To the Three “B’s”

I tore down the Continental Shelf off the Bogue Bank while the pogo made periscope hops trying to track me. Endless plains of salt flats like the steppes of Central Russia (music by Borodin here); mounds of salts where the new breed of prospector was sieving for rare earths; towers of venomous vapors on the eastern horizon where the pumping stations were sucking up more of the Atlantic and extracting deuterium for energy transfer. Most of the fossil fuels were gone; the sea level had been lowered by two feet; progress.

I was headed for Herb Wells’ hideout. He’s perfected a technique for reclaiming gold (which nobody wants these plastic days) and is schlepping ingots back into the past with a demented time-dingbat which is why the Group has nicknamed him H.G. Wells. Herb is making gifts of gold to characters like Van Gogh and Mozart, trying to keep them healthy, wealthy, and wise so they’ll create more goodies for posterity. So far it’s never worked. No Son of Don Giovanni. Not even The Don Meets Dracula.

Following the Thieves Vagabonds road signs that Herb puts out for the Group, I went under a mound and tunneled through the salts, absorbing NaCl, MgCl₂, MgSO₄, calcium, potassium, bromides, and probably traces of Herb’s gold which he’d grudge me. I came out at the bunker hatch. Locked, of course. I hammered on it while the pogo bounced and thrummed overhead and it was six, two, and even they’d get me before Herb heard me, but he hear me.

“Quien dat? Quien dat?” he called in Black Spanglish.

“It’s Guig,” I hollered in XXth Century English. That’s the secret cant the Group uses. “I’m in a jam. Let me in.”

The hatch swung down and I fell in. “Freeze it, Herb. The fuzz may have spotted me.”