Acres of wheat rolled out on the gently sloping land like a golden bobbing ocean, but Mel’s eyes were unfocused as she stared out the train window. A history of the first farm pioneers was propped on her jean clad left leg, spine up, for the moment unread. She had her arms crossed tightly against her with her hands tucked inside the sleeves of her brown sweater making her look like a human knot.
Someone had called the paramedics and Mad Dog had been swiftly taken to the hospital. Since their editor had no close relatives except a sister who was currently out of the country on a scientific expedition to track some great apes and they had no way of contacting any of his biker cronies, Mel and Stuart had ended up in the ER waiting room as proxy relatives. Mel had taken to drinking the sludgy hospital coffee and pacing back and forth. Stuart had made himself an annoyance by inquiring about Mad Dog’s condition every ten minutes or so.
The doctors had managed to stabilize the editor’s seizures, but that was about it. While Mel and Stuart were on the west-bound train to Gavot, Mad Dog remained in an isolated room at the hospital, in a coma. Mel’s mouth slightly twisted as she remembered the first time she and Stuart were finally allowed to go in and see him. Ralph “Mad Dog” Bartlett could act like a bastard at times, but he was a good bastard. He didn’t deserve to be struck down by this strange medical malady that had all the doctors scratching their heads.
The gray beads had been gathered up by an employee of The Black Bean. At the moment, they were in a sealed plastic bag in Mel’s tote which was stuffed in an overhead bin.
“Hey, this might look cool.”
Mel shook off her recent memories and looked over at Stuart who was sitting next to her. He was wearing one of his nerd t-shirts again, this time with the logo “Light Squared” and a tiny blue cartoon robot, and an unzipped black leather jacket. He was flipping through one of the magazines he had bought at the newsstand in the New Halis train station. The New Halis Times. The Cordon Quarterly. The CompTech Mag. Movie Digest. And The Quizzler, a lurid tabloid. Cautiously, she looked over at the page he was indicating. It was a movie review of the latest docu-drama by a famous director.
“I didn’t know you went for that genre,” she said.
He shrugged. “I like the spaceships and explosions like the next guy, but that doesn’t mean that’s the only thing I watch.”
“Huh.”
“Wanna go?”
She looked up from the review she had been skimming. He had never asked her out to a movie before. They were just lunch buddies. A reporter and a photographer who happened to work well together for Hot Tread—at least so far. She hadn’t yet tried to actually strangle him like her previous partner, ditzy Glenda.
Stuart cleared his throat. “Uh, when we get back from Gavot. I doubt the town is big enough for a movie theater. But I totally understand if you can’t make it.”
She sat back and took up her history book. “It sounds interesting from the review. Sure, why not?” A faint, wry smile flickered across her mouth before she turned to the train window. “It definitely looks like we’re out in the middle of nowhere now.”
“So found anything interesting in that?” he said, inclining his head toward the history book.
“I have to admit, I’ve been bad. I’ve only looked up Gavot in the index and read the referred pages.”
“That’s not bad. I haven’t been doing any research at all, just reading movie reviews.”
Mel tugged the magazine out of his lap revealing a large tome opened to a chapter entitled, The Political Founders of Gavot and Callas. “So what’s this?”
“Er, some light reading?”
“Really.” She held up her own book which was a third its size. “And what do you call this?”
“Being sensible?”
If he had been Glenda, she would have already given into her impulse to bean him with the book. But he was grinning and she felt her temper, which to her consternation had the bad habit of flaring up due to anything, ebbing away. “Okay, so I’m being sensible. But you’re not fooling me.”
“But I haven’t even started.”
“That’s page 372.”
“It’s just opened to that page.”
She raised an eyebrow and then said, “I hate it when you do that.”
“Well, you look better annoyed than, whatever you were before. You know and I know that Mad Dog won’t get any better if we end up moping around.”
Mel sighed. “Right.” She opened her book but didn’t read it. “I’m just not the person who has the patience to molder around in books. I just hate the thought that he’s being fed through tubes. I’m itching to do something, Stuart.”
“We’re doing something right now. We’re going somewhere.”
“That’s obvious. But what does a tiny farming town out in the middle of nowhere have anything to do with it? I’m tired of reading about histories. What do any of those old facts have to do with anything happening now? Those natives who got foisted off the land by the farming founders? The politicians from centuries ago who were more concerned with issues concerning survival and religion? What do they have anything to do?”
“There are the beads.”
Mel stopped short. “Ugly things, aren’t they?”
“Hm.”
“Mad Dog wasn’t wearing them before the vacation. I wonder where he got it.”
“Probably some touristy shop that sells junk,” Stuart replied. He flipped a page from the book in his lap. He made a whistling sound through his teeth. “Well, look what’s here. A little chart of the people who’ve been mayor of Gavot that goes back three hundred years.”
“Oh yeah, and that’s going to help.” Mel turned back to her own book and for a little while, both of them just read.
