Quantico by Greg Bear

‘Show-offs and clowns always bring trouble.’
    ‘I apologize. I sure could use some good old-fashioned preaching, whatever you can offer, sir,’ Griff said, hoping for the right amount of awkwardness, out-of-stepness. Chambers was the brightest and most experienced of a sorry lot. He had instincts born of fifty hard, ambitious years. Margaret Thatcher’s loo. Griff could hardly believe it. Right here in Snohomish County.
    ‘You been in prison until recently?’ Chambers asked.
    ‘Yes, sir, Monroe. I did not want to let on right away.’
    ‘Did they tell you about Tyee at Monroe?’
    ‘Yes, sir.’
    ‘Who told you?’
    ‘We’ll need to get better acquainted, sir, before I reveal that.’
    ‘Well, come closer, let me get a look at you.’
    Griff took a few steps forward.
    ‘My God, boy, you have arms like pig thighs. Pumping iron?’
    ‘Yes, sir. Weights kept me sane.’
    ‘Some almighty tats. Come on up here. Where you from before Monroe?’
    ‘Boise.’
    ‘Why don’t you tell me some names.’
    ‘Jeff Downey, he used to be a friend. Haven’t seen him in ten years. Don’t know if he’s still alive.’
    ‘He isn’t,’ Chambers said, and sniffed. ‘Which is convenient.’
    ‘Mark Lindgren. His wife, Suzelle.’ Again he was working from Jacob Levine’s script.
    ‘You talk with Lindgren recently?’
    ‘Nosir, but he knows me.’
    ‘Mind if I do some checking up on you?’
    ‘Nosir. But right now I’m very thirsty.’
    ‘For word or deed?’
    ‘Beg pardon?’
    ‘Will my words quench your thirst, or are you here for deeds? Because I’m not much in the way of deeds these days. Kind of staying quiet out here, like those volcanoes you can see from the road.’
    Griff nodded. ‘I understand, sir. Just wanted to make your acquaintance and get some preaching. Find a church where I can feel comfortable.’
    ‘Well, that’s all right. What’s your experience with weapons?’
    ‘Knives kept me alive once or twice. Know guns pretty well. Used to collect shotguns. The wife sold my whole gun rack on e-Bay. Ex-wife.’ He jammed a load of masculineresentment into that. ‘Nigh on fifty thousand dollars’ worth, some my granddaddy had back in North Carolina. Frenchmade, German, beautiful things. She just…sold them.’ He waved his hands helplessly, and tightened his throat muscles to make sure his face was red.
    Chambers said, ‘We all lose earthly things. Time comes when we make others lose earthly things, that’s the balance.’ Chambers liked this display of anger, the red face. ‘I’ve got sun tea out there on the porch and ice in the kitchen. Want a glass?’
    ‘Nothing harder?’ Griff asked, twitching his right eye into a wink.
    ‘I do not allow alcohol. I do excuse that request, coming as it does from a Monroe man. Still, you could have been worse off. You could have done your time in Walla Walla.’
    Griff grinned and shook out his hands. ‘Yessir.’
    They sat on the steps of the porch and drank tall glasses of sun tea sweetened with honey. Chambers was surprisingly limber and got down on the front step with barely a wince. His legs were long and skinny within the faded dungarees. His bony ankles stuck up from oversize and well-worn brown leather Oxfords. The sun was high over the farm and the dusty trees cast real shadows. It was the sort of bright day rarely seen up in these foothills at any time of the year and there had been many more of them recently—a long dry spell. They chatted for a few minutes about global warming and what it might mean.
    ‘Fuck, we’ll all get suntans,’ Griff said. ‘Then we’ll be closer to the Mud People. Might even marry one of them.’
    Chambers chortled deep in his beard. ‘I do wish you would clean up that prison language. I have kids here. They’re off celebrating Easter. Good Friday.’
    ‘That’s not till next week,’ Griff said.
    ‘We worship to God’s calendar,’ Chambers said. ‘All theworld’s calendar brings is grief and