Bill had never ridden shotgun in the Viper. Either he drove, or the big black car stayed parked. So it was a new experience for him to hand over the keys and sit back while someone else flogged the Dodge.

Hawk was fumbling his license out. Again. This was the third time he had been pulled over, and they were still on the way down to Rochester. Two State Troopers had nailed them so far. This was an Olmstead County Sheriff. Bill arranged his face into neutral lines, and sat back to watch the show unfold.

The officer was referring to the vanity plate a certain smartass had paid to put on the Viper. It had been a wonderful icebreaker for the law enforcement community.

Hawk grinned disarmingly up at the sheriff. Bill noted that the kid in the uniform looked about four, and seemed almost too frail for the weapon he carried prominently on his skinny hip. The kid leaned into the window and extended his hand.

Hawk took the registration from Bill and handed it to the youngster, along with the license. He rested his big hands on the wheel, the Air Force ring prominent on his right hand.

Hawk knew damn well what he didn't believe. He waited patiently.

The boy thrust the license and registration back into Hawk's hands, stepped back from the car, all but saluted.

The kid trotted back to his cruiser. Bill casually leaned forward and picked up the Bearcat. He hadn't even bothered with scanners before pitting for Elmore, bow he considered them great fun.

Dispatch finally sounded like a real person.

Bill switched the scanner off before somebody could start chewing the deputy a new asshole. Hawk pulled back into traffic sedately and motored south.

Bill absolutely concurred. The speedometer on the Viper climbed to some very high digits indeed, indicating possible speeds that Bill didn't feel personally qualified to reach. There was daring, after all, and then there was dumb.

Hawk downshifted for a stop sign. A car full of teenagers alongside issued a challenge. Hawk stood on the clutch and the brake and wound the mighty plant out, then let it back off, rumbling and snarling. The kids were driving a beat up Taurus SHO, and the driver correctly surmised that the Viper would eat him for lunch. He backed off promptly. Hawk tipped his hat to the female passengers. One of them recognized him, and the kids went nuts. Hawk waved as he pulled away and the kids waved back.

Bill had been alternately dreading and anticipating his time with Hawk, and their conversation. Now it looked like nothing was going to happen. As soon as they reached the Oncology Clinic, Hawk was blown past patients who had been waiting, in some cases for two or three hours. The implication was clear. These people are ill, in some cases mortally. Some were famous, some were wealthy, and some important, but none of them had risked their necks. None of them had saved millions of lives. None of them had had a commemorative medal struck by the U.S. Congress of their face, nor were the copies of that medal being sold at five hundred dollars a pop by the Franklin Mint. Hawk Hawkins was a board-certified Hero, and once the white cowboy hat and relaxed walk and bargain-basement cotton shirt were recognized, not a person in the room grudged him the line-jump.

Bill settled into a corner with a three-month old copy of US News and resigned himself to a long wait. He was surprised to see Hawk after an hour or so.

Bill gently eased the Viper's keys from Hawk's hand. He didn't need any measures of notoriety and all, and it appeared most of the known world recognized his car. Hawk was nattering on about what he'd understood of the procedure, something about a tube and a laser because the doctors were afraid the cancer would seed if they operated and they said a pancreas was not optional equipment. Bill listened with half an ear. Hawk was demonstrating a thoroughly charming ignorance of matters not directly related to flight matters. It felt familiar, and oddly reassuring.

Hawk accepted another cup of abysmal Perkins coffee from the awestruck waitress.

Hawk slashed through his steak. Bill mopped up egg yolk with toast and thought about what he'd said. It seemed as if it had all happened at once, even though he knew better. One day he'd been alone, the next--not.

Hawkins polished off his steak and went to work on a stack of pancakes. Bill knew these had the consistency of paving stones. He would avoid them unless they were the only thing left and he was half-starved. Hawk looked up at him.

Bill filed this information away. Eliot had been a chatterbox. It was something, a beginning, an actual human impression to add to the imperfect recollection and the impersonal record keeping he'd had to go on until now.

The man stared at him calmly, with great compassion. Bill felt clearly that Eliot had known this side of Hawkins at one time. He reached for, and snagged, a memory of Hawkins himself. He had been shy and sweet with the little Vietnamese woman, cocky and confident with his comrades, and divinely inspired at the controls of an aircraft, any aircraft.

The waitress brought more toast and pancakes. Hawk fell to work.

Bill tore a piece of toast into chunks. He never sat still gladly, and this was a special trial. He wanted to know, an there was a lot Hawk would be able to tell him.

Bill felt a vise begin to close round his head. He dropped the mangled toast, rubbed his temples. Hawk continued to talk, as though accommodating Bill's need to know and his inability to articulate his questions.

Hawk dropped his utensils, sat back and stared at Bill. He was plainly aghast.

Bill dropped his chin and drew a deep, shuddering breath. This was what he'd wanted to hear, whether the knowledge was good or not. He reminded himself of that, as well as Hawk's obvious remorse that he'd had any involvement in Cai Bian's death.

Bill looked up and Hawk noticed the rage and the pain.

Bill hissed and the fingers put brutal pressure on the temples. Hawk stopped talking until the younger man had got hold of himself.

Bill stared at his plate, the steak and eggs, toast wads, greasy hash browns. The food was over-priced and badly cooked, but what it lacked in wholesomeness it more than made up for in cleanliness. Bill could picture their 'meals', rice, always rice. Sometimes it was half-raw, often it took on the red color of the rust inside the metal bowl. He never chewed it, just swallowed it whole--his third day in the hooch he'd seen a man break a tooth on a stone and he'd seen enough gravel in the latrine bucket to know there was plenty more where that came from. The worst was feeling it, things crawling and wriggling in it, as he'd tried to push it over the back of his tongue. Extra protein, he'd told himself, but it had been a long time before he'd got over the urge to vomit the crud up ten minutes after finishing.

Bill simply waited for Hawk to continue. Hawk sighed, drained his coffee cup.

Hawk gave Bill a ghost of a grin. He'd caught Bill's near miss.

It made sense to Bill. He'd had a head injury. His brain had started to swell. The leakage had probably saved his life, though he'd been lucky not to catch anything else while it was happening.

The two men lost most of the rest of the day in the House of Coates. It was a special favorite of Bill's, the House of Coates, because it was a workingman's bar. It didn't have the Yuppie-Trendy-Themed feeling of places like Rosen's or the Pickled Parrot or even the Corner itself. Bill could go inside, nurse a beer and think without worrying about drunken Yuppie punks throwing darts or bouncing to some fucker on the bandstand. He took Hawk there, and the both of them got fabulously squiffed on MGD.

From there they drove a short distance north on Highway 52, to another establishment Bill was equally fond of, Jake's. The visit had a twofold purpose. Firstly, they were of a mind to investigate the entertainment offered there and secondly, they needed to sober up enough to get home. Since Jake's welcomed males from the age of 18 and up, they deliberately had no liquor license. Bill and Hawk would have to drink sodas, or water.

Bill noticed Number One on the other side of the stage. He was with the rest of the pit roaches, and they were all egging on the dancer on the runway. Bill and Hawk, on the other hand, watched impassively. How much flesh could you see before it lost any power to excite? Bill told himself, if One didn't wear himself out before too much longer, he was going to go over and clock him in the dome.

Hawk took a fancy to one of the dancers, a sweet faced, lean little thing named Jessey. He paid for the privilege of a lap dance, and his strong response gave the girl a jolt in more ways than one.

She giggled nervously at her famous client. Bill was getting used to the responses Hawk got when he went someplace. He went up and two weeks after he landed, and his medical condition still rated a mention on the network news. People hadn't known how close they'd been to oblivion until after Daedalus landed, and then their gratitude towards the grizzled astronauts was boundless. Bill supposed Jessey would gain a bit of notoriety of her own from this--*I* got Hawk Hawkins to attention.

He grinned hugely, then tucked a lavish tip into the girl's thong. She wandered away, looking back over her shoulder several times as though to confirm he was really there and she had really wiggled around on an impressive piece of a national hero's personal real estate.

It was sometime after three when the two of them finally hove into sight. Hawk came in alone, said Bill was outside taunting llamas or something but it was more likely that he was chatting a bit with Elmore out in the pole barn.

I saw a flicker of recognition in Sam's eye, but he was beat. Hawk was plainly worn out. Yeah, yeah, you're a national hero. Uh-huh, and you're a legendary cop. That and a quarter won't get you anything but the cheap ass St. Paul paper. Hawk excused himself and trudged on up to his room.

Sam was doggedly completing paperwork related to an arrest; the bane of any cop and a nightmare for a man like Sam. Especially in his current state of exhaustion was the combination of forms in triplicate, legalese, and cop-speak a form of torture.

Sam stopped writing, stared levelly at me. I knew exactly what he was doing, so I played along and dropped my eyes, conceding the issue. He had gone out in response to a phone call the same day Bill left, and had been away chasing down some kind of radical ferret pincher or whatever the guy was. He'd tried to relax a little the evening before, but managing Ryan and rolling around in a hole punching on Bill weren't really the sort of restful pursuits he'd been looking for. And he'd been downtown all day.

Bill came in looking much the worse for wear.

I wasn't angry and I expected a smartass response. I wasn't disappointed.

Bill instantly rose to the implied challenge.

Sam rose, throwing is pen down on the table and stepping into the clear.

Both of them turned on me.

Here we go again, I told myself, and I hadn't even seen the other brawl. Ryan had filled me in, and he'd told me how Sam had seemed to have the upper hand, but Bill had snatched it and had run Sam into a corner from which he couldn't escape. Now it looked like the advantage was changing constantly, the whole concept of right and wrong was dependent on who said what. The both of them were wired up and ready to go. I wished fervently for a bullhorn or a loudspeaker or a siren or even a dog's tail to stand on but the beagle was outside. I knew if I left the room they'd start in and if I stayed they'd start in and I ran the risk of my kitchen being totaled or myself being totaled.

I heard quick footsteps on the stairs. Hawk was back, in a perfect froth. He stood in the door, quickly taking in his situation. His eyes narrowed and the easy slouch disappeared. His back became ramrod straight, and not even the fact that he was barefoot and clad in old man boxer and an elderly Air Force Academy t-shirt detracted from his air of command.

Bill and Sam stopped. Cold.

Were they... sheepish? I backed up until I felt the kitchen counter behind me, pressing into my back.

I felt sort of hurt. A couple of women lived in the house and we never fought like that.

Bill and Sam stood silently. Their backs were straight. Their chins were high. Jesus Christ, they were at attention. It was plain that the military, the protocol of the chain of command, had been bred into their bones. It went a ways towards explaining the choices they had made.

No answer. I detected a slight shuffling of the feet.

Unison. God, it was wonderful. Next they'd be hanging their heads.

Sam had spoken clearly enough, but softly; it was the voice of a young man being reprimanded. It bordered on the petulant, but didn't quite make it there.

Hawk smiled gently.

He began to speak in a voice to match his smile, but then his tone began to toughen up as he reached the end of his statement.

Oh, shit. And I thought Bill's voice was a lash. Hawk was positively evil. And neither of the two younger ones dared flinch, or Hawk would eat them alive. He never raised his voice, but he didn't have to.

Hawk hadn't had much to do with children. Knowing mine, Three was up there waiting for all hell to bust loose, and saying 'cool.' Sam and Bill at war was nothing more than a comedy act for him. He knew better than to worry, for some reason. They might beat the crap out of each other, but they'd never hurt anyone else.

Hawk turned on his heel and stalked away. I heard him mutter something about 'stupid sonsabitches' and then he started up the stairs.