Free Galaxy Blues by Allen Steele Page B

back and forth across the solar system.
    At one time, that sort of thing had been my highest ambition. But now I was being given the chance to travel to the stars, to see things no one else in my class had ever dreamed of seeing. Sure, maybe it wasn’t going to be from the vantage point of the captain’s chair…but better this than a lifetime of sleeping on a prison cot.
    â€œYes,” I said. “I’d like that very much.”
    â€œExcellent. Pleased to hear it.” Standing up, Goldstein dropped his cigar on the floor. “I’ll have a chat with my friends,” he said as he ground the stogie beneath the heel of his shoe, “and send someone by to pick you up tomorrow morning.” He paused to look me over. “If you have a chance, write down your clothing sizes. That’s a fine outfit you’re wearing, but totally unsuitable for life here.”
    â€œI will. Thank you.” All this and a trip to the tailor, too. It suddenly felt as if I’d hit the jackpot.
    But not quite. Goldstein started to walk away when another thought occurred to me. “By the way…you didn’t say what sort of cargo we’re taking to the hjadd .”
    He stopped. For a second, I thought he was going to turn around, but instead he merely glanced over his shoulder. “Oh, did I forget that? Sorry.”
    And then he disappeared. The cell-block door creaked as it was opened from the outside, then it slammed shut once more. Leaving me to wonder if I’d just talked my way out of jail or negotiated a deal with the devil.

( FIVE )
    Good-bye, Your Honor…
    take me out to the ball game…
    where the aliens are…
    o, Captain! my Captain!…
    a cold Rain.
    XVII
    Morgan Goldstein was true to his word.
    Early next morning, not long after Chief Levin brought in breakfast—which I didn’t mind skipping; if the eggs had been any runnier and the bacon a little less fatty, I could have raced them against each other around my plate—another proctor showed up to take me to court. I straightened my clothes as best as I could, hoped that I didn’t smell too ripe, then let him put the cuffs on me and lead me from my cell.
    Two more proctors were waiting outside the stockade, along with a wagon drawn by an animal that looked like a cross between a water buffalo and a giant anteater. At least there was one creature on Coyote who stank worse than me. The shag farted at least twice on the way across town, and I seemed to be the only one who noticed; my guard and the driver had enough sense to pull scarves up around their noses.
    I got a good look at Liberty along the way. Clapboard houses and log cabins lined packed-dirt streets; men and women in homespun clothes walked to work on wooden sidewalks raised a half foot above storm gutters. We passed a schoolyard in which a crowd of children were at play, and from somewhere far off I heard a bell-tower clock strike eight times. Here and there, I spotted indications of advanced technology—sat dishes on rooftops, a hovercoupe parked in an alley, comps on display in a shop window—but otherwise the town looked as if had been transported across time and space from nineteenth-century America. Despite the opening of the starbridges, Coyote remained a frontier where the inhabitants had learned how to make do with what they could build with their own hands. I wasn’t sure whether I liked this or not.
    We finally arrived at Government House. The wagon trundled around the statue of Captain R. E. Lee, commanding officer of the URSS Alabama and founder of the colony, and came to a halt at a side door of the two-story wood-frame building. The proctors helped me climb down from the wagon; the shag passed gas one last time as a fare-thee-well, then I was marched inside.
    A quick walk down a short corridor, and then I was escorted into a small courtroom. On the other side of a low rail, two men were seated at a long, wooden