Moon - New Moon Part 27

"Thank you for trusting me enough to tell me why you keep backing away," he said. Then, to her relief, he dropped the subject. "Where did you get the clothes?" he asked as they walked.

"From someone drying them outside. I guess they're going to get wet."

"Yeah."

She swallowed. She had her own questions. And she might have been afraid to ask them, except that she was discovering that nothing was forbidden with this man. "Back at the convenience store... the man with the weapon... you said there was no violence here." The sentences came out disjointed and jerky, and she wondered if they sounded like an accusation.

Logan didn't break his stride. "Not as much as in your world, but there is always violence in any society. Sometimes it comes from inequality. Sometimes from bad people. Or greedy people. So I'd say it was just bad luck that we arrived at the Easy Shopper when we did."

"The Easy Shopper?"

"That's the name of the place."

"Oh." She swallowed. "That man, the robber. I felt the desperation and the hatred inside him. I think he would have killed the woman who owned it."

"She probably doesn't own it. More likely she was working for someone."

"Um," she answered, a.s.similating that new piece of information. Someone trusted the woman enough to leave her with all those goods.

In her memory, Rinna pictured the scene again. "Then cars came with flas.h.i.+ng lights."

He turned his head toward her. "The cops. That's slang for the police. Like soldiers. They keep order. But I don't think it's like in your world. We have soldiers, too. But they don't operate in the civilian world here unless there's a national emergency." He sighed. "That's probably getting too complicated."

"I know you're trying to give me the... the short course."

"Yeah. We have laws, and most citizens obey them. If you break the law, the cops come after you."

"And throw you in a dungeon," she said promptly.

"Well, not a dungeon. Jail. Which I a.s.sume is a little more humane. And what happens depends on how bad the crime was. You might get caught stealing-and be able to put up bail. I mean, you give them money that says you will stay in town until your trial. You get a lawyer, and you are presumed innocent until proven guilty. I get the feeling that in your world, you are presumed guilty unless you can somehow prove you didn't commit the crime."

"Yes," she whispered, still trying to process a bunch of new concepts. But there was something else she needed to understand. "Tell me about the weapon the robber had. I've heard of something like that, but I've never seen it."

"A gun."

"It hurts worse than a knife. And you don't have to be close to the person to use it?"

"It may not hurt worse, but can do more damage inside the body."

She shuddered. "I think we used to have those."

He nodded, then asked his own urgent question. "Can the soldiers figure out where we've gone? Do they have a way to track us? With smell, for example?"

She considered the possibilities. "If they brought a shape-s.h.i.+fter, he might track us. But shape-s.h.i.+fters aren't all that common. I don't think Falcone has one."

"That's good."

"What about that trap that Falcone used? Could he get us with that?"

Again she tried to come up with a logical answer. "He thought he would find no shape-s.h.i.+fters here. When he caught you, he probably reconsidered the wisdom of using it."

" 'Probably' being the operative word."

"Yes. We can't be..."

"Careless," he finished for her.

They had come out of the woods and were facing a narrow road. The middle was paved with a smooth black material. As they started walking to the right, the gravel at the sides dug into the bottoms of her feet.

"We need shoes," she murmured as she stepped from the gravel to the level black surface.

"How do they get it so smooth?" she asked.

"Machines with big metal rollers that press it down."

As she tried to imagine that, rain began to fall, first lightly and then with more force.

"I don't know about you, but I've had it for tonight. I need a place to rest and get out of the weather," he said.

Behind them something roared. Then she heard a loud horn. Logan pulled her off the road, and a huge vehicle hurtled past.

A car. She had seen them before when she'd come to this world, but she had never been this close to one that was moving.

"That could kill you," she whispered.

"Yeah. If you got hit. Which is another reason we need to get off the road."

"Is it against the law to kill with one of those?"

"Of course!"

"But we're not supposed to be walking on the road, are we? So if we got killed, it would be our fault."

"You're still not supposed to kill anyone," he muttered.

They pa.s.sed several narrow lanes leading to the left and right. Logan kept trudging past them. But when he came to one with what looked like white logs lying on the ground, he stopped. When she looked more closely, she could see they were made of some material that was rolled up with a transparent coating around them.

"Newspapers," Logan said, seeing her eye them. "A lot of them. Which usually means someone is out of town. Away from home," he clarified, then opened a metal box on a short pole and looked inside. "And a bunch of junk mail."

"Junk mail?"

"Advertising circulars."

"Like when a merchant has something to sell, and he wants to let the rich people know?"

"Exactly. Here they pay a government service-the post office-to deliver them."

He closed the box and turned back to her, his expression serious. "I told you about the law and the police. We could borrow the house. But if we go inside, we're breaking the law."