Termination Shock

The fancy suits issued to Black Hat personnel did not show up on the loading dock as suits, but as rolling footlockers crammed with modular parts, so the user could configure them for different conditions. The module that was responsible for the user’s not perishing of heat stroke was branded as the Me-Frigerator. More than one type of Me-Frigerator was in the kit. One of them was optimized for conditions where direct intense sunlight was the primary threat. Which was decidedly the case in the Chihuahuan Desert on an August afternoon. It was built around a technology that had been invented and patented a hundred years ago by none other than Albert Einstein, teaming up with a future A-bomb physicist named Leo Szilard. It didn’t have moving parts, other than some valves. It was just a particular configuration of plumbing containing certain fluids. One part of it just happened to get cold when another part of it was exposed to heat. You didn’t need a motor to drive a compressor or any of that. It just worked, provided you could open the valves and make one part of it hot. And that last was pretty easy in the desert sun, especially when there were new blacker-than-black light-absorbing materials and certain other innovations that Einstein hadn’t known about. During the first century of its existence, Einstein’s invention had not seen very much practical use because it was less efficient than other ways of making things cold. But more recently, researchers had been spiffing it up with an eye to using it in developing countries where heat, in the form of sun and fire, was easier to get than reliable electricity. The manufacturers of the fancy earthsuits favored by Black Hat had piggybacked off such innovations to make these Me-Frigerator systems. Rufus dug into one of them as soon as he had good light and a functional soldering iron.

That implement—the soldering iron—was an example of the same kind of problem he was facing with this Me-Frigerator. The part of the soldering iron that really mattered was just a dumb coil of wire that got hot when electrical current ran through it. Everything else was electronic brains that added features. When the brain got fried, it just had to be bypassed. The added features went away, leaving a soldering iron that was a throwback compared to the one with the brain. But it did most of what the brainy version could—especially if the person wielding it had some brains of his own.

Likewise, the maze of plumbing and sealed containers of special fluids in the Me-Frigerator were simple enough that they would do their basic job without a brain. That had to be the case, because ol’ Albert had patented the thing before thinking machines existed. The trick was to work a bypass, just as Rufus had with the soldering iron. He might have to turn it on and off by hand. But since he was a pretty acute judge of when he was and wasn’t hot, that should be easy.

“What the hell are you doing? Everyone wants to know.” This was Carmelita, whose role in this strange little community was to be the Rufus whisperer. Thordis talked to horses. Everyone except Rufus talked to eagles. Rufus talked to drones. Carmelita talked to Rufus. She had acquired the skill early in their relationship, when they hadn’t liked each other. As such it had been easy for her to speak to him bluntly. Now they’d come to like each other fine. The habit had stuck, though.

“Before you settle in to bothering me could you throw a couple more logs on the fire?” Rufus asked, without looking up. “Gonna need a heat source to see if this thing works.” Carmelita did so, then sat down across from him. “Seriously, Red. What the fuck?”

“We are at war,” Rufus said. “Gonna ride to the sound of the guns. Leaving before daybreak, I reckon.”

“The guns aren’t making any sound!” Carmelita objected.

Rufus sighed. “It is a Civil War joke. Not so funny apparently. It means I need to go to where the action is gonna be. Pina2bo.”

“And you think you’re gonna get that suit working.”

“Gonna try.”

“Then what, Red?”

“Head out before sunrise, like I said.” He heard footsteps and looked up to see Thordis approaching. Trailing behind her were Piet and then Tsolmon.

“On Bildad?” Carmelita asked.

“Pegleg. I’m too big for poor ol’ Bildad. Pegleg’s more my size.” Also, though Rufus was embarrassed to admit it, he’d held an irrational grudge against Bildad ever since the gelding had made his preference for Thordis clear.

“Pegleg does not have a Me-Frigerator.”

“By the time the sun is high enough to be a problem for Pegleg, we’ll have reached a waller I noticed, a couple of miles from the big gun.”

“Waller?”

“Low spot in the ground where there’s some water. Pegleg can rest easy there until the cool of the evening. Then he’ll find his way back.”

“While you cover those last couple of miles on foot.”

“Yep.”