some stupid old rocks. From Earth.
It might work.
What I had working for me, too, was that this was America, and I was white under my Mexico tan, a sunbeaten kind of look that was characteristic of all the veterans-turned-hippies who lived along the border, either licensed to grow limited supplies of peyote for religious purposes or renewing their classified each month with Soldier of Fortune .
Either way, I was legal, and, if asked, just out on a daytrip from Del Rio. I even had the doctored driver’s license to prove it, my number and birth date memorized and everything. Still, the fewer people I encountered, the better.
After another hour of searching, I finally found another blackish rock, and then it was drawing close to dinner. Not that I had enough to be eating two meals a day, but, out on a job like this, dinner was more a ritual anyway.
For twenty-five minutes, I sat still, like at a table, and thought of what I could eat, even said the names aloud, and then chewed and ate and swallowed until I would have been sick, and then I didn’t want anymore, was glad I didn’t have enough to spare.
Just at dark, a green and white plane drifted south and west, all its lights off. All it scared up was a big mule deer that had been ducking the heat in a sandy wash. He lowered his haunches and pounded up past me, close enough that, when he snorted, seeing me, some of his misted snot settled on the back of my hand.
I didn’t move.
By then the plane was already gone, either toward the lights of Del Rio, if I was north of town, or away from it, if I was south.
That night I covered ten miles and made three blacktop crossings, and the only mishap was halfway across one of them, when the strap on my backpack gave way, spilling the canisters across the asphalt. There were no cars or semis bearing down on me, though.
I picked each canister up and lined them by number along a yellow stripe, then made myself count them three times, to be sure they were all there.
They were.
In a washed-out draw, dawn seeping in, I stole some of the fabric from the pack’s flap, fixed the strap as best I could, then pulled the netting over me again, caved some of the bank in over me, and slept like the mule deer had: with simple dreams, of food, and water, and nobody shooting at me.
Before lunch the next day, more of my water gone than I meant, I cracked the number nine canister open. Just to see. It was dust, like a number four black rock that had been ground up fine. A breath of it swirled up into my eyes and nose and then I capped it off.
At least they weren’t lying to me — number four wasn’t a decoy. I wasn’t carrying narcotics or microfiche, but geology. Lunar geology. Stellar geology.
I kind of liked it.
Before screwing the cap back down tight, I ground up a piece of half burned wood from some cowboy or hitchhiker’s campfire — no coyote, mule, or wetback would ever risk a fire, even this far in — sifted it down into number nine. As best I could, I tried to get about a third as much in as had blown out, just because ash would be so much lighter. What I had to remember now was to get gone from their Uvalde warehouse before they started weighing their precious samples. Just in case. Even if they offered me a ride instead of making me walk back to Del Rio.
The longer I hung out in Uvalde, the more likely I’d have an accident, and they’d get their hundred thousand back. Another problem I had now was that the number four canister wasn’t the only one with its seal broken.
I was ready for that, though: if asked, my answer would be that, after ditching the case (the trick is to confess to the small stuff), my pack broke, like it really had — see? And when it broke, the canisters all hit the ground, and there’d been a truck coming so I hadn’t been able to be careful, just scooped them all up, dove for the ditch. Then, just to check if it had broken or something, I backed the top off the number four canister, only