Galaxy Blues by Allen Steele Page A

name was Mike Kennedy, and that he worked for Mr. Goldstein. Would I come with him, please?
    XVIII
    A hoverlimo was parked out in front of Government House, only the second ground vehicle I’d seen on Coyote that didn’t have an animal hitched to it. Kennedy opened the rear door for me, and I wasn’t surprised to find Goldstein seated inside.
    â€œMr. Truffaut, good morning.” In hemp jeans and a light cotton sweater, Goldstein was more casually dressed than when I’d seen him the night before. “I trust your arraignment went well.”
    â€œYes, sir, it did.” I climbed into the back of the limo. “No small thanks to you, I assume.”
    â€œThink nothing of it. I try to…” His voice trailed off, and there was no mistaking the look on his face as he caught a good whiff of me. I tried to sit as far from him as possible, but even so he pushed a button that half opened a window on his side of the car. “I endeavor to accommodate my employees,” he finished, his voice little more than a choke, then he leaned toward the glass partition between the passenger and driver seats. “Could you turn on the exhaust fan, please, Mike?”
    Without a word, Kennedy switched on the vents. Cool air wafted through the back of the limo. “Sorry,” I murmured. “Three days without a bath…”
    â€œNo need to apologize. Can’t be helped.” Goldstein tapped on the glass. The limo rose from its skirts and glided away from Government House. “I’m afraid I’m still a little overcivilized. There are still settlements where people take baths only two or three times a week…that’s a Coyote week, nine days…and then in outdoor tubs just large enough to sit in.” He paused, then added, “I’ve had to do it myself, from time to time.”
    â€œOf course.” He’d made it sound as if going without a bath for more than a day or two was an act of barbarism. For him, perhaps it was. “At any rate, thank you. I appreciate your acting on my behalf.”
    â€œThink nothing of it,” he replied, waving it off. “You’re working for me now…and you wouldn’t do me any good if your residence were the stockade, now would you?” He smiled. “Soon enough, I’ll have you at an inn here in town. Nice place…hot running water, two meals a day…and there are clothes in your room that Mike has bought for you. You didn’t have a chance to give me your sizes, so we had to guess a bit, but…”
    â€œI’m sure they’ll be fine. Thank you, sir.” I was gazing out the window beside me. This part of Liberty had apparently been built more recently than the neighborhood around the stockade and Government House. I caught a brief glimpse of shops, open-air markets, tidy parks surrounded by redbrick bungalows. Very few vehicles, although I spotted a teenager seated on a hoverbike, chatting with a couple of young ladies. More often than not, though, I saw hitching posts to which both horses and shags had been tied up.
    â€œLook over here,” Goldstein said, and I craned my neck to gaze past him. A collection of adobe and wood-frame buildings arranged around a quadrangle. “The Colonial University. Established a few years after the Revolution by some of the original colonists. It’s grown lately, thanks to endowments from Janus.”
    â€œI’m sure they appreciate it.” My new boss never seemed to let a chance to brag about his munificence slip by. Not that I could blame him; if I owned what was probably the only hoverlimo on a world where most people rode horses, I’d probably do the same. I was about to ask whether any schools had been named after him when something in a field across the road from the campus caught my eye.
    The moment I saw it, I knew exactly what it was.
    â€œStop the car!” I snapped. Kennedy hit the brakes, and before Goldstein