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“Remember me telling you she was big steam? Huge steam? Well, she’s even bigger than that.
When I tried to turn it around on her, she blew me out of her head like I was a piece of milkweed
fluff. Nothing like that’s ever happened to me before. I would have said it was impossible.”
“Is she potential True or potential food?”
“I don’t know.” But she did. They needed steam—stored steam—a lot more than they needed fresh
recruits. Besides, Rose wanted no one in the True with that much power.
“Okay, how do we find her? Any ideas?”
Rose thought of what she’d seen through the girl’s eyes before she had been so unceremoniously
booted back to Sam’s Supermarket in Sidewinder. Not much, but there had been a store . . .
She said, “The kids call it the Lickety-Spliff.”
“Huh?”
“Nothing, never mind. I need to think about it. But we’re going to have her, Crow. We’ve got to
have her.”
There was a pause. When he spoke again, Crow sounded cautious. “The way you’re talking, there
might be enough to fill a dozen canisters. If, that is, you really don’t want to try Turning her.”
Rose gave a distracted, yapping laugh. “If I’m right, we don’t have enough canisters to store the
steam from this one. If she was a mountain, she’d be Everest.” He made no reply. Rose didn’t need to
see him or poke into his mind to know he was flabbergasted. “Maybe we don’t have to do either one.”
“I don’t follow.”
Of course he didn’t. Long-think had never been Crow’s specialty. “Maybe we don’t have to Turn her
or kill her. Think cows.”
“Cows.”
“You can butcher one and get a couple of months’ worth of steaks and hamburgers. But if you keep
it alive and take care of it, it will give milk for six years. Maybe even eight.”
Silence. Long. She let it stretch. When he replied, he sounded more cautious than ever. “I’ve never
heard of anything like that. We kill em once we’ve got the steam or if they’ve got something we need
and they’re strong enough to survive the Turn, we Turn em. The way we Turned Andi back in the
eighties. Grampa Flick might say different, if you believe him he remembers all the way back to when
Henry the Eighth was killing his wives, but I don’t think the True has ever tried just holding onto a
steamhead. If she’s as strong as you say, it could be dangerous.”
Tell me something I don’t know. If you’d felt what I did, you’d call me crazy to even think about it. And
maybe I am. But . . .
But she was tired of spending so much of her time—the whole family’s time—scrambling for
nourishment. Of living like tenth-century Gypsies when they should have been living like the kings
and queens of creation. Which was what they were.
“Talk to Grampa, if he’s feeling better. And Heavy Mary, she’s been around almost as long as Flick.
Snakebite Andi. She’s new, but she’s got a good head on her shoulders. Anyone else you think might
have valuable input.”
“Jesus, Rosie. I don’t know—”
“Neither do I, not yet. I’m still reeling. All I’m asking right now is for you to do some spadework.
You are the advance man, after all.”
“Okay . . .”
“Oh, and make sure you talk to Walnut. Ask him what drugs might keep a rube child nice and
docile for a long period of time.”
“This girl doesn’t sound like much of a rube to me.”
“Oh, she is. A big old fat rube milk-cow.”
Not exactly true. A great big white whale, that’s what she is.