The Gunfighter and The Gear-Head Read Free Page B

restaurant
dining area.
     
    “Who’s your friend there?” The bartender
didn’t look up from the ancient newspaper he was reading.
     
    Gieo stepped right up to the bar, hopped onto
an unoccupied stool, and stuck out her hand to be shaken.
“Gieo—airship pilot, steam compression scientist, and mathematician
extraordinaire, pleased to meet you.”
     
    “Scientist, huh?” The bartender let out a
low, sarcastic whistle. “We don’t get many of those in here, what
with them all getting wiped out by their own EMP pulses. Got any
tech to trade?”
     
    “She had a device that let you know when you
were done having sex,” Fiona said, “but it broke in the crash.”
     
    “Shit, Fiona, you’d need to start getting
laid before you would need to know when to stop.” The bartender set
down his paper and smiled to Fiona. A short, stocky man with a
receding hairline of greased back black hair and matching, whisper
thin moustache, he struck a far more jovial figure than might be
expected of such a position in such a town.
     
    “Why would she have a hard time getting
laid?” Gieo asked.
     
    “You aren’t from around here, are you?” the
bartender asked. “Aside from the wagon train of prostitutes out of
Juarez that rolls through once a week, she’s it for women in this
town, and she’s made it abundantly clear to all the men that she’s
only interested in the ladies. Female gunfighters tend to be rare
and short-lived in the free cities.” The bartender pulled a bottle
from below the bar and poured two shots, placing one in front of
each woman. “What makes a good gunfighter is a lack of hesitation.
Fast hands are important, but there’s always a hesitation in taking
a life that can slow even the quickest draw when it comes to
pulling the trigger. The less conscience a gunfighter has about
killing, the faster they’ll be. Fiona here is the only one, male or
female, I’ve ever met without even a fraction of a second’s worth
of hesitation. Most women have too much to be any good at the
killing trade.”
     
    “That’s sexist,” Gieo said.
     
    “I’ll be dipped, you’re right! I’ll make sure
to turn myself in to the ACLU when they get back on their feet.”
The bartender went back to reading his old newspaper.
     
    “Got a room for her?” Fiona asked.
     
    “Colorado hunting party in town,” the
bartender said. “We’re booked to overflowing. I wouldn’t recommend
leaving her to her own devices with that bunch around. They’ve been
drinking hard and haven’t found enough Slark to vent on.”
     
    “Fine, she can stay with me.” Fiona downed
her shot, took Gieo’s shot, and drank it too. “I need a nap before
I go back out.”
     
    Fiona wandered away from the bar with little
more than a grunt of acknowledgement from the bartender. Gieo fell
in behind her, following her up the stairs, around the walkway,
until they reached one of the largest rooms in the far, back
corner. The room was once a slightly-modernized replica of old west
accommodations for tourists, but had since become genuine
accommodations of the post-apocalypse west when the tourist trap
section of the town turned into the most functional after the Great
Purge. Fiona flopped onto the bed, metal springs creaking in
protest. Her long legs stretched out to hook the heels of her boots
on the metal footboard. She slid her hat down until the brim rested
across her face, blocking out the bright, afternoon sun flowing in
through the two windows.
     
    “The train to Vegas comes through every two
weeks,” Fiona said. “You can stay with me until then.”
     
    “What if I don’t want to leave?” Gieo took
off her top hat, releasing the four braids of her purple hair to
bounce around her head. She unbuttoned her jacket the rest of the
way and tossed it aside as well.
     
    Fiona raised the brim of her hat with two
fingers to expose one eye enough to watch what Gieo was doing. “Why
would you want to stay around