========================================================================= Date: Wed, 10 Apr 1996 15:40:26 -0700 Reply-To: Noah Johnson Sender: Highlander TV show stories From: Noah Johnson Subject: Pawn To Bishop, part two Later, the two men were talking more easily. Reuben was now reasonably confident that Walker wasn't going to cut off his head. They'd been talking about Marignac, and Venner, and the past. In truth, Walker had been doing most of the talking. "...so there we were, fresh from the whole mess, trying to get decently drunk in this place in Vienna, when suddenly everyone starts yelling about the Hungarian Archduke and some Serbian guy. Hell, we didn't know what it was. Out of nowhere this French fella comes up to us and starts ranting about how it means war and it's our duty to join and fight. Venner looks at him and says, 'Look, my friend here is an American, and you know damn well they stay out of these stupid European things.'" Reuben winced. "Nice call." "Well, what the hell did we know? As far as the American government cared, shooting at each other was some kind of quaint European custom. It just got kind of out of hand that time." "Um, Alton? Speaking of the government, when you said you were with the Secret Service, what did you mean?" Walker smiled ruefully. "I've always thought of myself as a Service agent." he said. "It's a long story." "Apparently I've got time." said Reuben drily. "If you insist." Walker heaved a long sigh and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "I was with the Secret Service before I ever became Immortal. In fact, I was assigned to the President." "Which President?" Reuben asked. "Lincoln." said Walker flatly. "That night at the theater, I failed and he died." Reuben could do nothing but stare. "I never even suspected Booth was there. Christ, I didn't even hear the gunshot. The first warning I had that anything was wrong was when he jumped onto the stage. 'Sic semper tyrannis', the arrogant bastard." No one said anything for a second. Then Reuben asked, "What happened?" Walker shrugged. "Read your history. Lincoln died, they hunted Booth down and killed him, Lincoln stayed dead, and it was my fault. I hung myself." he smiled bitterly. "Didn't take, as it turned out." "It wasn't..." Reuben started to say. Walker stopped him with an upraised hand. "You're not the first person in the past hundred and thirty years to tell me it wasn't my fault. Hell, maybe you're all right about it too. Pretty damn moot now, but say you are. I didn't know that then. I knew Lincoln, and I knew my job, and I blew it." "You're still beating yourself up about it?" Walker shrugged. "I don't know. I think at this point it's just bitching about the past, really. Still, I do feel some responsibility for losing the man who might have been the best President we ever had." "Lincoln? I don't know, didn't it turn out he was..." "Smits, I knew the man. The history you learned has had a hundred years to get rewritten by everyone with an axe to grind. I worked for him for three years, and I know. I've seen them come and go since, and none of them could touch him. Some came close. Roosevelt, the second Roosevelt that is, came closest, but none of them were Lincoln." Walker seemed almost angry. "Sorry, man. I guess you'd know." "Yeah. Anyway, ever since then, I've been doing about ten years with the Service, then five years off, then another ten. Venner and Sean said I was trying to negate my guilt. I guess they're right. At any rate, I kind of feel I've got to make up for blowing it in '65." "Have you?" "Well, I've saved a couple Presidents, at least maybe. Just the sort of thing where you see some putz with a gun, yell your head off and get the President behind a bulletproof podium. Anyway, doesn't much matter anymore. Not a hell of a lot does." Walker seemed apathetic. Reuben decided to change the subject again. "So... uh... about this whole Immortal thing." Walker smiled a bit. "What about it?" "Um, what's that part about there being only one?" Reuben seemed embarrassed by his partial knowledge. "In the end, there can be only one. First rule of the Game." Walker nodded. "Game?" "A name for our wandering around with swords chopping each other's heads off for ultimate power, and all the crazy things we do to each other in the name of it." "Like what?" Reuben asked, worried. "Oh, kidnapping of friends and relatives, elaborate plots to draw people off of holy ground..." "Holy ground?" "Yeah. We can't fight on holy ground. Another rule. Not Immortals, not mortals, nobody." "Wait, you mean like _can't_ can't, or what?" Reuben seemed a little baffled. "Well, you'll find a few of us who'll swear up and down that god will strike you dead or something, but I've never noticed anything like that. Hell, one time I was in this church, and the priest comes down the aisle, and I notice he's one of us. So I glance at him and it's this total bastard I knew, Fyodor Donavich. I stood up and punched him in the eye before I knew what I was doing. Didn't get struck down. Well, not by god anyway. Donavich didn't take it awfully well. Still out there somewhere, I think." "Do you think he's going to come after you?" Walker shrugged. "If he does, he does. I'm not the type to go hunting guys down because I've got a grudge against them, but I don't exactly stay out of the Game." He made a brief fighting gesture with his sword. Reuben looked at the sword. It was about as long as Walker's arm, with a straight, single-edged blade and a narrow hilt with a knuckleguard. "Where'd you get your sword, anyway?" "This one? Had it made during the Great War. Design's my own. I call it a straightsabre. It's part of the reason guys like Donavich don't make me lose a lot of sleep." Reuben noticed that Walker looked at the blade the way a man will look at his wife of forty years. "What did you use before that?" he asked. "It's up over the fireplace." Walker said, nodding towards a straightforward longsword hanging on hooks above the fireplace. It had a wire grip and a pommel that looked to Reuben like two ducks facing away from each other. Walker grinned as he looked at it. "That one was given to me by my teacher, Arthur O'Hill. He loved that model. He carried and used a huge variety of weapons, but that one was his favorite. There is still a swordmaking family in Spain that for generations supplied O'Hill and his students with swords. They make a damn good sword, too." "Who was O'Hill?" "Oh, Arthur was a hell of a guy. Old, too. Born in England in... 529 AD, I'm pretty sure. Claimed to have been named after King Arthur, who was in power at the time. Some of the others used to call him the Pendragon. He was almost compulsive about training young Immortals. I don't think any other Immortal ever had as many students as he did. Some of us turned out good, some bad, but we can all fight." "Who else were his students?" Reuben asked, fascinated with the story. "I don't think the names would mean much to you." "Try me." Reuben said with a grin. "That's right, isn't it?" Walker said, raising an eyebrow. "Okay, let's see, besides me, Arthur also trained Maycoe, Daniel Rothschild, James Dietrich, Kuyler, Nick Ward, Annie Devlin..." "Devlin." Reuben interrupted. "Rings a bell. Beautiful, wasn't she?" Walker grinned. "Still is, last anyone heard. If memory serves, she and Venner were an item for a while around World War II. I could never understand his taste in women." "Yeah, I think I'm recalling a couple things now." Reuben's brows contracted. "A little psychotic for me. Then again, I'm with the Service; it's my job to be nervous around terrorists." "She was a terrorist?" Reuben was a little nervous himself. "Career IRA. Better bomber than a fencer. Never knew her all that well, but Venner never seemed to regret it." "Maybe one of us should let her know he's dead." Reuben suggested. Walker shook his head. "Nah. Like I say, they were over fifty years ago, and she'll find out sooner or later, through the grapevine." "If you say so." "So, Reuben, you going to be my student or what?" Walker asked suddenly. "What? I mean, I beg your pardon?" Reuben said, caught off-guard. "Do you want to be my student?" Walker repeated. "I don't know how much you got from Venner's Quickening - it's not as though that's ever happened before - but is it enough that you want to strike out on your own right now, or do you want me to show you the ropes first?" "I could use a teacher." Reuben said. "There's a lot more that I don't know than I do know." "Fine. Let me buy you dinner and we'll talk about it." "Actually, I could cover dinner if you want." Reuben said. "I got plenty of ready cash from Gouldman's wallet." Walker smiled. "That's a nice gesture, but I think it won't dent my budget too much. Last I checked, I owned forty-seven million dollars in funds and assets." "Forty-seven million?" Reuben asked, eyes wide. "And change. I did pretty well in World War I; made the right predictions about the right European economies. Turned the nest egg Arthur gave me into an entire omelette." "Jesus H." Reuben observed. "Are all Immortals rich?" "Most of us. Given a bit of cash and a lot of time, it's not hard. Anyway, let's get to dinner." Reuben spent that night in Alton's guest room. The next morning, they drove out to the desert in Alton's Humvee, arriving in the early afternoon. The sun was blindingly white in the purple sky, making the barren earth around them almost glow. Alton pulled the car onto a side road leading to nowhere and they got out. Each brandished a sword. "So, Alton, why the desert?" Reuben asked. "I don't know." Walker replied, looking around at the bleak landscape. "The desert's where you became Immortal; rather poetic to train here, I suppose. Also... I don't know, I just like to get out to the desert sometimes. T.E. Lawrence called it clean. It's a place you can go to scour some of the mess out of yourself." Reuben nodded. That made more sense than he would have thought. He'd always rather liked deserts himself; he suspected Venner had as well. "Okay. So what are we training in?" Walker twirled his sword around his body once. "Swordplay." he said. "Life and death for all of us. Let me see Marignac for a moment." Reuben handed the sword over with a twinge of reluctance. "Okay, but be careful with it." "You really care for it, don't you?" Walker said as he took it. "That's good. Make it a friend. Make it an extension of your own identity. Learn to be it, and let it be you." He handled the sword with a certain sensuous joy. "God, this is a good sword. I always kind of envied Venner for owning this beauty. You're lucky to have it." "Is it really that good?" Reuben asked. "I don't know much from swords." "Good? Watch." Walker stepped over to the side of the road, sticking his own sword into the dry earth. He looked at a roadsign proclaiming that this was, indeed, Interstate 192, took a deep breath, and cut through the iron signpost with a white-hot flash of steel and a loud clang. Reuben jumped. Walker turned to him, holding Marignac up and grinning. "_That_ is a good sword." he said with pleasure. "Anyway," Walker continued, "Marignac is a bastard sword, meaning it can be handled with one or both hands equally well. It's also a broadsword, and double-edged, which opens your attack options up. See, with my sword, to turn around for a backhand slash, I have to shift my grip on it..." he picked up his straightsabre to demonstrate, "...like this, see? Now, that's not usually a problem, but sometimes it'll come in real handy being able to cut with either side of the blade." Reuben took the sword back from Walker and slashed back and forth with it experimentally. "I think I see what you mean. So if I'm attacking a guy like _this_..." he said, slashing the air slowly, "...and he ducks, I can just turn like _this_ and try and nail his sword arm. Assuming he's right-handed." Walker nodded and frowned. "Yeah, that's right. Have you studied this before?" "No. Just seemed kind of... obvious, you know?" Walker nodded again, slowly. "Obvious to you, maybe. Care to spar a bit?" "Jeez, I don't think I'm ready..." Reuben said nervously. "I'll take it easy on you. Come on. En garde." Walker began with a series of exploratory cuts, only to find Reuben parrying them all. Intrigued, he increased the speed of his attacks. Reuben continued to block them. He experimentally enveloped Marignac's blade. Reuben slipped it. "Come on, attack a bit." Walker said encouragingly. Marignac's blade dodged around a feint and came in towards his chest. Walker parried it easily. The thwarted thrust turned into a cut, faster than Reuben should have been able to recover. Walker swung his body back away from it. The attacks weren't good enough yet to be dangerous, but they were better than they had any right to be. They were also strangely familiar. Walker carefully left a certain opening in his guard. Reuben took it, his left foot flicking out in a kick. Halfway into the move, he lost his balance and fell over. "Damn." Reuben swore from the ground. "I thought I was doing pretty good." "You were." Walker assured him. "Better than you should have been." "What do you mean?" "Normally, when you take a Quickening, you don't get anything concrete. At best, a sense of who the person was, a feeling for how they fought, maybe a little technique if you're lucky. Venner's Quickening was obviously far from normal. You fight like him. Less polished, less experienced, but the basic moves are there. There shouldn't be any way you can fight that well without any training. I'm not saying you're ready to go head hunting, but your training's going to be a lot easier than I thought." "So how come I lost it when I threw that kick?" Reuben asked. "That kick was the clincher. Venner used to sometimes get a lot of blade action going, then kick his opponents while they were watching his sword. You've never practiced tae kwon do, have you?" "No. Did Venner?" "Picked some up in Korea. Got good at it over the years. Your muscles remembered how to throw a kick, but your tendons aren't stretched for it, and your body doesn't remember where to put its weight during that kind of kick. So you lost your balance." Reuben rubbed his side where he'd fallen. "Believe it or not, that makes sense. That sounds right, actually. It felt kind of like my leg knew what to do but the rest of my body didn't." "You also don't know how to fall right. Then again, that was never Venner's strong suit." Walker played the sparring match back in his head, matching Reuben's moves to moves he'd sparred against during the Coolidge administration. "You really do fight a lot like him, though. Same footwork, same tight parries." "That's weird, man." "One of the weirdest things I've seen in a hundred and sixty years, I have to admit." Walker agreed. "So what does it mean?" "Metaphysically, I couldn't tell you. On a practical level, it means your training should be a piece of cake. Essentially, you just have to remember stuff you already know, so I think plenty of sparring should do it. That and you have to get your body into shape to use the techniques. Stretch those tendons I mentioned, build up your stamina, wrist and arm strength..." "This is weird..." Reuben said slowly. "Ah, you'll get used to it." Walker reassured him. "No, that's not what's weird. I _am_ used to it. This training and stuff. I mean, swordfighting isn't exactly a relevant skill these days, so you'd think I'd be having adjustment problems, right? I'm not. This all seems pretty normal." "For us, it is." Walker said soberly. It went on like that for two weeks, the two Immortals living out of a hotel on the edge of the desert, going out into the empty wastes of dry lake beds to fight. Reuben's fighting improved, faster than it had any right to, and his style evolved into a synthesis of Venner's hard, choppy style, and Walker's more fluid Chinese techniques. In the evenings, Walker would tell stories, explain about the Game, and try and convey to Reuben some of the things he'd learned about mortal and Immortal life over the years. "So, Alton, what did you mean today about how your fighting style changed over the years?" Reuben asked one night. "Well, the stuff I learned from Arthur was what you might call the anything-goes school of swordplay. He'd had over a thousand years to learn what worked and what didn't, and he used to fight a very vicious fight. He'd studied with Musashi and with Capo Ferro, and he used any technique that stood a chance of killing the opponent. He always used to say that that was the only objective in a duel. 'Fight fair, and maybe you'll come in second,' he always said. Problem was, that's kind of a hard style to learn. He knew so much, he could never quite convey all of it, so most of us would only pick up a fraction of all his techniques. Of course, it opened us up to learning new stuff later. "The other major influence on my fighting came in 1900, when the Boxer Rebellion flared up in China. I was in the Navy that year, and happened to be in the area. I wound up part of the Seymour Expedition. Ever hear of it? No? Well, we were sent in at the beginning of the whole mess, to try and 'assess the situation.' We take the train north, and find out that the situation is way worse than anyone guessed. We try and get our asses back south, and damn if they haven't blown up the tracks. The expedition wound up having to slog our way back on foot, with everyone back at HQ thinking we were dead, and all the Boxers trying to prove them right. A lot of us got killed on the way. I was one of them." "Say what?" "That's how I wound up stuck in China. For a while, we were trying to follow the railroad tracks back south, and got ambushed. I got shot through the head. I don't know how the rest of them got away, but that's not what matters. A couple of Boxers were coming over to me, intent on cutting my head off as a trophy. Fortunately, I happened to revive just then, and scared the bejesus out of them. I don't remember too clearly; I'd just had my brains blown out and they were still regenerating, see, and I apparently said something about being an Immortal, probably in Chinese. That's most likely the only thing that kept me alive. Immortals are very big in Chinese mythology, particularly among martial artists. They were a little confused by the fact that I was a _gwailo_ - that's Chinese for 'honky' - but they decided not to take chances. Next thing I knew, I'd been adopted into the White Lotus Society. Stayed there learning a dozen fighting styles for a few years, until word of the McKinley assassination finally filtered back into the temple I was living in. I was back with the Service within three months." "Wow. How much did you learn?" "A hell of a lot. See, I had kind of a funny status among the guys at the temple. I wasn't a priest, and the idea of my becoming one was scandalous, and I likewise wasn't especially welcome among the rebels that made up the body of the Society, so I didn't have much to do except study fighting. I tried to help out at the temple, but apparently that was reserved for monks, and strictly forbidden for _gwailo_, even Immortal ones. It was pretty much practice, practice, practice, all the time. Tai chi, hsing-i, shaolin boxing, all of them." "Man. You've got some good stories." Reuben observed. "Ah, you hang around long enough, they have a way of accumulating." "I hope so." * * * The next day, Reuben and Alton were driving along one of the narrow desert roads, between a vast flatland and a small range of mountains, when a side road caught Alton's eye. It was a narrow, winding dirt road, studded with rocks and filled with pits, leading off towards the foot of the mountains. It struck Alton's fancy. It reminded him of when this desert had been the frontier of civilization, over a hundred years before. "How does a detour sound to you, Reuben?" he asked out of the blue. Reuben looked up from where he'd been gazing meditatively out the window. "Huh? Um... okay. What were you thinking of?" "Hang on." was Alton's only reply as he braked hard, turning the large vehicle onto the side road. He drove onward, over every kind of natural obstruction imaginable, with the Humvee bouncing and shaking until Reuben was clinging to the door handle and the side of his seat to avoid being knocked against the walls and, in some cases, the ceiling. Finally a set of small buildings set against the base of the mountain came into view. Alton squinted at them through the dusty windshield. "Looks like a gold mine. There's a bunch of them scattered around. If the owner's around, get ready to be chased off with a shotgun." "What is this, the Wild West?" Reuben asked. Alton smirked at him. "Yes." he said. They pulled up next to a dismal little shack made of what looked like whitewashed adobe. They got out of the car, and once outside could hear the workings of machinery from an aluminum-siding building set right against the slope of the mountain. Both of them looked in the direction of the sound. "Uh-oh..." Alton began, before a certain feeling shivered his hindbrain, filling it with a sense of definite presence. "Uh-oh about says it." agreed Reuben as a figure emerged from the prefab mining building. "Well, well," said the man coming out of the building, brushing dust from his work clothes, "I don't get many visitors here. Especially not our kind." The voice sounded familiar to Alton, and as the figure approached he squinted in the blinding sun to try and make out who it was. A shaggy beard on the chin, ignore that, deep-set eyes, strong cheekbones, a broken curve of nose... "Donavich." Alton growled in recognition. As he'd told Reuben, he'd had more than one run-in with the unprincipled Russian before. He reached back into the car for his straightsabre, tucked under the front seat. As he glanced over, he saw Reuben, still on his side of the car, also staring intently at Donavich's face. "You here for my head, Walker?" Donavich inquired cautiously, picking up a sword rapier from the far side of the shack, where it had been leaning. As he stepped into the shadow of the building, his face became easier to make out, without the desert sun directly on it. Alton suddenly heard a short scream from Reuben's side of the car. Glancing quickly over, he saw the younger Immortal standing totally stiff, trembling, with what looked like a snarl on his face. A low growling was coming from his throat. He raised Marignac and stepped around the car. "I remember you." Reuben hissed. Donavich looked over at him. "Who's your friend, Walker? A student? Just how old are you, boy?" "I remember you now." Reuben repeated, his hand on the hilt of the sword tensing and relaxing, tensing and relaxing. "He's twenty-two." Alton blurted, wincing internally a second later. Donavich would be sure to try and kill Reuben now. Why hadn't he simply lied? "You can't be serious, child." Donavich sneered in Reuben's direction. "As gestures go, this is a stupid one." "1962." Reuben said in a low, furious voice. "Cape Town. You were calling yourself Van Der Galt. I... Venner never found out your real name." "Venner?" Donavich asked uncertainly. "I don't remember a Venner..." "You don't? You don't remember being chief of police? You don't remember raping a prisoner in the interrogation room, you miserable fuck?" Realization began to dawn on Donavich's face. "No way you're that guy..." "His name was Maximillian Venner. You starting to remember now, you bastard? You remember cuffing him to the table against the wall? How the wall in front of him was smeared with blood where you kept smashing his face against it, breaking his nose every time it healed? This starting to come back to you, you dead sack of shit?" Reuben was advancing towards the Russian, Marignac held low but ready. "You a friend of this Venner, kid?" Donavich said, beginning to raise his own blade. Alton tried to intervene. "Reuben, what are you doing, this is..." "_My fight_!" Reuben almost screamed, before turning back towards Donavich. "I'm going to kill you, you filthy bastard." "I really doubt that, whoever you are." a thin smile was visible in Donavich's beard. This, at least, was something he knew. "I'm two hundred and thirty-eight this year. Napoleon couldn't kill me. The Boer War couldn't kill me. Stalin's pogroms couldn't kill me. I don't think you stand much of a chance." he began advancing, sword leading. Facing him, Reuben spun Marignac into one of the Capo Ferro ready positions. Desperately, Alton grabbed his sword and tried to reach Donavich first. If he could just make this his fight, it might be all right. If not... Alton had never in his life been so tempted to break one of the rules. As he came up to Reuben's rear, however, Reuben's foot left the ground with a scuff of dirt as he kicked expertly backward into Alton's stomach. Alton bent involuntarily as the breath wheezed suddenly out of him. Reuben spun, his clenched fist backhanding Alton to the ground. "MY FIGHT." he said furiously to Alton, his eyes narrow and dangerous, his back momentarily to Donavich. In that moment, the Russian leapt forward in a graceful fencer's lunge, sword point describing a nearly perfect straight line with its terminus between Reuben's shoulderblades. Reuben whirled about, Marignac's heavier blade slapping Donavich's thrust aside with a sharp clang. "No." Reuben said in a low voice. The real fight began. Donavich hadn't lied when he'd spoken of his survival ability. His defense was careful and polished, his attacks fast and accurate. He was obviously a practiced and experienced fighter. Strangely, so was Reuben. Alton, watching from the ground, barely recognized the young man's style. His habit of extending off-balance was gone. His parries were so fast as to be mere blurs in the hot, still air. His every move defined cold, controlled anger. A deceptive cut from Donavich opened a long, shallow gash in Reuben's thigh. Reuben responded with a fast series of cuts at the head that drove Donavich into a scampering retreat to get out of their arc. Reuben started to press his attack, then fell back a moment, returning to an en garde position. Donavich took the opportunity, stabbing forward in a beautifully timed thrust. Even as he began the move, though, Reuben was crouching slightly and whipping one foot around in a half-circle, slamming his instep into the side of Donavich's knee. The lunge became a staggering advance forward as the Russian struggled to regain balance. Marignac came up, not so much parrying as guiding Donavich's blade past Reuben's body, even as the younger man spun inward until his back stopped Donavich's body. Marignac whirled in Reuben's hand, ending up in a reverse grip, pointing backward. Reuben twisted, driving it through Donavich's body with a heavy punching sound. Alton gasped. It looked like Donavich had lost. Reuben knocked the rapier out of Donavich's strengthless grasp, letting it fall the the dusty ground with a soft clatter. He stepped away from Donavich then, drawing Marignac out of his body with the movement. As Donavich staggered forward, Reuben made a fast horizontal slash, separating the Russian from his head once and for all. The desert air was still a moment, with only the soft thud of a body hitting the earth breaking the silence. The Quickening began then. Lightning pounded Reuben's body over and over. Alton felt the familiar sensations pulse weakly through him just from his proximity. As Reuben spasmed uncontrollably, and finally fell to his knees beside the body, Alton wondered who the boy had become for those few moments, and who Alton would be talking to when Reuben stood up again. Alton climbed to his feet himself, making sure he had hold of his straightsabre. Until he was certain of what was going on inside Reuben Smits' head, he was taking no chances. "Reuben?" he said, stepping carefully closer. "You all right?" "I... yeah, I'm fine. I think." Reuben worked at getting his feet under him. His head turned to regard Donavich's body. "I beat him, didn't I?" "Yes." Alton said slowly. "I recognized him." Reuben said, standing shakily up. "When I saw him, a whole set of Venner's memories kicked in. It felt like... I don't know, some kind of Vietnam flashback or something. I just went crazy." "You weren't just crazy." Alton replied. "You were something more. Crazy people don't fight like that. Until a few minutes ago, _you_ didn't fight like that either." "I don't know what I did. It felt like it was all reflex action." "Did... did Venner take over?" Alton had to ask. Reuben looked at him like he was crazy. "Venner's dead, Alton. Parts of his mind may still be rattling around my head, but he's in no position to be taking anyone over. I guess I just... reacted like he would." "Well, you killed Donavich." "Yeah. Now what?" "Well, we really ought to hide the body, but out here, I think we can just stick some sand over him and no one'll find him for a hundred years. I doubt he had a lot of friends." * * * Later, with the body of Fyodor Donavich in a shallow grave behind his shack, Alton and Reuben drove off, back along that narrow, miserable little road. "I don't think you need much in the way of a teacher any more, Reuben." Alton finally said. "Not with three Quickenings under your belt and your swordfighting going the way it has been." "Oh. Okay. What do I do now?" Alton smiled. "Anything you want. You've still got that guy's car, you've got a good sword, a Swiss bank account, and all the time you need in front of you." "Bank account?" Reuben asked. "I'll be setting it up for you as soon as we get back to Denver. In time, it should make you a very wealthy man." "Oh. Thanks. Um... Alton? Do you think I'll ever not have Venner in my head anymore?" Alton sighed, and decided to be honest. "I don't know. But I doubt it. You'll learn to live with him." Reuben looked out across the desert, stretching on seemingly forever. "I guess I'll have to." he said.