles. You know
who he is, and you know where he needs to go.”

Eagles shook his head and spat.
“Nope. Boy will bringing Eeguls many much moneys.”

Pook reached into his pocket and
pulled out a pack of cigarettes. He offered one to Eagles, who declined and
pointed to the wad of green nastiness in his mouth. Pook screwed up his face
and then popped one out of the pack for himself, lit it with the okcillium
lighter, and smiled at Eagles. “We don’t have time for this, old
man.”

“Boy being with me. Making Eeguls
much rich.”

Pook looked down at Jed, who began
climbing back to his feet. “Didn’t you offer him the gold like we
said?”

“I did. He turned it down. Said my
brother would pay more for me.” Jed knelt down and finished lacing up his boot.
“What did he mean by that, Pook?”

“He meant exactly what he said. Your
brother would pay way more than one gold coin to get you back.”

“My brother is either on his way
here, in suspension, or he never left Old Pennsylvania. And he’s four years
younger than me.”

“You’re wrong, Jed. Way wrong. And
on every count. But that’s to be expected, since you don’t have a clue what’s
going on.”