Free The Wild Shore: Three Californias (Wild Shore Triptych) by Kim Stanley Robinson Page B

surprised to see Rafael. They were drenched, weary and bedraggled. One was a skinny man with a long nose and a black beard that was no more than a thin strip around his jaw. The other was short and stocky, wearing a soaked floppy hat under his poncho. They took the ponchos off, revealing dark coats and wet pants. The shorter man saw Tom and said “Hello, Barnard. We met at the swap meet, remember?”
    Tom said “Yes.” They shook hands with him, and then with Rafael (a funny sight), John, Nat, Steve, and me. Without showing it much they looked around the room. All the women were dressed, or wrapped in towels, leaving a room filled with a fire, and steaming baths, and several naked men gleaming like fish among those of us with some cloth on. The shorter man did a sort of bow. “Thanks for taking us in. We’re from San Diego, as Mr. Barnard here will tell you.”
    We stared at them.
    “Did you get here by train?” Tom asked.
    Both men nodded. The skinny one shivered. “We brought the cars within five miles of here,” he said. “We left our crew there and walked the rest of the way. We didn’t want to work on the tracks closer to you until we talked with you about it.”
    “We thought we’d get here sooner,” the shorter one said, “but the storm slowed us.”
    “Why’d you hike in a storm in the first place?” John Nicolin asked.
    After some hesitation the short one said, “We prefer to hike under cloud cover. Can’t be seen from above, then.”
    John tilted his head and squinted, not getting it.
    “If you want to jump in that hot water,” Tom said, “go right ahead.”
    Shaking his head the taller one said, “Thank you, but…” They looked at each other.
    “Looks warm,” the short one observed.
    “True,” the other said, nodding a few times. He was still shivering. He looked around at us shyly, then said to Tom, “Perhaps we’ll just warm up by your fire, if that’s all right. It’s been a wet walk, and I’d like to get dry.”
    “Sure, sure. Do what you like; the place is yours.”
    John didn’t look too happy at Tom’s wording, but he led the two men over to the fire, and Carmen threw on more wood. Steve nudged me. “Did you hear that? A train to San Diego? We can get a ride down there!”
    “I guess we might,” I replied. The men were introducing themselves: the taller one was Lee, the short one Jennings. Jennings took off his cap, revealing straggly blond hair, then removed his poncho, coat, shirt, boots, and socks. He laid his clothes over the drying racks and stood with his hands stretched out to the fire.
    “We’ve been working on the rails north of Oceanside for a few weeks now,” he told us. “The Mayor of San Diego has organized a bunch of work forces of various sorts, and our job is to establish better travel routes to the surrounding towns.”
    “Is it true that San Diego has a population of two thousand?” Tom asked. “I heard that at a swap meet.”
    “About that.” Jennings nodded. “And since the Mayor began organizing things, we’ve accomplished a good deal. The settlements are pretty well scattered, but we have a train system between them that works well. All handcars, you understand, although we do have generators providing a good supply of electricity back home. There’s a weekly swap meet, and a fishing fleet, and a militia—all manner of things there weren’t before. Naturally Lee and I are proudest of the exploration team. Why, we cleared highway eight all the way across the mountains to the Salton Sea, and shifted the train tracks onto it.” Something in the way Lee moved before the fire caused Jennings to stop talking for a moment.
    “The Salton Sea must be huge now,” Tom said.
    Jennings let Lee answer. Lee nodded. “It’s fresh water now, too, and filled with fish. People out there were doing pretty good, considering how few of them there were.”
    “What brings you up here?” John Nicolin asked bluntly.
    While Lee stared at John, Jennings