Free Coyote Horizon by Allen Steele Page B

he said at last, not looking up at her. “I’m just glad we managed to get him.”
    “Hawk-Hawk . . .” Melissa sighed, then put down her spoon and reached across the table to take his hand. “I’m scared. What you told me he said . . . If there are others like him, they may come for you.”
    That thought had occurred to him, although he’d tried to suppress it. Until now, he’d been safe in his anonymity: just another person living in the tenements, trying to get by as best he could. But he remembered the way everyone on the block had looked at him when he’d come home. If there were other members of Living Earth in New Brighton, and if they decided to take revenge upon him, he wouldn’t be hard to find.
    “So what do you want me to do?” Hawk looked back at her. “I can’t just hide here all day, y’know. I’ve got a job to go to. And my uniform . . .”
    “Leave.” Her voice was low, almost a whisper. “Get out of town.”
    “I can’t just leave. I . . .” His gaze fell to his left wrist, and the bracelet wrapped around it. “You know that’s impossible.”
    “No. Not impossible.” Melissa paused. “Hawk-Hawk, there’s nothing here for you . . . for either one of us. I haven’t wanted to tell you, but . . . I’ve been thinking about this for a while now, and I want to get out of here. New Brighton’s a dead end. If I stay here, I’m just going to end up turning tricks again. I don’t want to do that. And I’ve heard about places a long way from here where people can . . . y’know, disappear.”
    “Maybe you can.” He held up his left hand. “But I can’t.”
    “Yes, you can.” A smile crept across her face. “If you want to bad enough.”
     
     
     
    Hawk was still thinking about what Melissa had said when there was a second incident at customs. It wasn’t violent, but it changed his life. After that, nothing was ever the same again.
    A few days after David Laird was arrested at the spaceport, a hjadd vessel came through the starbridge. Its arrival wasn’t unexpected; once the aliens had an embassy on Coyote, ships from Hjarr had begun making occasional visits to 47 Uma. Before, their shuttles had landed at their compound in Liberty, touching down within the center of the odd doughnut-shaped structure that the hjadd had erected almost overnight from native materials. As a result, few people had ever met the denizens of Rho Coronae Borealis; their affairs were cloaked in secrecy, as mysterious as before.
    Sometime in the last few months, someone at Government House had apparently decided that the hjadd should be subjected to the same immigration protocols as anyone arriving from Earth. Whether the hjadd objected to the new rules, no one in New Brighton knew; nonetheless, Hawk was surprised to learn that, for the first time, a new hjadd ambassador would be arriving at the spaceport.
    That morning, the customs inspectors were convened in the break room, where a senior government official briefed them on what would happen later that day. In deference to hisher desire for privacy, no other vessels would be allowed to land at the same time, and the terminal was to be cleared of all nonessential personnel. In light of the arrest a few days earlier, strict security procedures would be enforced while heshe was on the premises. Once the shuttle was on the ground, the ambassador would be met by a Federation liaison who would then escort himher through customs. Otherwise, all the usual protocols would be observed, with one important exception: the ambassador’s personal belongings would not be examined, but instead would be exempt from search under U.N. rules regarding diplomatic immunity.
    For once, Hawk shared the same feelings as his fellow agents. Although they were intrigued by the prospect of seeing one of the aliens in the flesh, they also knew that it would be a major headache. A squad of Colonial Militia in full dress uniform had been flown in for the occasion; although they were