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It would look good on her delicate skin, the red and green echoing her hair
and eyes. I hoped it wouldn't be too exotic for her to wear.
On the train ride back, I showed it to a woman who sat next to me. She said it
was pretty, but in her opinion was too dark for a black woman's skin. I told
her I'd have to think about that.
I left it on Amelia's dresser, along with a note reminding her it was two
years, and went on to Portobello.
JULIAN WAS BORN IN a university town, and grew up surrounded by white people
who weren't overtly racist. There were race riots in places like Detroit and
Miami, but people treated them as urban problems, far removed from their
comfortable reality. That was close to the truth.
But the Ngumi War was changing white America's feelings about race or, cynics
maintained, allowing them to express their true feelings. Only about half the
enemy were black, but most of the leaders who appeared on the news were from
that half. And they were shown crying out for white blood.
The irony wasn't lost on Julian, that he was an active part of a process that
was turning American whites against blacks. But that kind of white person was
alien to his personal world, his daily life; the woman on the train literally
came from a foreign land. The people in his university life were mostly white
but color-blind, and the people he jacked with might have started out
otherwise, but didn't stay racist: you couldn't think black people were
inferior if you lived inside black skin, ten days every month.
OUR FIRST ASSIGNMENT HAD a lot of potential to turn ugly. We had to "remand
for questioning" kidnap a woman who was suspected of being a rebel leader.
She was also the mayor of San Ignacio, a small town high in the cloud forest.
The town was so small that any two of us could have destroyed it in minutes.
We circled it in a silent flyboy, studying the infrared signature and
comparing that to maps and low-orbit pictures. The town was lightly defended,
apparently; ambushes set on the main road where it entered and left the town.
Of course there could be automated defenses that didn't betray themselves with
body heat. But it wasn't that rich a town.
"Let's try to do this quietly," I said. "Drop into the coffee plantation about
here." I pointed mentally to a spot almost two kilometers downhill from the
town. "Candi and I'll work up through the plantation to the rear of Senora
Madero's house. See whether we can make the snatch without raising any fuss."
"Julian, you ought to take at least two more," Claude said. "The place is
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gonna be wired and 'trapped."
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20by%20Joe%20Haldeman.txt (52 of 261)15-8-2005 0:05:12
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0Peace%20by%20Joe%20Haldeman.txt
I gave him a nonverbal rebuttal: You know I considered that. "Just you be
ready to charge up if something happens. We start making noise, I want all ten
of you to run up the hill in a tight formation and circle Candi and me. We'll
keep Madero protected. Lay down smoke and we head straight down the valley
here and then up this little rise for a cargo snatch." I felt the flyboy relay
that information laterally and, in a second, confirm that we could have a
warm-body snatch in place.
"Now," I said, and all twelve of us were falling fast through the cold night
air. We spaced ourselves fifty meters apart and after a minute the black
chutes whispered out and we drifted invisibly down into the acres of low
coffee trees bushes, actually; a person of even normal height would have a
hard time hiding out there. It was a calculated risk. If we'd landed closer to
town, in the actual forest, we would have made a lot of noise.
It was easy to aim between the neat rows. I sank up to my knees in the soft
wet soil. The chutes detached and folded and rolled themselves into tight
cylinders that quietly fused into solid bricks. They'd probably wind up as
part of a wall or fence.
Everybody moved silently to the tree line and took cover, while Candi and I
worked uphill, weaving quietly between trees, avoiding brush.
"Dog," she said, and we froze. From where I was, slightly behind her, I
couldn't see it, but through her sensors smelled the fur and breath and then
saw the IR blob. It woke up and I heard the beginning of a growl that ended
with the "thap" of a tranquilizer dart. It was a human dose; I hoped it
wouldn't kill the dog.
Just past the dog was the neatly trimmed lawn behind Madero's house. There was
a light on in the kitchen worse luck. The house had been dark when we jumped.
Candi and I could just hear two voices through the closed window. The
conversation was too fast and too heavily accented for either of us to follow,
but the tone was clear Senora Madero and some man were anxious, whispering
urgently.
Expecting company, Candi thought.
Now, I thought. In four steps, Candi was at the window and I was at the back
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