Dominion

TWENTY-SEVEN

Lucia drove them north, into the Rocky Mountains and Wyoming, following a course of high, twisting roads through one of the least populated regions in America. They’d siphoned the gas from the Goblin Valley truck before leaving, and now the Bronto could travel for several hours before stopping again. Ruppert sat on the passenger side, still aching from his fight in the desert.

Nando sat in the back seat of the Bronto, alternating between long periods of silence and long barrages of questions.

“If you’re really my mom, how come it took you so long to come get me?” he asked at one point.

“I tried, Nando. The officials keep your location secret. They don’t want your parents to find you.”

“I don’t believe that. Who was my father, then?”

“I have not seen him in a long time, Nando. He was taken to prison.”

“For why?”

“For helping the wrong war victims. Practicing medicine.”

Nando frowned. “The Commandant told me my father was in Special Forces, and he commanded a regiment of the Nigerian army against the Islamofascists. He died defending America.”

“He commanded a…small regiment of volunteers. Like me. He was a very, very good man. You would have loved him, and he would have loved you."

Nando took that in for a moment, then pointed at Ruppert. "If he’s not my father, and he’s not your commander, who is he?”

“My name is Daniel,” Ruppert said. “I’m just helping your mother.”

“Why?”

“Because she’s helped me, and now it’s my turn.”

“Oh.” Nando sat back and stared out the window again. Then he asked, “Where is your base?”

“We don’t have a base, Nando,” Lucia said. “We aren’t part of an army.”

“So you’re irregulars.”

“We aren’t soldiers,” Lucia said.

“Intelligence?”

“No.”

“You aren’t civilians, I saw everything you did back there. You’re terrorists, aren’t you?”

“We’re just people, Nando,” she told him. “Just trying to survive.”

“You bombed our base,” Nando said. “You took me prisoner. Who was that on the P.A.?”

“That was me,” Ruppert said.

“You don’t speak Arabic too good.”

“I don’t speak it at all,” Ruppert said. “Just what you hear on the news.”

Nando recited a long, fluid Arabic verse, then smiled and translated, “‘In the name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful. Praise be to Allah, the Cherisher and Sustainer of the worlds.’ That’s the opener for the Koran.”

“They teach you about Islam?” Lucia asked.

“It’s just for controlling foreigners,” Nando said. “In church we study the New Dominion Bible.”

“That’s what we used at my church, too,” Ruppert said.

After a long pause, Nando asked, “Am I going to Hell for going AWOL?”

“No, Fernando,” Lucia said. “You’re going to be fine.”

Lucia shifted gears to climb a steep, narrow dirt road. They were far from any highway, once again relying on the maps stored in Archer’s dashboard computer. Ruppert hoped there weren’t any surprise washouts ahead, or fallen rocks blocking their path.

The driving was rough, steep, and much slower than they would have liked, but the Rockies provided far more cover than the flat, open lands to the east or west. Lucia said that mountains were the best setting for guerrilla war, the kind of terrain that yielded least to control by central governments, which were more interested in ruling cities and masses of people than rocks and goats.

Nando launched into an enthusiastic monologue on the subject, describing in detail tactics employed by mujahideen against Soviet and American soldiers in the Hindu Kush mountains of Afghanistan. He seemed to be adjusting to the sudden events fairly well, enjoying the sight of moonlit mountain pinnacles outlined against the stars.

They drove through the night, northward along the roughest mountain roads, Ruppert fading in and out of consciousness. They shared a jug of juice, a bag of nuts and dried berries, a few squares of chocolate. Eventually Nando fell asleep as well.

Ruppert woke to Lucia shaking his arm. He blinked as his eyes adjusted to the soft early morning light.

She’d parked by the side of an overgrown dirt track winding through a valley encircled by sheer, dark bluffs. Within the bluffs, blooming meadows and veins of rock sloped down to a clear alpine lake, reflecting the gold and red of the sunrise over the snowy peaks to the east. A white mist emanated from the lake itself, obscuring the far side of the valley.

“What is it?” Ruppert asked.

“Look at this place,” Lucia said. “Have you ever been anywhere like this?”

Ruppert thought of his closest experience, looking at an uninhabited island over a railing as he and Madeline rode the Pirate’s Booty tour boat through the Virgin Islands. The ride had been narrated by Captain Steve, who wore a plastic hook hand, an eyepatch, and an automatronic parrot who squawked one-liners. He shook his head.

“Nando,” Lucia said. “Nando, wake up. We’re stopping for a while.”

The boy stirred, rubbed at his eyes, then gasped at he took in the landscape.

“Can I go outside?” he asked.

They poured out of the truck into the meadow, fragrant and richly colored with late summer blooms. Ruppert stood and stretched, breathing in the pristine air.

“Where are we?” he asked Lucia.

“Wyoming,” she said. “There is nothing out here, no towns. We are as safe as we could be.”

Nando saluted his mother. “Permission to scout the area, sir?”

“Stay where I can see you,” Lucia said. “And you say ma’am when you talk to a woman, not sir.”

“Yes, sir. Ma’am.” Nando clomped through the high grasses and flowers, still dressed in gray pajamas, wearing Ruppert’s extra pair of shoes.

“Do you think that’s safe?” Ruppert passed a hand through the tall grass beside him, nearly as high as his waist.

“He seems disciplined enough.”

Ruppert couldn’t argue with that. They ambled downward along the meadow, toward the glowing lake painted the colors of sunrise. Nando ran far ahead of them, zigging and zagging through the meadow, head low as if avoiding imaginary gunfire.

“Do you think he’ll ever be normal?” she asked.

“I think he’s very prepared for the world he’ll have to live in,” Ruppert said.

They reached the pebbled shore of the lake. The water lay clear and still before them, and Ruppert could see all the way to the stony, sandy bottom. He looked off to their right, where Nando had taken an interest in one of the crooked veins of stone that ran down from the cliffs and divided the meadow into sections. The boy inspected the rocks closely, probably looking for a place to climb.

“How cold do you bet the water is?” Lucia asked.

“Freezing,” Ruppert told her. “Don’t even think about it.”

She kicked off her shoe, dipped a toe in the edge of the lake. “It’s not so bad. I haven’t had a real bath since California. Neither have you.” She pinched her nose, keeping her face solemn.

“This isn’t a real bath, either. Besides, Nando-”

“We can watch him from here.” The boy was walking up along a flat vein of rock toward the dark bluffs, arms wide as if he were navigating a tightrope, though the ridge was wide and low. The gorgeous colors of the morning sky glowed around him.

Lucia peeled off her skirt and tossed it into the grass, then weighed it down with rocks against the cool morning breeze. She waded out into the lake wearing the black panties and the short top she'd purchased to seduce the staff sergeant. She turned back to face Ruppert, smiling and waving, and then dived into the deeper water toward the center of the lake.

Ruppert glanced back towards Nando, who now lay on his back on the stone ridge, looking up at a stream of low, fluffy red and yellow clouds streaming across the sky just above them, nearly close enough to touch.

Ruppert took off his own shoes and jeans, then followed her into the water. It was so cold that it seemed to grab both his legs.

“Better if you just dive in,” Lucia told him. She treaded water several yards from the shore.

“I know that.” Ruppert plunged into the clear depths, dunking his head under the frigid surface to soak his hair. The water was painfully cold, until his skin grew numb.

“That feels so good, doesn’t it?” Lucia said.

“Sure. Ready to get out?”

Lucia swam up to him, her head submerged up to the eyes like an alligator. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and pushed her body up against him.

“Thank you for all of this,” she said. “I could not have rescued him without you.”

She gave him a long kiss. For some reason, he could only think of how easily she’d tricked the man from Goblin Valley.

“You don’t have to do this,” he whispered.

She pushed back from him and lay floating on her back, sunlight glittering on her damp skin, eyes closed. “This is the perfect moment,” she said. “Don’t ruin it.”

Ruppert swam for a couple of minutes, occasionally glancing up the slope to see that Nando was still close. He thought about all the copies of his interview with Hollis Westerly now beginning to circulate out in the world. Lucia and Nando were minor figures to Terror, nonexistent in terms of public perception. Daniel Ruppert, though, had been a recognizable media presence, at least in southern California, before turning guerilla journalist (or “terror propagandist,” as the charge would surely read at his closed-door tribunal). Terror would want his blood, and would never cease hunting him.

If he settled in the same place as Lucia and Nando after they crossed into Canada, he would only become an unnecessary threat to their safety. As if the mountain water had cleared his mind, he now saw that he would have to help the two of them across the border, but then part ways with them forever. Over time, they could build new identities, and the world itself might change for the better, but Ruppert would have powerful enemies hunting him as long as he lived.

He returned to the shore, shivering hard, and replaced his jeans and shoes. He glanced up to check on Nando, and saw the boy hurtling down the meadow towards him, arms wide. Nando opened his mouth and began screaming, his voice redounding off the mountains around them, but Ruppert couldn’t make out his words.

“What is it, Nando?” Ruppert asked. The boy rushed towards him with great, leaping steps down the slope. He jumped up and down, jabbering words too fast for Ruppert to follow, and pointed across the lake.

Ruppert and Lucia, who had just reached the shore, turned back to look across the lake. On the meadow sloping up and away from the far side of the lake, where most of the fog had now burned away, a herd of elk nibbled among the thick grasses. A few of the cows sipped cold water from the shallows on the far side, while their calves nuzzled them for milk.

The massive, dark animals paid no attention to the jumping, yelling boy across the lake.

“What are they?” Nando asked.

“Those are elk,” Ruppert told him. “Mountain animals.”

“They’re so big,” Nando breathed, gazing at them. “I didn’t know animals got that big. What do they eat?”

“Whatever they can find, I guess,” Ruppert said.

“Do they eat people?” Nando’s eyes were very large, looking up at him.

“Nope, just plants. You want to stay back and give them plenty of room, though.”

“Do they care if I watch them?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Can you ride one?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Can you teach them tricks?”

“Couldn’t tell you.”

“I wonder if they have names. Anything that big should have a name.”

“They probably won’t mind if you name them.”

“Really?” Nando seemed captivated by the idea. “I’ll name that one Washington…Lincoln…Roosevelt…Eisenhower…” He walked along the shore, pointing at each of the grazing elk.

Ruppert and Lucia changed into dry clothes, and Lucia spread out the forest-colored tarp near the lake. The three of them ate lunch on the meadow, and Lucia pointed out images in the clouds to Nando. Nando entertained them with a detailed plan of how he could invade, occupy and defend the valley with a force of fifty soldiers.

?

They remained in the valley for the rest of the day, Lucia and Ruppert taking turns between sleeping and keeping watch on Nando. As the sun began to set, they climbed back into the Bronto, and Ruppert drove them northward.

They passed into open, flat country in Montana, under a sprawling blue sky that made Ruppert feel dangerously exposed, as he had in the desert. Terror controlled the skies, and there was a lot of open sky out here. The safehouse that Lucia knew about was out in prairie country, an hour or more east of the comforting shadows of the Rocky Mountains.

They traveled in a relaxed quiet and let the stereo play songs at random from its memory. Archer had stored an unfortunately wide array of old Broadway musical numbers on his truck's hard drive, which Lucia flipped past impatiently.

It was another night of driving, and they arrived before dawn at a cluster of wooden buildings that appeared to be an actual working ranch, with a herd of a thousand or more cattle, lowing to each other in the early light. These animals impressed Nando as much as the elk.

A few men approached on horseback as Ruppert parked alongside a row of trucks. They wore cowboy hats and appeared to be in their late thirties or early forties, with deep lines worn into their faces by years of wind and sun. One of them rode up alongside Ruppert’s window.

“Help you?” he asked. Ruppert turned to Lucia.

“We’re looking for Violet Jakobsen,” Lucia told him.

“She expecting you?”

“No,” Lucia said, “But you can tell her we’re arriving under a flag of distress.”

The man’s eyes narrowed. He instructed the other two to keep watch on the unexpected visitors, then dismounted and walked up into the rambling, uneven main house, which looked as if it had grown one misfit room at a time over the years-some stone, some brick, some wooden. A collection of miniature windmills spun in the front yard.

“Is that an elk?” Nando pointed to a white and brown spotted horse. The man atop it shook his head.

“Appaloosa. Horse.”

“A horse.” Nando spoke the word in awe.

“Must come from someplace awful strange,” the other man said. “Not to know what a horse is.”

“I know what they are!” Nando sounded defensive, which amused Ruppert a little. “Alexander the Great’s horse was Bucephalus, and he conquered Afghanistan, like George Bush the Second. Soldiers used to ride them a long time ago.”

“Not all that long ago,” the man on the Appaloosa said, and his companion smiled.

The rider who had first greeted them returned, accompanied by a tall woman in a straw-colored cowboy hat-Ruppert guess this was the woman called Violet, the owner of the ranch. Her gray hair was gathered into loose, thick braids punctuated with bits of turquoise. She looked over the three strangers in the Bronto, then leaned in at Lucia’s window.

“Kipp tells me you’re travelers in trouble.” She studied Lucia’s face for a second, then looked towards Nando in the back seat. “What’s your name?”

“Private Cadet George Liberty, sir,” the boy replied. “I mean, ma’am.”

“That is surely an interesting name.” She lifted an eyebrow at Lucia. “He is your son.”

“His name is Fernando,” Lucia said.

“Child and Family Services?” Violet asked.

“We only just recovered him.”

“That must be an interesting tale. I’d love to hear how you managed it.”

“I doubt anyone could repeat it. We nearly died.”

“It’s always good to learn.”

Lucia leaned out and whispered into the woman’s ear. Violet nodded, looking to Ruppert and Nando. Ruppert didn’t know if she was explaining their story, or passing information, or using some sort of code to indicate she was a trustworthy resister. Whatever she said, it worked, because the woman hugged her and invited the three of them inside for a “late breakfast.” It was a few minutes past six in the morning.

The kitchen was clearly the biggest room in the house, arranged around an unevenly built stone fireplace at the center of the room. Violet directed them to a big picnic table that could seat twenty people at once, though none of them would be sitting in matching chairs-there were chairs of wood, wicker, bamboo, and a couple of folding aluminum seats. Two adolescent girls, one white and one Guatemalan, hurried to dish them out breakfast from an array of skillets on the brick counters flanking the stove.

Before eating, Nando said a prayer aloud: “Our Almighty King, Commander of the Legions of Heaven, Let us eat grain from the fields of our enemies, that we may grow strong on their hunger, and let our swords find their bellies empty. Amen.” Then he tore into his food, loudly proclaiming it the best he’d ever eaten.

Lucia cast a gloomy look at Ruppert.

They learned what it meant to eat like a ranch hand-the girls brought fried steak, fried eggs, fresh tomatoes, and biscuits yellow with butter. They drank hot coffee and cold milk thick with cream. After days of crackers and nuts and watery juice mix, it was a feast.

Afterward, Violet and the teenage Guatemalan girl, whose name was Ana, led Ruppert, Lucia and Nando behind the house to the long, ramshackle horse stable. They carried their luggage-Ruppert’s suitcase, Lucia’s duffle bag, and Nando empty-handed-up a narrow staircase of wooden slats into the dark loft, which was illuminated by a wide, narrow slit of a window. Violet crossed the length of the building to the rear wall, reached through the clutter of saddles, harnesses and horse blankets that hung upon it, and opened a concealed door that folded back into a dark, hidden room.

The interior of the room stank of old sweat and musty, hot air, though a little light and fresh air trickled in through a constellation of nail-holes in one wall. Fresh straw lined the floor, and on top of that people huddled together on blankets and sleeping bags in the shadows. They stirred as the door opened, but said nothing.

As Ruppert’s eyes adjusted to the gloom, he could see the room’s occupants consisted of two families with small children, plus a few lone individuals scattered along the rear wall.

“We have a few extra guests,” Violet announced to the people in the room, who didn’t exactly applaud the news. She turned to Lucia. “We were just about to wake the children anyhow. We let them work around the farm during the day-it ends up better for everyone.”

“Can I feed the elks and the horses?” Nando asked.

“We don’t have any elk, but we have cows,” Violet said.

Ana collected the three other children in the room, who were already awake and ready to get busy.

“Are you sure that’s safe?” Lucia asked.

“Of course,” Violet said. “Ana will keep an eye on them. We have workers’ kids running all over the farm, and everyone will assume they belong to someone else.”

“That’s not what concerns me.”

“If the police come, they usually want to question me, or my sister, or one of the workers. They don’t care about the kids. And anyway the kids aren’t always good at keeping quiet when you need them to, so everyone’s safer this way. Speaking of that…” Violet pointed to a small light bulb wired to a roof beam. “If that lights up, everyone must lay low and be quiet. It’s for emergencies. Follow me?”

“When do we cross the border?” Ruppert whispered his question, which drew scowls from both Lucia and Violet.

“You’ll cross when it’s time, with everyone else,” Violet said. “And I will thank you not to ask more of those kinds of questions. There’s a washroom downstairs if you need it, but otherwise please stay up here unless somebody comes for you. Are you going to be all right? I have a lot of work this morning.”

“We’re fine,” Lucia said. “Thank you so much.”

“My pleasure.” Violet closed the concealed door after her.

Ruppert looked among the others in the crowded room, smiling awkwardly, thinking of how nobody liked to talk in an elevator. He saw a lot of dull eyes and blank faces, the signs of people who’d experienced unspeakable things. A man in the back corner looked familiar to him, but it took Ruppert a minute to place him. Then he ran over to the man.

“Sully?” he asked.

Sullivan Stone barely resembled the man he’d been a few months earlier. His head was shaved, and scars twisted across his exposed scalp. Splotches of bruised purple and sickly yellow marred his face and arms. A hashwork of scars tattooed the left side of his face, and the eyelid there drooped over a staring, bloodshot eye.

Ruppert recalled what Archer had told him, that it was likely Sully had been sent to a behavior modification clinic.

“Sully, are you okay?”

Sully blinked at him, showing no sign of recognition.

“You know him?” Lucia asked Ruppert.

“Sully. He was the one who was going to…do what I did. It should have been him that you extracted, his house’s memory you deleted instead of mine.”

“That’s Sullivan Stone?” Lucia knelt on the other side of Sully. “Oh. Wow. I see it. How are you?” She took his hand, but Sully pulled it back and folded his arms around himself.

“Sully, look at me close,” Ruppert said.

Sully did look at him, mouth open, appearing to comprehend nothing. Then he said, “Daniel?”

“That’s right. It’s Daniel Ruppert.”

“Oh.” Sully’s gaze drifted away for a few seconds, then fixed back on him. “Is it time to…do a show?”

“No, Sully, no more shows. We’re down to reality now.”

“Yeah.” Sully stared at his own dirty shoes, where the tips of the laces looked chewed. He’d lost a significant amount of muscle mass, leaving him shriveled inside clothes that were too large for him. The clothes themselves were odd choices for Sully: corduroy pants that didn’t reach his ankles, a big t-shirt featuring characters from the kids’ cartoon Dog Soldiers.

“Jesus, Sully,” Ruppert whispered. “What happened to you?”

“Re…programmed.” Sully took a breath and made an effort to speak up. “You were my friend.”

“I am your friend, Sully. It’s good to see you again. I'm sorry you’re hurt like this.”

“Reprogrammed,” Sully said again, “I’m deviant. They made us…they injected us, and they made us do…bad things…"

“I’m sorry,” Ruppert said.

“They asked about you,” Sully said. “They asked if you were, you know, disloyal to the state, and I said no, but then they burned me more, and I said yes. They made me say that about a lot of people. They had cameras recording it. I didn’t mean to.”

“Don’t worry, they’re after me for worse than that. Your friend Archer came and found me. You remember him, don’t you?”

“Did they get him, too?”

“No, he’s fine. I just saw him a few days ago.”

“I did love him,” Sully said. “The doctors said I shouldn’t anymore.”

“It’s all right, Sully.”

“Do you think he’s okay?”

“Yes. I just saw him.”

“Hope he’s okay.”

“The project you planned with him,” Ruppert said. “We did it. It worked. The word’s getting out there.”

“We were supposed to go north together.” Sully looked at his watch. “Now I only have one thing left to do.”

“What’s that?” Ruppert asked.

“Huh?”

“You said you had something to do. What is it?”

“Oh, yeah. Canada. I have to get to Canada. Can you help me to Canada, Daniel?”

“You’re already on the way. How did you get here?”

“They dumped a bunch of us on the street. St. Louis. Or Chicago. Or Minneapolis, I think. They didn’t want to feed us anymore, or something. They said-I don’t remember.”

“What happened then?” Ruppert asked. “Can you remember after that?”

“I went to-I don’t know, Daniel. I can’t keep track. I was in a hotel room with a dog on the wall. A painting of a dog. Some people helped me out with money, and they sent me here. Or some other people sent me here later, from the bar.”

“What kind of people?”

“Just people. This is really hard, Daniel.” The strain of trying to concentrate turned his face red and drew deep furrows in his brow. His right fist opened and closed, opened and closed, as if a muscle inside it were having spasms.

“It’s all right, Sully. We can talk later. Do you need anything? Water?”

Sully shook his head.

"Sully, you were right," Ruppert said. "About what I always wanted. You gave it to me. The big story. The truth that changes the world. My old teacher Dr. Gorski would be proud of us. We're journalists now, not reporters."

Sully blinked a few times, and his lips moved soundlessly. Then he closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the wall.

Ruppert and Lucia sat on the hay-covered floor next to Sully. They remained quiet for a long time. Ruppert didn’t feel like talking. Seeing his friend all but incoherent, his mind broken up into unrecognizable pieces, chilled any comfort Ruppert might have taken in reaching this next step toward freedom.

Later, Violet returned and motioned for Ruppert and Lucia to follow her. She led them back to the main house, into an upstairs sewing room with a small video screen.

“I thought you should see this. It’s been playing on all the newsnets. Don’t worry, my nephew fixed it, or broke it, so nobody can look out through it.” She turned on the screen, accessed a news site (GlobeNet – Salt Lake City), and clicked the blinking TERROR ALERT icon.

Ruppert appeared onscreen in a way he’d never appeared in a newscast-disheveled, tie undone, a growth of stubble on his chin. He looked dirty. A Chinese dragon with a red star on its forehead filled the background behind him. The video effects group had done excellent work.

“It is time we admit the truth,” the digital Ruppert said. “America is weak and broken. America will fall. We must throw ourselves on the mercy of the great nation of China, a society thousands of years older and wiser than ours. They are closer to God than we are. We should adopt the Chinese way of life as our own, and beg China’s forgiveness for the crimes and provocations waged of our own evil, terrorist government.”

“This isn’t really you,” Lucia said.

“No,” Ruppert said. “But it’s on the news, so it must be true, right? I guess we can assume they’ve seen the Westerly interview. So they set up the narrative that I’m an anti-American, terroristic, apparently pro-Chinese, traitor spreading propaganda. They won’t broadcast the real video, of course, but it prepares people to dismiss the Westerly interview in case they do see it.”

Lucia shook her head. “That is diabolical.”

“In the news business, we call it muddying the stream-flooding them with so much conflicting information they don’t know what to believe. George Baldwin, the Terror agent at my studio, called it releasing the antibodies. You swarm the unwanted bit of information and surround it, steer it your own way, kill whatever leaked. That’s how you keep the official narrative intact.”

“What interview are you talking about?” Violet asked. “Who is Westerly?”

“I’ll show her.” Lucia ran outside, then quickly returned and gave Violet one of the discs. “We have more copies. I can leave some with you. It’s best to distribute these hand to hand instead of online, if you want to avoid Terror.”

Violet led them down the hall to a bedroom with another, older video screen, assuring them it was not connected to anything but its own hard drive. She closed the door and inserted the disc.

As Violet watched the video, her knees shook and she sank down to sit at the foot of her bed. She was in tears as the interview ended, but she didn’t look away. She stared at the blank screen for a few minutes.

“None of it was real,” she finally whispered. She looked to Ruppert. “None of it was ever real.”

“There’s an organization called PSYCOM,” Ruppert said. “Defense, or intelligence. They wage psychological warfare on the world, and that includes us. They have everything, the media, the schools, the big Dominionist churches you have to attend. The Department of Terror is a front for them. They went rogue, or maybe they were following orders, I don’t know, but Columbus was their project.”

“But why?” Violet asked. “To our own people?”

“To make us afraid,” Lucia said. “So they could remake everything.”

“This makes me more afraid,” Violet said, gesturing at the screen. “I’ve never been this frightened.”

Ruppert looked at the black screen. “Even this works for them, doesn’t it? It shows us how ruthless they are. What if it only intimidates people, and they keep quiet?”

“They will have the truth,” Lucia said. “It never goes away. It stays inside you.”

“I think it’s going to stay inside me a long time,” Violet said. “I’m not sure I’m glad I know this. I thought things were bad enough before.” She stood up. “We need to move fast. You need to get out of this country right away. I’ll see if I can move things up a day or two. Until then, you better get back up to the hideaway. Try not to let anybody see your face, Daniel. Even folks around here can’t always tell the difference between truth and not.”