Cover by Rocky Kelley
As we barrel toward the August 29 premiere of Rayguns Over Texas at LoneStarCon 3 (aka the 71st Annual World Science Fiction Convention) in San Antonio, I am presenting book excerpts, one contributor per day.
The final selection comes from Josh Rountree‘s “Best Energies.”
After the bomb dropped at Hiroshima, the United States, led by President
George Washington, and Texas, led by President Sam Houston, rest on the
precipice of a cold war in Josh Rountree’s startlingly different vision of the mid-20th century.
Defecting from the Unites States wasn’t the easiest of tasks, certainly not for a man as recognizable as Albert. He’d shaved his mustache and cut his wild hair into a short and messy patch with his pocket knife. He’d done so in a gas station restroom somewhere west of Memphis after being recognized by a poultry truck driver who’d given him a ride from Nashville. The man had let him off at the station with few questions and little trouble, so either he hadn’t been listening to the radio or had somehow missed the alerts airing constantly for Albert’s capture.
Albert trudged along the side of the road, cursing the damned Ford that he’d left smoking alongside the highway a few hundred miles behind. He finally receives the call to put the plan in motion and the car picks that day to die. As far as signs went, it wasn’t the most promising.
He’d left the Pool Compound mid afternoon the previous day. Better to make it look like he was leaving for some quick errands than sneaking out in the middle of the night. By supper time the reports of his flight had already reached the press, and King George’s propaganda experts were earning their money. Albert had woken a national hero and by the time he’d slept, half the country thought he was a murderer. Killed two men and stole state secrets. Tried to pollute the Immortality Pool. It was nothing but lies, but that wouldn’t matter if he was caught.
Albert had expected this sort of thing, but not so quickly. Technically he wasn’t even a citizen of the United States and could come and go as he pleased. But he had no more personal freedom than a prisoner. Albert knew far too much about the internal operations of the Compound, and about the Water itself, and he knew how the King would react if he simply disappeared. Better to cut his losses with his pet genius than let that sort of knowledge fall into foreign hands.
The King had never trusted him; Albert doubted there was a man on earth he trusted.
Albert heard the gray pickup rattling before he saw it appear over the rise. He stuck out his thumb, and pulled his hat down a bit, hoping the lack of mustache would be enough to disguise his true identity. The locked steel briefcase he was carrying wouldn’t make him any less conspicuous.
The truck stopped and the driver pushed the passenger door open. “Get on in.”
Albert climbed into the truck and put the briefcase between his feet in the floorboard. The cab smelled like liquor, and the driver looked as if he was quite familiar with the stuff. He was handsome, and had a better shave than Albert, but he was rail thin and wore only a stained undershirt and worn pants and boots. He had a crooked sort of smile that made Albert a little nervous, and his eyes seemed to be staring at some point just beyond the horizon. His hand jumped slightly when he offered it to shake and Albert wondered if he might be affected by something more than just alcohol.
“Name’s Hiram,” he said. “Where are you headed?”
“Austin, Texas,” said Albert.
Excerpt from “Best Energies” © 2013 by Josh Rountree.