The church's executive helicopter had kept fairly low as it flew over the Gulf of Mexico. The main airborne gangcults kept to the Great Central Desert, where there were lots of long, hard freeways to use as landing strips, and the Confederate Air Force shouldn't be interested in tangling with the Church of Joseph, but Roger Duroc knew the South-East was full of 57 varieties of psychopathic crazy, and it only took a set of wings and some air-to-air Stinger missiles to put a severe dent in the flightplan. As it turned out, the flight was quiet. Boring, even.
Simone just sat strapped into her seat and looked out of the window at the flat, sparkling expanse of sea. She had never flown before, and had been afraid it would upset her tummy. After what she had lived through, she had obviously developed a strong stomach. She didn't complain. Duroc wondered whether the Elder would approve of his bringing the girl along. They were close to the Last Days, and Seth probably wanted the elect to purge themselves of all distractions. Duroc wasn't quite sure why he had decided to pick Simone out of her New Orleans hell, but it still felt like the thing to do.
Since the Jibbenainosay, he had been having to crunch his way through an increasingly scary dosage of narcolep pills to get any sleep. Simone helped. She was energetic, and tired him out. Their love-making was desperate, and draining, and afterwards he could usually sink into a dreamless oblivion for a few hours. It was comforting, after being so close to the Great Secret Shaping Events of the Age, to be around a girl who barely knew the name of the President of the United States. She was smart, but her life had robbed her of too much awareness.
They flew over a little battle. A coastguard PT boat, augmented by a couple of Good Ole Boy skimmers, was methodically sinking a bargeload of Mexicans. On the skimmers, fat men with cowboy hats were picking off the bobbing heads in the water with precision rifles. Duroc wondered what the wetbacks expected in the land of the free. If by some miracle they got through the immigration patrols, they'd just wind up indentured for life. From the perspective of the killing fields of Guanajuato, even a life of servitude in chains must seem like a step in the right direction. At least if you were property, you were valuable enough not to be shot for sport. Duroc wondered whether he could take the time, in the name of chaos-spreading, to lay down some napalm on the Good Ole Boys. Biron the Rouge would approve, he was sure. But it was a side issue. He had Brother Sam Quarrill, the pilot, take the spidercopter up out of range, and they headed on, towards the Keys.
It was difficult to draw a coastline on a map these days. Just as the swell of the Mississippi Delta had put New Orleans on an ineptly-walled island in the mud, so the rising sea level had sunk most of the Florida peninsula. They flew over sunken towns, thickets of swampland, and shallow lakes. East coast resort towns like Daytona and Miami had done their best to keep some tidal integrity, but the rest of the state was practically a primeval waste. There was still some kind of community at Tampa, but that was as far as it went. However, the flyover did reveal some traces of inhabitation. There were swamp-skimmers out, and Duroc noticed more than a few houses in trees or artificial islands.
There was a big GenTech experimental compound at Narcoossee, he had been warned, and it was suggested that he not tangle with them. "Work of the Devil," Quarrill muttered as they overflew Narcoossee. From the air, the place looked like a prisoner-of-war camp. Duroc supposed the boys in Tokyo just kept the plans from WWII in case they ever had to build a swamp hellhole again. There was quite a bit of activity around the compound as they passed. As usual in America, there were people running around with guns.
They came up to Cape Canaveral from due East. The reclamation crew were supposed to have raised a stretch of the firing grounds out of the water as a landing pad, but work had gone slowly. Quarrill inflated the amphibian runners, and touched down on the sea off Merritt Island. They waited for the boat to come for them, and Duroc wondered who he would have to single out for the blame.
The seas were scattered with dead fish.
"Are we there?" asked Simone, waking up.
Duroc nodded.
"It stinks." She wrinkled her nose.
A human body, face-down, floated by. It bumped against the copter and slowly turned over. The fish had taken most of the flesh off its face, but Duroc could tell from the expoosed skull that the dead man hadn't been normal. The jaws were lengthened, and seemed to have more teeth than usual, and there were bony ridges around the eyes. What little skin remained was green, and rugose. Duroc stuck his leg out of the copter, and shoved the corpse with his boot toe. It sank beneath the surface, and didn't come up again.
Simone was still looking with distaste.
"There's a boat coming out from the Cape," Quarrill said. A skimmer, its bulk raised out of the water on treads, was darting towards them. A couple of people in Josephite black hats were standing up in the prow. Evidently, they wanted to make a ceremony of greeting the Big Man from Salt Lake City.
Duroc was wearing a short-sleeved black shirt and slacks. He held out his hand, and Simone gave him what she called his preacher hat. He set it on his head, and tried to look religious. Elder Seth's people were indispensable, but Duroc wished they didn't have to go through a lot of this thee and thou crap.
The skimmer slowed, and bobbed next to the spidercopter.
"Elder Duroc," said a square-faced young woman in Josephite strip. Duroc held out his arm, and they awkwardly shook hands across the gap. "I'm Sister Addams. Bethany Addams."
"Well met. Sister. This is Simone. She's my…executive assistant"
Simone wore a flowered beach coat over a coffee-cream string bikini that matched her skin-tone almost exactly. She wiggled close to the open hatch of the copter, and gave Sister Addams a look at her long legs. The Sister wasn't impressed, but swallowed her disapproval. Duroc came with the Elder Nguyen Seth seal of divine approval.
"We'll tow you in. A ceremony of thanks for your arrival has been prepared."
"I am well pleased."
Quarrill and the Brother driving the skimmer got together and slung a line up.
Duroc noticed another person in the skimmer. He was obviously not a Josephite. His head was buried in a mass of angled grey-and-white beard and hair. He wore open-toed rainers, ragged army pants and a denim vest covered in latches. Duroc recognized the names on the patches. Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Hercules, Pegasus, Circe, Argos, Vulcan.
"This," said Sister Addams, "is Commander Fonvielle."
"Of course. Good afternoon. Commander…"
Fonvielle saluted. "Present and correct, Mr Prezz, sir."
Duroc caught Sister Addams' look.
"And how are things in the White House?" Fonvielle asked. There was drool in his beard.
"Very well thank you."
"And the First Lady?"
"Excellent."
"Bully."
Duroc felt a twinge of worry. The plan depended on Commander Fonvielle's expertise, and the astronaut was obviously a couple of planets short of a solar system.
The skimmer was roped to the copter now. Duroc strode across and got a firm footing on the deck. He helped Simone, and she pushed herself away from the copter door.
Something surfaced betwen them, pushing the spidercopter and the skimmer apart. Simone screeched, and Duroc grabbed her.
The water was frothing and foaming, and the thing—a large animal—thrashed.
A long arm, basically human but thickly scaled, latched onto the side of the skimmer. Duroc took in the hand in a glimpse. The fingers were webbed, and instead of nails, the creature had yellow barbs.
Duroc struggled with the thrashing Simone, trying to pull her out of the water, to get her out of the thing's way.
It had both hands on the skimmer now, and was hauling its bulk out of the sea. Streams of saltwater gushed from its orifices. It was wearing the remains of a Lacoste shirt, the alligator still visible over one knobby nipple.
Quarrill had a boathook. He struck the thing on the back of its skull. Roaring, it turned around, opening its snout to reveal a tangle of green-furred teeth. Quarrill backed into the copter, but the thing pushed away from the skimmer and leaped for him. The pilot screamed as the barbs went into his flesh.
It had a long, thick tail, poking through the buttseam of a pair of waterlogged and multiply-holed designer jeans.
Simone was still screaming. Duroc had her in the skimmer now, and she was clutching her knees, certain that her legs ended there. He saw she wasn't hurt.
"A gun," he said. "Give me a gun."
Quarrill's cries got sharper, and then cut off. His head rolled across the floor of the copter, and dropped into the water. The eyes were rolled up, showing only white. The mutant turned around, its jaws bloodied, and yelled in triumph. Pouches under its jaw inflated as it shouted.
"Go for it, buddyboy," it was saying, the words struggling through a throat no longer designed for speech. "No pain, no gain."
Sister Addams was sitting glumly on the other side of the skimmer, hands joined in prayer. She seemed resigned to being high tea for the monster. Religion could be a weird thing.
"I said, give me a gun."
Duroc couldn't believe none of the Josephites were armed.
Simone whimpered. The mutant raised its arms, and roared. It was an ugly son of a bitch.
"Breakfast is for wimps."
Fonvielle lifted up his vest and pulled an old army revolver out of his waistband.
"Mr Prezz…"
Duroc took the antique, and hoped it wouldn't blow up in his hand. He thumb-cocked the piece and sighted on the creature.
All this activity was rocking the skimmer and the copter. But they were too close for him not to get a good shot.
The bony skull was probably too well protected. And the thick plates over the chest looked tough too. Duroc shot the mutant in the greenish white soft V of its throat. It choked on the slug, and threw itself into the water.
Duroc emptied the gun at the thing as it dived, lifting up little spouts of seawater. It twisted in the water and punched the sky with a clawed fist, shouting something defiant but incomprehensible, and went under.
"Freaking yuppies," said Fonvielle. "I hate 'em worse than poison."
Two days on the road, and the trip was going fine. She had taken a turn driving last night, while the Op slept in the back seat. The Cadillac handled well. Krokodil appreciated the machine. Every part was in its place, doing what it was supposed to do. The Cadillac was a fine cocoon, inside which she could ignore the rush of sensations, of information. The thing inside her was dormant, and she was not overwhelmed by its perceptions. She could remember her Jessamyn self. She could remember the Jazzbeaux days, on the road with the Psychopomps. Back then, a fast car, a neat guy, unlimited funds and super-powers might have seemed like the summit of her ambitions. Now, things were different. She felt a driving sense of purpose. It was waiting for her among the flooded silos and rusting gantries of Cape Canaveral.
The Op had been playing her his old records. He had been reticent at first, but a few words had pressed the right button, and he was pulling out more and more scratchy-sounding vinyl-to-tape-to-CD-to-musichip transfers. She realized she had heard of him before, dimly. She had the idea that he had been quite a big name before she was born. Before her father was born.
The dashscreen flashed a warning.
"Bandits," she said. "One-five."
The Op took a look. There were three flying objects, in tight formation, moving fast. Their current course would intercept the Cadillac in two and a half minutes.
The Op chewed his lower lip.
"It's probably government, or corp. Just routine."
"Nope," he said. "That's an attack formation."
He was right.
Seth must know she was coming. He could scramble some killcopters with no trouble. Her internal workings buzzed, prepped for a fight.
"Hell, it's the CAF," the Op sneered. "Sorry, ma'am. This ain't your fight, but you're in it."
"What's happening?"
"I pissed off some nasty guys a couple days ago. Hoodheads."
She knew what that meant. In her Jazzbeaux days, she had tangled with the far right gangcults: the Daughters of the American Revolution, the Minutemen, Buckley's Buckaroos. Down South, they had the Confederate Air Force and the Ku Klux Klan instead.
The road up ahead exploded, and Elvis swerved the Cadillac into the soggy brush. He flipped a dash-switch, and the underside air-blowers cut in, putting a cushion between the car and the mud. They wouldn't do for outright swamp, but they should keep the vehicle from getting bogged down.
The killer birds were overhead now. They had broken formation, and were circling around, dropping charges. Krokodil saw the Stars and Bars stencilled on their underside.
The Op was as good a driver as she had heard. The long car slalomed between explosions, sustaining barely a graze. Panels slid open on the car's flanks, and the weapons arms poked out.
"Rock," Elvis said, "and roll…"
That was nothing to do with music. That was the army expression for "lock and load."
The lases sliced the air, and one of the spidercopters had to dodge the red beam, going into a difficult spin the pilot only just managed to pull out of.
"May I?" Krokodil asked.
"Be my guest.."
She reached into her hold-all for the M-312 all-purpose combat rifle she had "liberated" from the US Cavalry back in Arizona, when she and Hawk-That-Settles pulled the first of their fund-raising raids on the G-Mek convoys. It was state-of-the-art deathware, with a laser sight, a full clip of minimissile slugs, and enough punch to put one of its charges through the granite wall of a pyramid. Elvis whistled as she unwrapped it from its antistatic cloth.
"Quite a baby," he said.
"She'll do."
The CAF were laying down ground fire now, angling the copter noses towards the dirt and spitting bullets from the twin snoutguns under the armourbubble.
Krokodil rolled down her window, and squeezed through. This surprised Elvis. But she didn't have to worry too much about the skeetersting slugs these hoodheads would be packing. And she wanted to get a free shot.
The wind whipped her ponytail as she pulled herself with ease up onto the roof of the Cadillac.
She could see the look of astonishment on the haggard face of the pilot of the lead copter. He was wearing a back-turned baseball cap. He paused for a second before pouring some shots into her…
…and a second was all she needed.
Getting a firm footing on the reinforced roof of the Cadillac, she raised the M-312 and put the dot of the laser dead centre on the exposed elastic of the pilot's cap.
One penetration-plus round was all it took.
The pilot's head exploded, and the spidercopter dropped from the sky. Hoodheads rained around it, trying to hurl themselves from the falling machine. Elvis drove in a big semicircle and kept out of range of the explosion, but Krokodil felt the wave of hot air pushing past her.
The Cadillac's lase crossed with a beam from one of the other copters, and there was a chain-lightning crackle as the discharges fed back. The CAF weren't top quality airborne killers. Krokodil reckoned they'd come out second if they took on the Red Baron and his Flying Circus, the Arizona-based aerial gangcult She put a couple of shots into each of the other copters, to dissuade them from coming in any closer.
Someone was shooting at them from ground cover now. This had the feel of a well-assembled trap. The Cadillac was crashing through thick grass, and the snipers were well dug-in.
Krokodil adjusted the M-312, and squirted concentrated napalm in an arc, hoping to start a brushfire that would distract the ground troops.
One of the copters came too close, and Elvis got off a ground-to-air rocket that took out its right runner and arm-guns. It wavered in the air, and went down for a bumpy landing. Hoodheads poured out, burpguns chattering.
A stray slug passed through Krokodil's thigh, putting a grey hole in her karate pyjamas. The lead just grazed her. Her bioflesh tingled as it knit. She wouldn't even have a graze. Since Dr Threadneedle worked her oyer, even all her old scars were healing over. One morning, she expected to wake up a virgin again and with her eye grown back.
She turned around, feeling the wind press her jacket to her back, and potted enough hoodheads to make the others throw themselves flat. She noticed there were two types of bandit in the assault team. The CAF were the hoodheads with red crusader crosses on their camouflage robes and white steeple hats. The others wore brown suits and stetsons and bootiace ties. Krokodil recognized the usual strip of the Good Ole Boys, an Agency she had heard only bad things about.
The sole remaining copter was hanging on, keeping high enough to be out of range, but staying in the race. A hatch opened in the bottom, and four black things dropped into the air. They didn't fall, they flew like whizzing birds, clawed arms clacking.
Krokodil recognized the devices as Killer Crabs. They were remote probes that locked in on a human heat pattern and pursued their subjects mercilessly. When they caught up with you, they hugged you with their razor-tipped arms and exploded.
The Killer Crabs moved too fast for her laser sight to be any use, and so she fell back on her senses. Aiming and firing fast, she exploded two and winged a third. The crippled crab fell out of the sky and burst in the grass. The final drone zigzagged towards her. It was too close for the M-312. She reached into the sky, and snatched it, turning it around so that its arms tried to hug the empty air. The Killer Crab pumped streams of paralyzing nerve-toxin out of its arm, and green splashes marred the roof of the Cadillac.
Krokodil's fingers sank through the durium-laced carapace of the crab, and she felt circuit-boards crunch. The Killer Crab sparked, and its legs hung useless. She tossed the piece of junk away.
They were out of the grass and on a highway again. And there were other ve-hickles in the game. This was moonshine country, and the GOB would need souped-up machines to keep up with the moonrunners. Fifty yards back was a wedge-shaped racing tank with a rear-mounted cannon. Krokodil put a line of slugs across its window, turning the supposedly shatterproof white glass to powder. The tank flipped up and over and exploded.
Elvis was slowing down. Krokodil looked up front. There was a block across the road. The kind of block the Op wouldn't drive through.
Krokodil swore. Her hair had come loose, and was streaming around her face in rat-tails.
If the GOB had parked a couple of trucks across the road, and set fire to them, then laid down a hundred yards of minimines and caltrop spikes, then Colonel Presley would probably just have cruised on through and trusted the Cadillac's defences.
The Cadillac rolled to a halt. Krokodil slipped a new clip into her M-312, but held her fire.
Strung across the road was a human chain. Men, women and children in ragged work clothes. They must be indentees. They were chained at ankle and wrist. There were one or two white-ish faces in the chain, but the overwhelming majority were black.
A couple of Good Ole Boys with pumpguns were riding herd on the indentees. There was a small gentleman with white whiskers and a big hat in charge. Krokodil wondered where she had seen him before.
He took off his hat, and swept the floor with a bow.
"Howdy, ma'am," he said. "Always a pleasure to meet a lady."
She sighted the red dot on the crotch of his tan pants. He had an automatic pistol in his hand. It was pointed at the head of a sullen, big-eyed little girl.
"Now, if you would kindly cayuh to lay down your weapon, then I won't have to spread this pickaninny's brains all over the interstate."
Krokodil didn't have time for this. But the Op was already out of the car, without a visible gun and. with his hands up.
"Back off, Chamberlain," he was saying.
The pursuit ve-hickles were drawing up around the Cadillac, and Good Ole Boys were pouring out. There were one or two hoodheads left, but most of them had been wasted in the air.
Krokodil kept her sight steady. Her business was too important for this distraction.
"You could be singing soprano," she said to the Southern gentleman.
The automatic kicked, and the little girl screamed, pressing her hand to her head. Chamberlain had just nicked her ear.
"Next one will be two inches to the right."
Krokodil knew why the Good Ole Boy seemed familiar. She had seen his face recently, but not in the flesh.
"Krokodil," said Elvis, "please…"
She let the dot fall to the ground between Chamberlain's feet, and set the M-312 on the car roof. Two Good Ole Boys snatched for it, and immediately started arguing over the bone.
Krokodil stood tall on the Cadillac, feeling the slight breeze in her hair, letting her body relax.
Inside her, the Ancient Adversary stirred.
Shiba's bites were itching badly. He knew he shouldn't scratch, but he lacked the willpower not to. The backs of his hands were worst. Dotted red with bites this morning, they were covered with nail-tracks this afternoon. The scratching didn't help, of course. If he got the time, he would ask Mary Louise Blaikley if there was anything he could do.
He was having to spend the day with Visser, which was not a thing he much relished. There had been another break-in, and a whole stretch of the compound fencing was down. Visser had some of his Good Ole Boys out in the swamp with rifles, tracking whatever large predators were out there. The ground by the fence had been suggestively trampled by something big. Some of the indentees were missing. Shiba wasn't sure whether they had been taken by the intruder or simply taken the opportunity to run away.
There was a work gang seeing to the fence now. The indentees worked slowly. Shiba noticed that there was an apparent epidemic of grogginess among them. One woman had just spent five minutes trying to loop a piece of wire around a pole. It was hard to watch. Shiba felt a compulsion to step in and perform the simple action. But that was not done. He was in administration. It was his job to administer. The woman acted as if she were drugged, or struck down with a swamp fever. Shiba would check to see that the indentees were being fed and medicated correctly. GenTech knew how to treat a workforce to get the best out of it.
There was a thumping sound, and he turned. Two indentees had been carrying a roll of wire, which was now quarter-sunk in a mudpatch.
"Hey, boys, that there's 'spensive," Visser shouted, slapping his truncheon in his hand.
One of the indentees bent down to get a grip on the wire, and a Good Ole Boy planted a kick on his buttocks. The man took a nasty fall on his face.
Visser laughed. "Get him one o' them mudpack beauty treatments, eh?"
"This is ridiculous, Captain," Shiba snapped. "How can you expect these people to work if you treat them like this?"
'"Denties are lazy, sir. You gotta give 'em a couple o' asskicks a day or they fall behind."
The fallen man got up, and a mask of mud fell from his face. Shiba noticed that mere was something wrong with his cheek muscles. His lips were pulled away from his teeth in a sardonicus grin.
"C'mon, Smiley, git back ter work," sneered the asskicker, administering a light tap with his truncheon.
The indentee pulled the wire out of the mud. There was a sucking sound, and it came free. His mouth grinned, but hatred glowed in his prominent eyes. His eyelids were drawn back, too. And his tight skin had a grey-greenish pallor that didn't look healthy.
"Skeeters got ya?" Visser asked.
Shiba realized he was clawing at his hands. Some of the bites were leaking a milky pus.
"Yes."
Visser rubbed his belly. "Me, too, chief. Ain't a place for a natural man, this ain't."
Shiba was inclined to agree, but didn't want to question the decision of the GenTech committee that had established the research compound, and sent them all here.
"The work can only be carried out under these conditions, you know that."
Visser slapped a bug off his shoulder. "I suppose so. Tell me, chief, don't you ever wonder just 'zactly what the gol-dang work is?"
Smiley was unwrapping the wire like a bale of silk, and the other indentees were languidly stretching it out.
"That's Dr Blaikley's department. Captain. I am not qualified to follow it We're doing medical research. Important biomedical research."
"That, as my ole Daddy used to say, can cover a whole multitude of sins."
Shiba's hands felt as if they were on fire. He also had pains at the base of his spine and the joints of his jaw. They couldn't be mosquito bites.
"You don't look too chipper, chief."
Shiba left Visser with the fence crew, and walked away. He wanted to get his hands under some cold water.
Suddenly, it was as if a hot poker had been shoved into his belly. He doubled up, and leaned against a wall. His mouth filled with warm water. There was a drainage sluice in the ground. He vomited neatly into it, feeling the hot pain surge up through his pipes. There was blood in his chyme.
Shiba straightened his tie and stood up. He patted his hair into place, and walked towards "A" block. His head was pounding now.
Reuben was outside, getting some feed sacks from the concrete bins. He said something, but Shiba didn't hear him properly.
The flaring pain at the corners of his mouth was making him grind his teeth That was most unhealthy, Shiba knew.
He remembered the pain of his Blood Banner initiation. This was worse.
He pushed into "A" block. This was Blaikley's kingdom. There was a washroom just past reception.
The duty guard—a Good Ole Boy (Good Ole Girl?) called Serafina—forced him to take a plastic tagbadge, and logged him in. His hands couldn't work the catch, and she had to pin it on for him. It was as if acid were eating into his skin. Finally, he was officially able to enter the facility.
Serafina smirked. She obviously thought he needed desperately to urinate.
He blundered into the washroom, and ran a cold tap, filling a basin. As he stood at the washstand, waiting for the bowl to fill, looking at the floor, a scorpion scuttled out from the waterpipes. It was a freak, with two tails. He crushed it under his shoe. The work blocks were supposed to be kept clean of that sort of vermin. It was most unhygienic, irregular. He would upbraid Blaikley severely.
The pain was rising up his spine now, as if the vertebrae were being displaced.
He plunged his hands into the water, and scrubbed viciously. Flakes of skin came away.
He looked up at the mirror, feeling some relief from the pain. His face shocked him. He could see the bones of his skull shifting, dislocating. A trickle of blood crept from one nostril. His jaw shifted from side to side. This was agony.
He realized he was screaming. The sink overflowed, and water cascaded around him. He looked at his hand, and saw the new skin that had risen where he had scratched the old away. It was rougher, greener…
There were people around him, dragging him away from the stand. Someone twisted the taps.
Dr Blaikley had hold of him. He felt her soft body pressed close to him. She was holding his arms at his side while someone else squirted an air bubble out of a hypodermic syringe.
She wasn't joking lewdly now. She was treating him as dispassionately as she did her animal subjects.
But why was she loosening his belt?
He tried to protest, but he couldn't get the words out through his clenched jaws. He could taste his own blood.
Two assistants had him now, and Dr Blaikley was tugging his pants down. He thrashed his legs, and she pulled his jockey shorts to his knees.
Merciful heavens, was the crazy woman trying to rape him?
"Just a little prick," she said, "with a needle."
The assistants turned him round, and bent him over a sink. His spinal column was a fiery mass of pain.
He felt the needle sink into his buttock, and heard Dr Blaikley say, "Got him."
The pain vanished instantly, but so did all other feeling. Still fully conscious, he was unable to move a muscle. He sagged, and someone mercifully pulled his underwear and pants up.
"Shame," said Dr Blaikley. "Still, it's not the size of your pencil, it's how you write your name."
They took him out of the washroom, and there was a gurney waiting for him.
He lay flat, looking up at the white ceiling. A fan was turning up there.
'It's happening fast," someone said. "His metabolism must differ from the others."
"He's not a proper subject," Dr Blaikley snapped. "He's GenTech brass. The fecal matter just collided with the ventilation system."
He was being trundled down a corridor.
"Hiroshi," said Dr Blaikley, looming into his field of vision and talking straight at his face. "You've had a turn. We've seen these symptoms before. There's nothing to worry about. We can help you."
Her hair was hanging into his face. He could smell her lemon shampoo.
"You're going to be just fine."
Then she turned away to someone else and said, under her breath but loud enough for him to hear, "God, I hope the Nip swallows that shit."
He was being wheeled deeper into "A" block.
"Get Visser, and tell him what's happened," Blaikley said. Fans and overhead lights passed. His head rolled from side to side. He fought to get control of his neck muscles, but couldn't
His head flopped. He realized he was hearing things again. The same sounds that had been getting into his dreams recently. They were like the keening cries of swamp birds. Primordial noises.
There was an animal smell. He had never toured this part of the compound. It was not his field.
Like one of his snails, he snatched a breath that would have to last a long time. His chest wasn't rising properly, as if the dope they'd shot into him had paralyzed his lungs.
"He'll come out of it soon."
"Then freaking hurry up, Misty. I like having two hands and big teats."
The gurney stopped, and he was transferred to a cot. It was just a mattress over an iron frame. Things were stuck into his arm, and he heard the steady beeping of a vital signs monitor.
Dr Blaikley peered into his eyes, pulling the lids back. Her sweet breath was on his face. Her heavy breasts brushed his chest.
"Hurry up, Misty," she said to someone.
His hand was working now. He raised it, and caught Blaikley's skirt, just above her thigh. He felt the warm meat of her hip.
She flinched, and Shiba thought he could see something strange in her expression. It was most un-Mary Louise Blaikley-like. It could have been pity.
She took his hand between thumb and forefinger and put it on his chest, touching it as little as possible as if it were a dead rat. Or a diseased one.
There was a clanking, and Dr Blaikley and the others were gone. The pain was creeping back, and he could move his limbs slightly. His hand stung where Dr Blaikley had touched him.
His lungs expanded, and he tore another breath from the air, feeling the fires raging inside his chest.
There were sprouts of pain all along his jaws now.
He sat up, and realized he was not in an infirmary room. He was in a cage.
"You've messed with the Good Ole Boys one time too many, guitar man."
Robert E. Lee Chamberlain was going to fulfil a longstanding ambition by killing him, Elvis realized. But first he was going to make a long, boring speech about it.
Elvis looked around. The indentees were sat down on the ground, their chains between them. Good Ole Boys with guns chewed toothpicks, and tried to look cool behind their Sterlings.
Krokodil was just standing, a little away from the car, her hands out where everybody could see them.
"Got any songs you wanna sing, guitar man?"
Chamberlain was pointing his automatic. The girl he had shot earlier wasn't crying any more, just pressing her ragged ear flat against her head. It was about time they had a slave revolt down here in Georgia.
"How about 'John Brown's Body,' massah?"
Chamberlain sneered, and shot the ground by Elvis's feet. He raised a divot. Elvis wished he hadn't flinched, but knew he had. He had the feeling he'd be seeing Jesse Garon pretty soon.
"How d'you feel without your nigra buddies to help you out, guitar man?"
Elvis didn't say anything. Chamberlain had taken a severe humiliation back in Memphis thanks to Gandy, Big Bill and the Dollman. This wasn't going to be over until the Good Ole Boy thought he had paid the Op back for that.
"I've got orders to put you out of the game, guitar man. Orders from Judgement Q. Harbottle himself."
"The big man?"
Chamberlain grinned. "Yeah. The big man. You should be flattered. Usually, Judgement has better things to do than bother with pissant solos who screw up field Ops. You've been a regular 'skeeter, bitin' and botherin' us. But he says we gotta make an example of you."
He waved at the indentees.
"You'll be real pleased to know that after we do the business on you and your lady friend, we're gonna let these nigras go free as birds."
Chains chinked as the indentees shifted. They knew better than to trust Chamberlain.
"The important thing is not that you get a .45 headache, but that these coloured boys see you check out. You've got quite a rep with the swamp trash. They reckon you're some kind of a hee-ro. But with your brains shot out through your greasy hair, I reckon you'll jus' be another piece of dead shee-it. These nigras will spread the word that the guitar man got blown away, and the Good Ole Boys won't get so much rebelliousness from the 'denties. Killin' you is gonna accomplish a lot of things…"
He brought the gun up to bear, and Elvis could see the rifling on the inside of the barrel.
"…but it's also gonna give me a li'l piece of harmless amusement."
Elvis wasn't sure how what happened next happened, but he lived through ten seconds, and was able to breathe again…
Krokodil moved faster than was possible, and Chamberlain swung around to take a shot at her. It went wild. A Good Ole Boy was on the ground, blood coming out of a hole in his throat. Another was up in a tree with a broken back. A hoodhead was holding his ripped guts to his belly.
Krokodil was cartwheeling, her hands bloody and buzzing.
Elvis was in the grass, moving on his elbows. A shot fired overhead. Chamberlain was out to get him.
Krokodil was wrapping a hoodhead into a pretzel shape. Someone was speeding the hell out of the area on a cyke. That might well be a smart move.
There was another shot, and dirt lifted before Elvis's face.
He was down flat by the Cadillac now. A bullet spanged off the bodywork.
Two Good Ole Boys came at Krokodil with electroprods. She put a hand to her face and shifted her eyepatch. A sizzling beam struck out and the two GOB men fell screaming, their heads on fire. Krokodil had an optic burner implanted to replace her missing eye.
Half of the indentees had tried to make a break, dragging the other half with them. A Good Ole Boy with a scattergun jacked in some shells and was ready to bring them down, but Krokodil was behind him, her elbow nutcrackering his neck, and he fell like a broken doll.
She had the scattergun. It went off, and a bloody stetson rolled past Elvis's cover spot.
Most of the enemy would be out of the action by now.
Elvis pulled the car door open, and squirrelled into the passenger seat. He saw Chamberlain through the windscreen. A slug flattened uselessly against the bulletproof glass, and Chamberlain ejected an empty clip, fumbling in his jacket pocket for a spare.
Elvis pulled what he wanted out of the dash, and stepped out of the car.
Krokodil wasn't even breathing heavily. The last of the hoodheads was dead at her feet, still spasming.
Chamberlain had the clip out now, but froze.
Elvis held up the voodoo doll.
"You don't believe in magic, do you?" he said.
The Good Ole Boy rammed the clip into the gun, and sighted at Elvis.
"Careful, you might hit the dolly."
Elvis gripped the doll, feeling the wood strain and crack. Chamberlain looked uncomfortable. His face was red again.
"It's all psychosomatic, you know."
He pulled his tie loose, and his collar button burst.
"It just depends on the victim's credulity."
Chamberlain coughed, and tried to speak. He couldn't.
"You and me, we're not like that, are we?"
Chamberlain threw the gun away.
Elvis dropped the doll in the grass, and Chamberlain spluttered, clutching his throat, cursing…
Krokodil walked over to the car. She seemed almost bored. There was blood on her face and clothes, and several smoke-blackened holes had appeared in her jacket. She pulled the garment off, and wiped her face and hands with it. Her body was bruised, but the skin didn't seem broken at all. She was not self-conscious about her nudity, Elvis saw. She moved like a living statue, and again the Op wondered how much of her was the original girl.
She took an identical suit out of her hold-all, and stepped into the loose pants.
"Enjoying the view?" she said, not at all nastily, but without any invitation either.
"Sorry, ma'am," he gulped. He had been staring. Even Chamberlain, who was drawing in quick, chesty breaths, had been fixing his eyes on her.
She slipped on her jacket and knotted the sash at her waist. With a touch of the vanity she hadn't hitherto suggested, she ran a hand through her unbound hair, tidying it a little. She adjusted her eyepatch over the burner, smiled tightly and said "Ready?" to him.
She slipped into the car, and waited.
Whatever trouble she had been expecting on the journey, this was only a minor instance of it. Elvis was not quite scared by that.
Chamberlain was looking for his gun. Elvis saw it glinting, and kicked it across to the indentees..
A man picked it up, and pressed it to his ankle-lock.
"No," Elvis said, "you'll blow your foot off."
One of the electroprod men had a ring of keys hanging from his belt. He tossed it to the indentee, who unlocked himself, and passed the keys on.
Chamberlain sat glumly, not saying anything.
"The keys will be in their ve-hickles," Elvis told the indentee. "If I were you I'd strike West. You can lose yourself in the Delta country, maybe make it to Texas."
"Thanks, man," he said. Elvis didn't hold out much hope for them. It was a long trip. But the GOBs and the CAF hoodheads had plenty of loose hardware lying around. The runaways would be well-armed, well-wheeled.
All the indentees were free now, rubbing their aching ankles and wrists.
The wounded little girl looked up at Elvis. She had tight curls, and a protruding lower lip. He smiled at her, and patted her head.
"Here," he said, "have a dolly."
He scooped the Robert E. Lee Chamberlain doll out of the grass and gave it to her. She looked at it, unsure. It was an ugly thing, after all.
Chamberlain opened his mouth to protest, but the girl had her thumb over the doll's face. His eyes stared.
It was just a psychosomatic reaction, Elvis told himself.
He looked at the faces of the indentees, and saw the sufferings that had come with their forefathers from Africa. The man he had given the keys looked a lot like a picture he had seen of Robert Johnson, thin and scared and running…
The girl started chewing on the doll's wooden hand. Agony showed on Chamberlain's flabby face.
The girl laughed, and started twisting the doll's head and limbs.
Chamberlain convulsed, kicking the air.
Elvis waved goodbye, and got into the Cadillac.
Krokodil had already turned the ignition. Elvis took the wheel. The automatic windows rose, cutting out Chamberlain's cries.
He saw the girl waving. The doll had come apart in her hands, and she had what looked like red paint on her dress.
As they drove away, Elvis supposed that really had been the last time he would mess with Robert E. Lee Chamberlain.
He wasn't sorry.
Since the Prezz touched down, things on the Cape had been really jumping. Fonvielle was being consulted all the time as the Black Hats beavered around the command bunker, trying to hook up the systems again. It was a lot like stringing Christmas tree lights. You had to get every circuit working at the same time, or the whole thing would shoot sparks and fall to pieces. The Black Hats weren't up to the old NASA standards, but they were enthusiastic about the work. It was like the early days again. They were on the threshold, expanding the envelope, strutting out the righteous stuff, spitting up at the sun, holing the doughnut and conquering the high frontier.
"We're reaching out again," Fonvielle told the Prezz as the Big Board started to light up. "We're gonna stick up a hand and grab ourselves a fistful of the sky."
The Prezz just smiled and nodded sagely. He looked a lot different now than the last time they had met. Then, he had been a jowly, growling character, direct and domineering. Now, he was a quiet, confident, smoothly handsome man with a touch of a French accent. Fonvielle was used to the Prezz changing. Over the years, he had taken many new faces, many new bodies. But he was still the Prezz. Fonvielle had taken his oath personally to the President of the United States, and he would stick by it. He had always known that the Prezz would remember, even if the rest of the world forgot. You could count on the White House to be on top of everything.
The Black Hats had been pumping swampwater out of the bunker, and repairing or replacing the rusted equipment. The damage was surprisingly slight. NASA had built to last back in the '60s, before it lost its guts and balls to the Suits. Fonvielle would miss the knee-high warm brine he had been sloshing around in for twenty years. He had rigged himself a hammock between two of the old central consoles, and become an extremely expert spear-fisher.
The locals had all been driven away by the creeping waters, and the few die-hard swamp-dwellers who stuck around on the peninsula had stayed clear of him. They called him the Mad Old Man. He didn't give a damn. He had always known that some day the Prezz would be back, and that he would have to get the Cape operations ready at short notice. He hadn't been lonely. After all, the ghosts were all his friends.
At first, he had thought the figures—manshapes in charred spacesuits, lumbering around as if weightless—were hypnagogic visions, and had had to caution himself against going crazy. He would be no use to the Prezz if his mind went out on him. Then, he had started to recognize them. The one with the red-smeared visor was Collins, whose helmet had ruptured during EVA, and the one leaking water from the suitseals was Gus Grissom, who had gone down with his capsule. All the other names came back to him: Shepard, Capaldi, Griffith, Mildred Kuhn, Mihailoff, Lindsay, Breedlove. All the other lost-in-space victims. Even the Russians were there, CCCP stencilled on their cosmonaut suits. Gagarin, the re-entry burn-up, was a man-shaped mass of mobile ash, with a bulbous helmethead. Fonvielle hadn't known the Soviets personally, but he had picked up their names over the years. Victorov, Netelkina, Sementsova, Dvorshetsky, Lazarev, Klimov, Ledogora, Rakan.
Sometimes, the ghosts would congregate in a crowd on the launchpad, standing on the water surface as if it were solid concrete, looking up at the abandoned gantry. Fonvielle understood what they wanted. If the Cape remained abandoned, then their lives and deaths were meaningless. If all this activity was for anyone, it was for the ghosts.
Black Hats with mops were drying the concrete floor. They went about their work with strange smiles on their faces and didn't say much except when they wanted to tell you how wonderful everything was since they saw the light. Fonvielle wasn't used to live people any more, but the Hats didn't seem worse than any of the others.
One thing that was good was that the Black Hats had a full security staff with some heavy hardware. Fonvielle had been getting tired of bucking the odds in his one-man war with the Suitcase People. They had started showing up about two or three years back, slithering out from the inland swamps, tails lashing, jaws grinding. They would eat anything that came their way, including human limbs. Fonvielle had been potting them whenever he got the chance, but he was only one guy and the swamp was getting thick with the Suitcase People. The Hats had already had a tussle or two with the creatures, and had got over the initial shock of their 'gator faces. Now, the problem was being contained. The Prezz had taken one of the things out personally as soon as he arrived. Fonvielle was interpreting that as a policy statement.
Black Hats were working over the consoles. One or two were in poor shape and had been dismantled, tangles of multicoloured wire spilling onto the floor as screwdrivers and soldering-irons were wielded in their insides. Others were operational, and the staff were transmitting test signals. The Black Hats were using a decomissioned but still-functioning satellite for the tests, bouncing messages off it to their HQ in Salt Lake City. Fonvielle was proud that the technology had lasted so well, so long.
The monitors began to hum, and an operator began tracking the target objects. Fonvielle stood over her and looked at the screen, recognizing the familiar ring of dots in their regular orbits. The operator had taken off her Black Hat to get her phones on. Without their hats, they were just ordinary people, if a bit more perfect-faced. Fonvielle laid a hand on her shoulder, and she smiled up at him, displaying white, even rows of enamel.
The target objects circled the globe projection. A printer began to emit a sheet of graph-paper, recording the twelve regular passages through space. Fonvielle looked across the room and saw Grissom, standing unnoticed amid the scurrying Black Hats. The astronaut gave him the thumbs-up, and Fonvielle shakily returned the gesture. He tried to hold back the tears, but they trickled anyway.
The Great Days were back again. At last, the Dream was shared.
They had had a big meeting in the old conference room, the dustsheet coming off the round table with the NASA symbol inlaid into it. The Prezz and his advisors had yanked out a whole mess of spec sheets on imperishable plastic, and outlined the aims and intentions of the project. It was the one he had expected. He still knew all the plans by heart, and he had been itching for another crack at this for better than two and a half decades.
Mars was more romantic, the Moon had more practical applications, and Deep Space was where the scientific data the whitecoats wanted could be scooped. But this was the one that ate him up from the inside. It had never been right, and Fonvielle didn't like leaving it that way. It could be made right, and he wanted it so.
The Prezz gave orders. And Commander Lawrence Jerome Fonvielle snapped off a precise salute.
There was a schedule. There were targets.
And within a month it would finally be done. The Needlepoint System would come on line.
And down here on Earth, the Arms Race would be over.
It was just a couple of swamp shacks on poles, but it had a diner. They had been in an amphibious mode for thirty or forty miles now, the Cadillac's wheels sealed off and the rear motors kicking in. The machine displaced quite a bit of water as it cruised through the thick swampland, and they were leaving a foamy wash behind them. Progress was slower than it had been on the road, but Elvis liked being on the water—if the thick mud and chemical stew that made up the Florida swamps could be called water—and the Cadillac handled, as always, like a streamlined dream. His only worry was that there'd be something toxic in the swamp that would eat the paint off the car's hull. They hadn't crossed streams with anything alive and large enough to be dangerous.
Thanks to an old friend at T-H-R, Elvis' onboard computer had a hook-up into the Gazeteer, the map-making-cum-census-taking service underwritten by the big Agencies. Wacissa was recorded as being still barely populated. The diner was called Casper's Chow-Down, and the trilobite thermidor was triple-starred. But the date of the last check on the entry was eighteen months ago. You couldn't rely on things staying the same for five minutes out here, let alone a year and a half.
Since their tangle with Chamberlain, Krokodil had been sitting quietly, rarely talking. He was intently conscious that the obstruction had been his fight, not hers. In her place, he would be wondering whether hiring the Op had been worthwhile. After all, as she had shown, she could certainly take care of herself in a fight. Elvis was beginning to feel the strain of so much driving, the familiar ache in his neck and shoulders. And he was tired of their road rations.
He pulled the Cadillac up by the diner's jetty, and used the automatic grapple as an anchor. The ve-hickle settled down, waters lapping around the sides.
Krokodil started, as if jolted out of a waking daze. Elvis had noticed the girl occasionally seemed to lapse into vague trance states. That was what cyborgs did instead of sleeping, he knew. The trances were functional. You could live without sleep, but if you didn't dream you went crazy. Sooner or later, the GenTech brain-meddlers would find a way to burn out the dreaming synapses, and Elvis reckoned the whole human race would just have to give up and die, because it wouldn't be worth carrying on. There were some things the brain boys should just leave well enough alone.
"Chow stop," he said.
He knew that Krokodil did eat, if only occasionally. It was probably a habit, like scratching an itch on an amputated leg.
"Fine." She didn't protest. Some of his courier clients objected to anything that slowed down the journey, but as they got nearer Cape Canaveral, Elvis got the impression that the woman was displaying a certain reluctance. She wasn't chicken, the run-in with the hoodheads had demonstrated that, but she was nerving herself up to face something pretty damned formidable out on the Cape. Elvis didn't like to think about the kind of thing Krokodil would find formidable. He had enough nightmares of his own.
The roof rolled back, and the thick, heavy air of the swamp, with its many odours, swept in, blowing away their air-conditioned, pollution-filtered and temperature-regulated bubble of atmosphere.
They stood up, and Krokodil helped him onto the jetty. The old boards creaked under them. Elvis was a little unsteady on his legs after so many straight hours at the wheel. He swivelled his hips to get the circulation moving. A mosquito buzzed by, but a stare from Krokodil warned it off.
"Hi y'all," said a voice. There was someone sitting in a rocking chair on the porch of the diner. "What's yer pleasure?”
Elvis tried to make out the man's shape, but he was shaded by a saggy awning.
"Vittles would go down well, I reckon," he said.
"Yep, I guess they would." The old man laughed, coughing. There was an unhealthy rasp in his chest, as if it were clogged.
"Are you Casper?"
He coughed and laughed again. "Hell, no. Casper done upped and ran off with a li'l high yaller gal a year or so back. I heard he settled down in Cuby with them ceegar-rollers and drug smugglers."
"You run the diner?"
The old man hawked at maximum volume, and spat clear off the jetty. "Nope. You'll find them inside."
"Thank you kindly, sir."
"Don't thank me, boy, until you come out o' the place. You'll find it ain't the same since Casper took off. No sirree, not the same at all."
A spear of sunlight came through the shifting cypresses and landed in the old man's lap. Elvis saw that his hands were knotted with arthritis. They were green and thickly scaled, and his nails were stubby yellow talons. The swamp bred strange things.
Krokodil tugged his sleeve, and they went into the diner.
It was empty of customers, but there was a youngish man standing behind the counter and a woman who could have been his identical twin over by the griddle. The man had a blond crewcut, a pipe clamped between his perfect teeth, a lightweight sports jacket and a Howdy Doody bowtie. The woman had a fluffy blonde perm that had turned to a concrete helmet with pink ribbons, a puffed-out dress, and a tiny, frilly apron. Elvis had the impression that the couple had been posed lifeless as shop-window dummies until the very instant he and Krokodil had come into the diner, wherupon they had sprung miraculously into an imitation of life, like the animatronic presidents in Disneyland.
"Hi, neighbour," said the man. "I'm Donny, and this is my wife Marie. We're here just to serve the Lord, and our good customers. What can I offer you?"
Elvis looked at the menu, which listed plain fare but was covered with curlicue flourishes and smiling cartoon faces licking their lips.
"Recaff, and…tell me, these porkchops you got listed here? They ever walked around as part of a pig?"
"Yes sir. No vatgrown meat at the Walton Family Diner."
"Great. I'll have a couple of them, smothered in brown gravy, with a side order of fries, salad hold the mayo, and, to follow, a slice of deep-dish apple pie, with ice cream if you've got it and nothing if you ain't."
"Coming right up, sir. And for your lovely wife?"
Krokodil raised the eyebrow over her patch, and didn't say anything.
"She'll just have mineral water. She's on a diet"
Donny grinned even wider. "A figure watcher, eh? Just like Marie."
Mrs Walton giggled wholesomely, and slapped a couple of chops on the griddle. She managed to cook without besmirching her pristine self, and the meal that was set before him on the counter looked as perfectly-arranged and brightly coloured as an illustration in a cookbook. A delicious aroma wafted up and curled into his nostrils.
Elvis took his knife and fork, and began carving into the chops.
"Excuse me, sir," cut in Donny, a tone of good-natured disapproval creeping into his easygoing manner, "but aren't you going to say grace?"
Elvis felt a chill, but bowed his head and mumbled.
"There now," said Marie, "don't you feel better now you've thanked the Lord?"
"Yes, ma'am," he raised a forkful of chop to his mouth.
Marie and Donny linked arms and smiled benignly at him. They could have stepped out of a '50s Sears-Roebuck catalogue, fresh from standing admiringly over their new kidney-shaped coffee table, backyard barbecue or atomic fallout shelter. Behind them, between the framed wedding photographs and the Norman Rockwell prints, Elvis could see embroidered Bible sayings.
Krokodil reached out, her arm moving faster than his eye could register, and she took a grip on his wrist. Not knowing what was happening, he instinctively craned his neck forwards, opening his mouth.
His tastebuds tingled, his saliva glands secreted. The hunk of perfectly done chop, rich brown on the outside with a core of subtle pink, was the most delicious fragment of food he had ever lusted after.
Krokodil forced his hand down, making him lower the fork.
"What?"
Donny and Marie smiled even wider. Nobody could smile that wide. Their smiles were slashes that cut into their cheeks almost to the ear, disclosing sharper and sharper back teeth.
"Is everything all right, sir?" Donny asked.
"We refund your money in full if you aren't satisfied with the food or the service," said Marie.
"They're Josephites," Krokodil said. "I've seen this before."
"Praise the Lord," said Donny, hauling a skeletal European machine pistol out from under the counter.
"…and rejoice as you follow the Path of Joseph," said Marie, pulling two three-feet-long, razor-edged skewers from a rack.
Elvis hit the floor, as the first stream of fire ranged across the diner. Plastic tomatoes leaped in the air and exploded ketchup. Salt and sugar shakers shattered. The checkered plastic tablecloths were shredded. Napkins danced as the bullets tore them apart.
Krokodil was flipping across the room, tables and stools flying out of her path, and Donny was trying to bring up the fire.
Elvis had his derringer out of the small of his back. He sighted on the still-grinning Donny's forehead, and put a ScumStopper into it. His fingers felt wrenched off his hand as the recoil hit him. The derringer was a one-shot fight-finisher.
Donny's perfect tan burst open, and gobbets of flesh flowered above his eyes. But there was no blood, and he kept emptying the machine pistol.
Elvis rolled just in time to avoid Marie's skewers, but the metal speared through the sleeve of his leather jacket, sticking him to the floor. Still simpering, she positioned her other spike over his heart.
"Have a nice day," she said.
Hating to strike a lady, Elvis lashed out with his boot, aiming for Marie's midriff. The skewer above his chest wavered and plunged into linoleum, but his foot felt as if he had just tried to give Mount Rushmore a good, solid kicking.
"Now, now, courtesy is cheap, sir," Marie said as she took his ankle and began twisting it viciously.
Donny's gun wasn't chattering any more. As he reloaded, Krokodil vaulted the counter, and double-kicked him in the head. He shrugged it off, and tried to fit a new clip into his pistol. Krokodil slipped behind him, and tried to pin his arms to his sides.
Elvis felt his bones grinding as Marie smilingly continued the torture.
There was a wrenching sound, and Elvis saw that Krokodil had pulled Donny's arms off. He turned to face her, his pipe still clamped in his mouth, and head-butted her. She went down behind the counter, the thump of their clashing skulls resounding throughout the diner. Donny wasn't bleeding from his shoulders.
Elvis tore his jacket free, and dragged himself upright. Marie still clung to his ankle, and hauled herself across the floor, her smile opening. He kicked at her teeth, trying to prevent her from fastening a poisoned mouth on him. Her hair was still perfect. Her make-up was unsmudged. It was as if her cosmetics were part of her skin.
She was babbling about the Will of the Lord and the Path of Joseph, and Elvis realized just what it was about the Josephites that stroked Krokodil's fur the wrong way.
The bastards weren't freaking human.
Donny came at him, kicking. Elvis felt agony explode in his pelvic girdle.
Marie's mouth gaped. The inside was as red as a firehouse.
And Krokodil exploded through the counter, screaming. Donny half-turned into her first slash with the cleaver, and it lodged in his neck. She should have taken his head clean off, but she simply sank the blade deep as if into a hardwood tree, and was unable to pull it out. Donny's pipe snapped, and Krokodil heart-punched him with what Elvis recognized as a killing karate stroke. The Josephite bumped back against the wall, bringing down a paint-on-velvet print of Whistler's Mother. He lurched forwards, and Krokodil shoved Marie's lost skewer into his stomach. The steel length bent as it went in, but Krokodil pushed hard, and Elvis heard the metal sinking into the wall. Pinned like a butterfly, Donny struggled but was held fast. He still wasn't bleeding, but Elvis couldn't see metal flashing in his wounds. If he was a cyborg, he was some odd new variety the Op wasn't familiar with.
Marie let him go, and slithered backwards like a crab, her starched petticoats flaring like a lizard's ruff. She was hissing like an animal.
Suddenly, the woman pushed against the floor and swung upright like a stepped-on rake. It was a neat, impossible trick.
Elvis pulled his Colt Python and shot Marie a couple of times in the chest. It didn't even slow her down. Her blouse erupted where his slugs went in, and blackened.
"It's no use," Krokodil said. "Bullets don't hurt them."
Marie's smile closed, and she spoke in an even, bright, reasonable tone. "Have you noticed how even with the new blue whiteness in your wash, you still can't get rid of understains, static cling, waxy yellow build-up, unpleasant household odours…"
Krokodil stepped in front of Elvis, and bowed to Marie, a martial arts formality that struck the Op as incredibly inappropriate.
"And is your kitchen floor sparkling fresh, lemony-honeyed, economy-sized, family-friendly, cottage-loaved, kissing sweet, babyskin-soft…"
Krokodil kicked Marie in the face, leaving a dusty footprint.
"Pain, tension, headache? You need fast relief…"
Marie's hands were around Krokodil's throat.
"Honey," said Donny, gargling around the steel in his throat, "I'm home." The lights went out inside his eyes, and he sagged dead against the wall.
An adorable dog ran into the room with a rolled-newspaper and a pair of slippers in its jaws. Elvis shot it, and it rolled away in a mewling ball.
Marie's fingers were sinking into Krokodil's flesh. His employer didn't show pain, but Elvis knew she could be hurt.
He punched Marie in the kidneys to no effect, mashing his knuckles. The woman must wear solid steel foundation garments.
He was flagging. His body could take it, but inside his mind voices reminded him of his age. When he had first had the Zarathustra treatments, there had been a lot of barracks scuttlebutt about the so-called Dorian Grey Effect. Apparently, some of the first volunteers had done fine for a while but then had the years catch up with them in fast-forward, like the last reel of a horror movie.
With a gasp, Krokodil broke the grip, and landed a right cross on Marie's chin.
"A Godly Home is a Happy Home…"
Yellow fluid was leaking from Marie's eye, like yolk from a cracked egg. She tossed her hair, trying to make herself perfect again.
The Waltons were like refugees from the 1950s. The thought chilled Elvis, as he remembered the decade of the music. They weren't the only leftovers from the years of canasta, Joe McCarthy, sputnik. Sergeant Bilko and Rock Around the Clock. Sometimes, Elvis felt a peculiar sense of responsibility about his longevity, as if he were the last survivor of the Battle of Waterloo or the audience at the Gettysburg Address, and it was all down to him to pass on the memory to an uncaring posterity.
Locked together, Marie and Krokodil crashed against the picture window, which exploded outwards. They rolled together onto the jetty, broke apart, and came up fighting.
Elvis left through the door, looking around for something to use as a weapon.
The porch-sitting old-timer had beat it out of there. Something else was missing, but Elvis didn't have time to think about it
Marie pulled up a board from the pier, and the Op saw polished nails sparkling in it. Krokodil put up an arm, and the board splintered against it.
Elvis found Donny's pistol under his feet. He picked it up, and rammed home the clip. Bullets might not hurt the Josephites, but they couldn't do them much good.
Marie stood on the pier, not even breathing heavily. He would show her that he was a mighty, mighty man.
Elvis aimed at the general direction of her head and chest, and emptied the clip in one concentrated burst. Marie shook and shuddered as scraps of her dress and skin flaked away. She lost her footing, and splashed into the swamp.
His hands felt as if they had been through a wringer. Moulinex claimed that this model was recoilless. He ought to report them to the Armaments Ombudsman.
Surfacing, she shouted "my hair is a mess" and struck for the jetty. But something—quicksand?—grabbed her ankles, and pulled her down. Her smiling face disappeared under the greenish mud, and there were only bubbles left behind.
"What the hell…" Elvis said.
Krokodil had her breath back. "It's like a progressive mutation. I've seen these things before. Not all Josephites are like that, but a lot of them are. I don't know, but I think they might be clones or something."
"Creepy."
"Yeah. And people call me Frankenstein's Daughter…"
Krokodil pulled her jacket over her bruises, and wiped her hair out or her eye.
"They don't have any body hair. They also don't have belly buttons, nipples or private parts. Some of them have their toes fused together like dummies."
"And they come from Salt Lake City?"
"Yeah, God's paradise on Earth. Don't be fooled by all that grace-saying and thanks-giving. These people wouldn't know Jesus Christ if he asked them for change on the street."
The pain in Elvis's ankle flared up again, and he looked down. An arm, still in a sportscoat sleeve, was fixed to him by a gripping fist. It held fast like a beartrap.
Krokodil bent down and prised the fingers loose, snapping them back. The thing still lashed. She tossed it into the swamp, where it floated a while, fingers flopping, and sank.
"Krokodil?" he asked.
"Uh-huh."
"Where's the car?"
He was able now to view what was happening to him with some detachment. He was even gaining some degree of control over his tail. It was odd having a new appendage, but he found it easily manipulable. With the changes overtaking him, the tail was like an anchor, holding him steady.
His body was finding its own reptile-human equilibrium. He felt hungry all the time, and had to chew his way through the raw carcasses they threw into the cage every few hours, even though the human brain wrapped inside the alligator tissue knew they were using the meat to administer knock-out drugs. After feeding, he would fall asleep and dream of operating tables and agony and Dr Blaikley, and then awake, changed even more, in the cage.
He knew he had been moved permanently into the experimental block, which Dr Blaikley insisted on calling "The House of Pain" for some reason, and that he was no longer an administrator. He was a subject. And he was not alone. There were other cages. He found old friends. Reuben was in one, his black-green skin crinkling as he progressed. And there were those whose changes were almost complete, who could no longer speak properly.
Reuben told him what they were becoming. The indentees called them the Suitcase People. Shiba could not see the point of the experiments, but that was not his business. Dr Zarathustra would have authorized Dr Blaikley's work. The experiments would eventually benefit the corp, and Hiroshi Shiba was not going to jeopardize his position by criticizing them. Inoshira Kube had explained to him that the corp was like a complex organism, with myriads of cells performing differing tasks all geared to the perpetuation and protection of the whole. This might not be as well-publicized an operation as the submarine oil drilling, the transport and media monopolies or the designer plastic surgery, but it contributed to the economic and social health of the whole being that was GenTech. And as a member of the Blood Banner Society, Shiba was sworn above all to protect the corporate colossus that embodied all that was fine and noble and strong in the values of the Orient.
Still, Dr Blaikley was looking juicier and juicier every time she came to feed him and haul him off to her surgery. He estimated that he had been taken to the House of Pain three times in the day and a half since he had moved into "A" block. He was further gone than Reuben, but he could still articulate words. From what he understood, Dr Blaikley hoped to preserve in him the capacity for speech. It was important to the experiment that the subject be able to give a subjective account of the experience.
Just now, he was reciting his Blood Banner oath. He had always had trouble with English consonants, now his throat felt as if it were not suited to Japanese either. He persisted, trying to master his new body. He must not give in. Great things were expected of him in Kyoto.
He lay on his belly, so his tail wouldn't get in the way, and looked through the bars of his cage. It would be feeding time soon. And then there would be the House of Pain.
Reuben was singing an old negro spiritual about Israel being in Egypt's land.
It occurred to Shiba that perhaps Dr Blaikley was proceeding without Dr Zarathustra's authorization. This line of research was characteristically flamboyant, but it might be a little too wild even for him. And usually Zarathustra's projects had obvious practical applications, like retarding the ageing process or building up the body's auto-immune systems. Shiba couldn't think what earthly use a human being half-turned into an alligator might be. If Dr Blaikley were using lizards as a model, he would assume she were trying to get amputees to grow new limbs. But alligators were just big, ugly reptiles with lazy appetites. Perhaps Suitcase People could be trained to work in sewers, scuttling through pipelines in filthy water. Shiba did not relish the prospect, but GenTech knew best.
"Let my people gooooo," sang Reuben, his voice resonating around the cell block
The food and the pain was late. Shiba wondered if the routine of the compound had been broken. If so, it was due to the lack of a good administrator, he was sure. If he were removed from his position, the corp regs automatically promoted the security chief to the co-ordinator's chair, and Shiba couldn't see the slobbish Spermwhale Visser handling the responsibilities at all well.
Shiba thought of Visser, and wondered whether his nickname wasn't a reference to another strand of Dr Blaikley's experimentation. Was the man ballooning into an aquatic mammal? Did some of the GenTech East executives miss the old days of illegal whale-hunting, and want to reintroduce the creatures into the Sea of Japan so they could resume their sport? As a trainee, Shiba had had to do three weeks on a GenTech R & R yacht, caddying harpoons for the upper-echelons. He felt cheated that the animals had become extinct before he got far enough in the hierarchy to be the whaler rather than the poon-boy. It was the duty of all those who saluted the Blood Banner to kill without a second thought when it was required of them.
Shiba's stomach hurt. Alligators, he had heard, did not need to feed more than once a week. He still had human appetites. Indeed, more intense appetites than he had had as a human.
Although unwilling to admit it, he felt an enormous sexual desire.
He was ravenously hungry. There were growls and cries from the other cages. His condition was shared by the rest of the Suitcase People.
He wrapped his lanterning jaws around the bars and chewed them, but tasted only flake iron. One of his teeth broke and he spat it out. He had the impression that it would grow back. New teeth were sprouting all the time, crowding his lengthening jaw.
This breakdown of the orderly schedule was intolerable. He would issue a reprimand when he was returned to his office.
Reuben stopped singing. There was gunfire outside.
"It's come," he said. "We're rescued."
What was the old indentee talking about?
There were screams amid the gunshots. Shiba heard creaks and crashes, and knew that the compound was under attack. The fences were going down. The security klaxons were sounding.
The lights flickered and went out, then came on again, humming. The emergency generators were working, but the main power plant must be down.
There were explosions outside.
The cage room had no windows. It was most frustrating not to know what was going on. Shiba didn't care to ask Reuben what he knew. It was not seemly for an executive to appear ignorant.
He slithered away from the bars, and waited for further eventualities.
The main doors burst open, and a Good Ole Boy backed in.
He was firing wildly at something advancing on him. The doors swung open and closed as he fired at them. Bullets ricocheted, clanging spent against the bars.
Shiba warned the security man that his carelessness would be reported.
Something big came through the doors, and towered over the Good Ole Boy.
"Hallelujah," breathed Reuben.
It was about twelve feet tall, and reptilian. It had mighty thighs and a tail, but small, almost useless human arms hanging out of the sleeves of a Petya Tcherkassoff T-shirt. Its head was the size and shape of the front of an old-fashioned helicopter, tiny eyes high up on either side, and its sharklike mouth was crammed full of large teeth.
"Yo," said the creature, "we come to bost yo asses out, homes!" It had a hispanic accent, and there was a five-foot scarf knotted around its brow.
It dipped its head to the Good Ole Boy, and opened wide.
"Excellente," it said, chewing. "Thass real radical, maaann! Thees pendejo ees out of the game."
A green-faced, upright figure with combat fatigues and a Statue of Liberty crown of horns squeezed past the saurian, and saluted Shiba.
"We have liberated this facility, sir."
Shiba reared up on his hind legs and stood like a man, tail lashing the floor.
"We are presently trying to locate the keys. You will be free within moments, sir."
Shiba bowed at the soldier lizard, foreclaws locked in humility.
The saurian stumped off, whooping in Spanish, and Shiba heard lab equipment falling over.
"Arriba, arriba!" the saurian shouted.
"Be careful," Shiba told the lizard.
"Discipline will be maintained, but the action is still being fought."
Shiba understood.
Two Suitcase People, former indentees to judge from their dark hides, dragged Visser in. The Good Ole Boy was bloodied and shaky.
The lizard pointed a revolver at Visser's blubbery neck, and ordered him to turn over the keys. They were on a ring attached to his belt. The officer tore them free, and passed them to a female Suitcase Person with long, straight black hair and dainty human hands. She tried the keys systematically until Shiba's cage was open, and then progressed to Reuben's cell and repeated the process.
The lizard saluted. "Captain Tip Marcus, sir," he said.
"Hiroshi Shiba."
"Pleased to make your acquaintance. Are you the ranking official here?"
Shiba looked at Visser, whose eyes were tightly shut, and nodded his head, slapping his chest with his lower jaw.
"We have received a surrender from this man. Do you accept it?"
Shiba lifted Visser's head. The Good Ole Boy's eyes opened. He was speechless with fear.
How much had Visser known? Was he another catspaw, or in on Dr Blaikley's schemings? Shiba growled, and felt saliva fall from his jaws.
"Sir?"
"Oh, yes, the surrender. I accept."
"Very well." Marcus nodded to the Suitcase Men, who shoved Visser in Shiba's old cell. The alligator girl locked him in.
"We're not quite sure, you understand," Marcus said, grinning, "whether to treat these people as prisoners of war…or as emergency rations."
Shiba felt his stiff snout forming a smile.
With Marcus at his side, he walked out of the animal room. The House of Pain was messed up. Evidently, a lot of Marcus's people had suffered extensively here and felt the need to wreak a degree of retribution. But even amid the mess, Shiba could make out the remains of Dr Blaikley's programme of experiments. There were half-dissected alligators lying in shallow tanks of blood. And in the vats, bulbous organs were being grown. A child's paddling pool was incongruously lying in one corner, pale-grey quadruped reptile babies swimming in the shallow water. They looked up at Shiba with big, human eyes.
"We've been regrouping since the initial break-out, sir," said Marcus. "Mother Mary Louise has had this coming for a long time."
Shiba would have to get to the .bottom of this backstory eventually. Evidently, his arrival at the Narcoossee compound had come very late in the plot.
"Where is Dr Blaikley?"
Marcus looked at the floor, horizontal lids blinking over his eyes. "I'm sorry, sir…I accept full responsibility…I was unable to maintain discipline…"
He drew back the sheet that had been flung over the main operating table. Bloodied instruments clattered to the floor, and the naked and flayed thing on the red rack writhed, exposed eyes moving in the ruin of a face.
"Old scores, you understand, sir?"
Shiba laid a cold-blooded palm on Dr Blaikley's meaty brow, and felt something approaching regret.
It didn't have to be like this. Marcus's people should have known that the doctor hadn't acted out of malice. She was merely a loyal GenTech employee, doing her best for humanity.
If she hadn't died that instant, Shiba would have ended her life for her.
He paused a moment, in tribute to a woman of science. A woman who had done some good with her life.
Then, he dropped the messy sheet over her and accompanied Marcus back outside, to survey the damage and to resume the organizational reins.
There were reports to be made, and things to be done.
There was no sign of Colonel Presley's pink Cadillac. Krokodil suspected the old man who had been on the jetty of spiriting it away. It didn't really matter who had taken the car. It—along with all their heavy weaponry—was long gone and would never be coming back. While they had been distracted by the Josephite freaks, someone had cleared a neat profit. Ve-hickle theft was a capital offence in most states of the union, including Florida, but few people ever went to the chair for it. Compulsive car thieves didn't have much of a life expectancy anyway, and the professionals were much too cool to get caught
Krokodil, who still retained a residual prejudice against Sanctioned Ops from her gangcult days, wasn't sure how Elvis would take the loss of the carboat. It was a common panzergirl taunt against Ops that their guts were under the hoods of their machines and that if you took their wheels away they were like turtles on their backs. There was even a whole range of semi-obscene jokes about the relationship between Redd Harvest, the top T-H-R Op, and her G-Mek V-12 'Nola Gay. But, hell, Krokodil had known gangcultists who were just as hung up on their hardware.
Elvis surprised her, by taking the loss as a simple irritant. She had gathered that a good deal of his earnings over the years had been channelled into the Cadillac, and that this would practically wipe him out financially. Apart from the one million he would pick up for this job if he survived, of course. But even a cool mil probably wouldn't replace a '57 Cadillac with more firepower than a US Cavalry cruiser.
"Easy come," Elvis said, "easy go. We better find ourselves a boat to requisition."
"Requisitioning" was a term used by Ops whenever they wanted to steal anything. They would turn over the Walton diner completely before leaving.
They hunted through the ruins of the kitchen and dining room. They came up with a cache of ammunition for the Moulinex machine pistol Elvis had requisitioned from the late Donny Walton.
"Do you reckon any of this stuff is okay to eat?" he asked, indicating a refrigeratorful of supplies.
She wasn't sure. Most of the food looked like the plastic replicas they use for adverts.
"Best be safe."
"Yeah," the Op sighed. "Hell. I could do with a candy bar or something."
"I could catch you a trilobite and we could cook it in swampwater."
Elvis made a face. "I just lost my appetite."
Upstairs, the Waltons had lived in an illustration from an old magazine. Everything was perfect in its place. There were Readers' Digest condensed books in neat rows on shelves, dust-free but blatantly unread. There was no teevee or ceedee. The couches were plastic-covered, and the lamps ugly. A pile of Josephite tracts lay neatly on the table. Happiness Through Spirituality, Miracles by the Moment, Further Down the Path.
"Do you notice?" she asked him.
He looked around. "Nope. Nothing strange here."
"It's what's not here. Colonel."
"What?"
"This is their living room. It's their only room. No bedroom, no bathroom. What kind of people don't need a toilet?"
"Jeeze," he shuddered. "These people are weird."
Krokodil smiled at the understatement. Like almost everyone else in the world. Colonel Presley didn't really know what was going on. It wasn't his fault. She had crossed Elder Seth back when she was a teenager, taken his spectacles and been taught to see the world as it really was, a fragile place being crowded at the edges by the Dark Ones. Monsters and demons walked with her always now. The thing inside her was coiled dormant, but she was forever aware of it, waiting for it to erupt again. She hoped never to see anything like the Jibbenainosay again, but knew that her life held those horrible possibilities, and that she would have to confront them.
"Look at this," Elvis said, pointing to a framed picture.
A talon of fear punctured her heart. It was Elder Nguyen Seth himself, amateurishly painted with an unconvincing angelic smile, standing in front of the Josephite Tabernacle, a glowing halo around his black hat, surrounded by little children who were beaming merrily up at him.
Without thinking, she made a fist and put it through the picture. Glass shattered.
"Whoa there, ma'am. It ain't that ugly."
The picture was torn now, ripped across the face.
In her head, the Elder spoke to her again, taunting her for her many failures. No matter how she strove, she would never stop him. She didn't even know what his Grand Design was; how could she hope to prevent him from the accomplishment of it?
She broke contact with the painted eyes, and stormed downstairs, with Elvis following.
"I never thought to see that face again," Elvis said.
Krokodil didn't understand.
"Mr Seth. He don't look no different now than he did back then."
"Back when?"
Elvis was preoccuppied. "The crazy days. The music days. Him and Colonel Parker ran me like a greyhound."
"This is the same man? Elder Nguyen Seth."
"Now you mention it, I suppose they are the same man. That ain't possible, is it?"
Krokodil remembered the memories that had bled into her mind from the Elder's.
"He'd have to be near a hundred years old."
"He's been around for a lot longer than that."
"Lady, what are you in to?"
She shrugged. "You don't really want to know, Colonel Presley. Just get me to the Cape."
"I'll try."
There was a small powerboat in a shack by the diner, gassed up and ready to go. They loaded scavved weapons and ammo into its storage compartments, and Elvis insisted on bringing along some of the more obviously pre-packaged foods.
"There ain't no charts," he said. "We'll have to steer by the stars when it's night. Still, if we cut across the peninsula until we come to the sea and turn South we'll have to find the Cape."
Krokodil didn't doubt that they would get there without getting lost. It was what would happen afterwards that worried her.
"This will slow us down some. Put a couple of days on the journey. And I don't know if there's enough gas in the extra cans to get us there."
"We'll deal with that when it becomes a problem."
"We surely will."
Elvis cast off, and the boat puttered out onto the waters, which rippled thickly as it cut across them.
It was late afternoon, and the insects were thick in the air. The Op was sweating heavily, even with his jacket off, and had to bat the bugs away from his face. They grew them big in this country. Even she was bothered by them. Doc Threadneedle had made her invulnerable to almost everything short of a direct hit with a nuclear weapon, but she could still be bitten by nuisance-value creepy-crawlies. That was science for you. They'd find a cure for cancer before they got around to licking the headcold.
He was humming under his breath. Krokodil wondered if he realized he had that habit.
It was an obscure American folk song, composed by someone called Alligator John Fogarty. She had only heard of it because Petya Tcherkassoff had done a cover version, with a bizarre Russian-accented twist to the English language lyrics, on his A Cry for Help album.
It was called "Born on the Bayou."
Sister Addams summoned him down to the control bunker. It was good news. Fonvielle had established contact with Keystone, the communications link of the Needlepoint Ring. If the satellite could be made to respond, then the whole chain would fall in line. And the Church of Joseph would wield unparalleled power over the nations of the Earth. His first impulse had been to order someone to report the good news to Elder Seth, but he held back. There was no harm in verifying the situation for himself.
Simone trailed along after him. He rather liked the obvious disapproval the Brothers and Sisters had to choke back whenever she was around. They were prudish fanatics mostly, even the ones who hadn't gone Donny-and-Marie yet. Given free rein, they'd like to stone Simone Scarlet, the Scarlet Woman, to death. They did that sort of thing all the time in Salt Lake, and Seth encouraged it. Spilling blood was all part of the ritual.
She didn't ask questions, but she was learning more and more. She wasn't much like the nervous indentee hooker she had been back in New Orleans. With Commander Fonvielle, she was only too willing to play the role of First Lady. The creature in the sea had unnerved her, but she had put up with all the other horrors without a murmur. The sacrifices were still baking on the tarmac as they strolled across the launchpad. Two were Josephites who had fallen beside the wayside and succumbed to doubt, but the one with a tail was a Suitcase Person. Duroc had ordered that the perimeter guards round a few of the monsters up for study. They had obviously been human once.
Bethany Addams was waiting outside the bunker, her best black dress and poke bonnet on. She had been with NASA before she joined the church, and knew what she was doing. She even remembered Fonvielle from the old days. She was of that generation of Americans that had wanted to be astronauts when it grew up, and been sorely disappointed when the ruinously expensive and dangerous space programme was dismantled.
Duroc looked up into the sky. It seemed close enough to touch. The Needlepoint satellites were up there somewhere. They had been frigidly unyielding for years, but the Frenchman knew they were just waiting to be seduced by the right touch.
They rode the freight elevator down to the bunker. Two goats were tethered in one corner. Ezekiel Astor, a dour Brother in shirtsleeves with a butcher's knife in his waistband, tended them. He was the Officer of the Sacrifice.
Sacrifice was the key to the whole thing. The Needlepoint Ring was lost to scientific endeavour. That had been proven in the '70s. But the Church of Joseph had other avenues of communication with the machine minds that controlled the heavy lases.
Duroc stepped off the elevator platform and strolled into the control room. Fonvielle saluted his president, and he returned the respect. The commander looked like Ben Gunn, but at least 75% of his brain cells were still firing.
Astor led the goats towards the console that had been opened up. The plastic casing was cast aside, and someone had carefully scraped away the jacketing of most of the wires. Astor gently picked up one of the goats and placed it in the nest of wires. He cut its throat and held its mouth shut as it bled into the machine's insides. There were sparks as the contacts were made.
Simone took it all as a normal rite. She was from the swamps. She knew voodoo when she saw it.
Sister Addams chanted softly as she engaged the monitors. The dying goat kicked feebly, and lay still, its life seeping into the workings.
The big board lit up.
"Contact," Fonvielle said.
There was some discreet cheering from the technicians.
"Keystone, Keystone," Fonvielle said into his throatmike, "do you read?"
The Satellite beeped its response. Later, they would engage its voicebox simulator, and converse in English. For now, mathematical signals would do.
Addams turned round, smiling beautifully. "On line, Elder Duroc."
Duroc quietly punched the air. There was another cheer. It was a shame the Josephites abjured champagne. This was one of those Moet et Chandon occasions.
"You have a subject?" Addams asked.
This had been one of Duroc's odd little tasks, the selection of a test subject. He had run his mind through a long list of people he had met and whom he thought the world would not be the poorer for the lack of. But then he realized they were so close to the End of All Things that settling one petty score among so many accounts due and soon to be paid was small-minded of him. Spontaneous human combustion had always been random in its nature, and so he decided on a genuinely random form of selection.
He had used the ZeeBeeCee Blotto Lotto RaLPPH, the most finely-tuned random-person selection machine in the world. The station claimed that it picked its winners without regard to any social, racial, sexual, economic, psychological, numerical, alphabetical, moral or sociological consideration. So, smiling a little at the thought of such ill-fortune following on the good, Duroc had picked Gavin Mantle of Springfield PeeZee, Massachusetts.
Gavin had been until recently a salesman for Kitchenmaster appliances. He was 32; married to the former Clodagh Hanrahan; father of little Tish and Reggie; a keen follower of the My Pal, the Biosurgeon soap; the star of his works bowling team; the sometime backstreet lover of Erik Kartalian, a bleached blond muscle builder, still a suspect in the embezzlement of five thousand dollars from the Kitchenmaster slush fund; and just on the point of graduating from zooper-blast and ju-ju pills to smacksynth and Method-1. Duroc supposed Gavin was a typical American. ZeeBeeCee had just given him one hundred million dollars in cash and a lifetime supply of GenTech medical care. His face had rarely been offscreen during the past week, as Lola Stechkin and the news team reported how Gavin was disposing of his fortune.
Duroc fed in the co-ordinates of the walled estate Gavin had moved into—without taking Clodagh, Tish and Reggie or Erik—and also gave the machine a map of the lucky winner's body-heat patterns.
"Keystone is accurate to the half-centimetre," Fonvielle claimed. In the past accuracy had been the problem. The curvature of the Earth and the distortion of the atmosphere got in the way. But now, with the charm of blood seeping through the works, they should have that problem licked.
The monitors showed the satellite extending its lase arm, and making minute adjustments in its orbit.
A map appeared on the big screen, with a red dot over Springfield. The map was magnified as the aiming became more precise.
Sister Addams was praying.
Duroc imagined Gavin in his new-won palace. He hoped he was alone. For some reason, Duroc felt it would not be fair to singe a GenTech supplied sexclone.
"Target: lock-on!"
Fonvielle was standing over the console.
"We have manual control, Mr President."
He lifted a little cover and revealed an unobtrusive red button.
"Simone," Duroc said, "do the honours, would you?"
With a satisfied smile, Simone walked across the bunker. Even Josephites who had abjured carnal relations couldn't stop themselves staring at her body. She was wearing something white and clinging and silky that set off her skin colour perfectly.
"Goodbye, Gavin," Duroc said.
Simone casually pressed the button, and the red dot on the map flashed.
"Firing sequence initiated," Fonvielle snapped.
There was a rising whine. Brother Astor sacrificed the other goat, almost unnoticed. Duroc was pleased with the man. He liked the way he did his part in the operation without being asked or demanding an acknowledgement.
Sister Addams had her thumbnail between her teeth.
"Firing…"
The big screen suddenly scrambled, and the map was gone. Lights flared.
"…now!"
It was unspectacular. The big screen just shut down. Astor's goat kicked and shrieked, clinging to life.
Fonvielle slumped in his chair. Simone stood away from the console.
"What happened?" Duroc asked.
The commander ripped out a fistful of his beard and chewed it like tobacco.
"Malfunction, Mr Prezz."
"The lase doesn't work?"
Fonvielle spat a hairball on the floor. "Nope. That's fine and dandy. Well up to scratch, in fact."
"So?"
"It's the targeting system we have to get the bugs out of. We don't seem to have reestablished control over the Keystone mapmaster programme."
A read-out chattered. The big screen came back on.
"Ah," said Fonvielle. "Does anyone know where Taabazimbi is?"
"It's in the Transvaal," Duroc said, "in Greater Rhodesia. Why?"
Fonvielle looked sheepish. "Ah, well, because Keystone seems to have um…"
"Out with it, commander!"
"…obliterated it."
It was getting dark. The boat was going to need gas soon, or they would be down to using the paddles. Elvis told Krokodil. "Well, there are people nearby…"
Elvis looked at her. "You can tell that from some cyborg sense?"
"No, I can tell that from simple observation. Wherever there's garbage, there are people, and look…"
There was a mud lagoon clogged with food wrappers and other disposables, sinking slowly.
"That's someone's dump."
"Yeah." Elvis reached for his Moulinex.
"Paranoid."
"It's the only way to get to be my age, ma'am."
Nevertheless, he left the gun where it was.
"Yeah," she sighed. "I suppose you're right."
"We'll try silent running from here on in."
He cut the motor, and took the paddles from the stern locker. He handed her one.
They eased the boat forwards. The swamp was thick here, more mud than water, and it was easy to get clogged with the swampgrass. They'd had to stop several times to unwind long tangles from the propellor.
Elvis could hear noises up ahead. Human noises.
"Sounds like a party," Krokodil said.
There was music. Cooking smells reached them.
"I sure hope the natives are friendly round here."
"We'll find out soon enough."
They could see lights through the hanging cypresses. Elvis felt very hungry again.
'"Old eet raight zere, mon ami," said a harsh, loud voice. The accent was backwoods French.
Elvis pulled his paddle out of the water, and raised his hands.
"We're friends," he said.
"Easy to say, 'ard to preuve."
The Frenchman leaned out of the shadows. He was lying in the branches of a cypress, camouflaged among the leaves. He wore a patchwork of oilskins and small pelts, and had long, tangled hair. He was carrying a Grand Guignol shotgun, four barrels welded together in a square. One of those things could blast a hole clear through a bull elephant.
"We're just passing through. My name is Presley, and this is…"
He couldn't think of a way of making "Krokodil" sound like a friendly name.
"Jessamyn," she said.
"Enchanté, mam'selle. Je suis Zhille."
"Where is this place?"
"It 'as no name. We float."
Zhille put up his shotgun.
"Can a feller get some gas around here? Or maybe some food?"
Zhille smiled and kissed his fingers. "If a felleau 'as ze price of ze services."
"We can pay," said Krokodil.
"Zen, come on een, get warm and get fed…"
Zhille held aside a curtain of cypress, and they paddled past his tree.
There was an island ahead, with a bonfire built on it. Elvis realized that it was not a true island, but rather a large raft built on a network of empty oildrums layered over with soil and vegetation. There were shacks and storehouses. And a group of maybe twenty or thirty people, clustered around the fire. A spitted 'gator was turning over the flames, roasting nicely, and big-bellied iron cookpots were heating up gallons of gumbo.
"You laike Cajun cookeeng?" Zhille asked, appearing to tether the boat.
"Yes, sir," Elvis replied politely.
"You laike plenty of 'ot spices, n'est-ce pas?"
"I surely do."
"Zen zis ees ze plaice for yiu."
"The natives," Krokodil whispered, "seem friendly."
Still, Elvis saw her slinging something from Donny Walton's gun collection around her waist You could never be too careful.
There was a small band by the fire, playing fast, raucous zydeco. A serious, thin-cheeked woman with a derby hat and a long skirt sawed away at a fiddle. The rest were okay, but she was good. A few barefoot children were dancing, but most of the crowd were more interested in eating just now.
Zhille introduced them to the community headman, DuFrezne, and his wife Jeanne, and to others. Places were found for them near the fire, in the food line.
Elvis watched the 'gator turning. He had never eaten 'gator before, but knew people who swore by it.
"At least they've taken its eyes out," Krokodil said.
"They're in the gumbo."
"Oh well, I've eaten raw lizard in my time. This looks appetizing by comparison."
"You need to eat?"
She shook her head. "But I should, here. We don't want anyone thinking there's anything odd about me, do we?"
The fire made strange shapes on her face. Elvis wondered just how odd Krokodil really was. He knew she was packed full of bio-amendments. But there was something else weird about the woman. Sometimes, someone else seemed to be looking out through her eyes.
The music stopped, and the eating started.
Elvis was fortunate enough to get an unidentifiable hunk of tasty, highly-spiced meat. After a day's fast, it was wonderful. And the swamp-brewed moonshine that came with it burned all the tastes out of his mouth anyway. He wondered if his tastebuds had sustained any lasting damage from the liquid fire.
They talked about themselves, but were vague about their reasons for being in the swamplands. Krokodil told DuFrezne her name was Jessamyn Bonney, and that she had been wilder as a teenager. Elvis remembered the name. She had been a War Chief with the Psychopomps, a Western gangcult, four or five years ago. It was hard to imagine the calm woman in glitter make-up and ragged tights. Elvis just said he had been in the army most of his life.
As they talked, Elvis was aware of dark eyes fixed on them. It was the fiddle-player.
As the fires died down, the woman got up, and began a long recital in incomprehensible Cajun French, punctuating her sentences with unearthly melodies.
"Zat ees 'Ti-Mouche," said Zhille, "she ees un p'tit crazy, but she 'as ze saight…"
"The Sight?"
Zhille made an expressive gesture. Elvis gathered 'Ti-Mouche was a wise woman, a white witch.
"She talks about yiu," Zhille said.
'Ti-Mouche was playing a drawn-out but spirited tune, a Devil's Trill.
"What's she saying?"
Zhille wasn't sure whether to pass it on. "She says zat yiu 'ave…uh, eet 'ard to explain…ze talent?"
"Talent?"
"Eet ees witch stoff. She says yiu a powerful sorciere, only' yiu do not know eet. Yiu put aside your magic, turn your back on eet, but ze magic, eet weel not be put aside. Eet come back soon."
Elvis felt the music creep into his spine. 'Ti-Mouche seemed to be playing incredibly complex variations on "Heartbreak Hotel." She couldn't know…
The music got darker, wilder, and 'Ti-Mouche's recital became a rant. Zhille stopped trying to explain, but Elvis could tell he was unnerved. The climate of the gathering chilled, and a few of the children crossed themselves. DuFrezne looked serious, and nodded.
"She's talking about me," Krokodil said.
The bow scraped higher, and 'Ti-Mouche's eyes glowed in the dark. Her skirts whipped around her thin legs, and her caterwauling was answered by cries from creatures out in the swamp.
Elvis nudged Zhille. "What is she saying now?"
Zhille was reluctant. "She talk about your woman. She say your woman 'ave ze diable a sa coeur. Yiu understand." 'Ti-Mouche was saying that Krokodil was the Devil in disguise. Krokodil did not seem unsettled by the accusation.
"Bot, eet alright to make spaice for yiu at ze fire…"
DuFrezne looked happier, his decision vindicated.
"…because yiu such a pow'ful sorciere."
The fires flared up again as Ti-Mouche finished her recital. She flopped down, exhausted, and was handed a jug of white lightning.
After a while, Elvis asked. "Say, how much do we owe you for the food and gas?"
He had his moneyclip out.
Zhille looked offended. "No monai, m'sieu. Yiu pay os een kaind. We feed yiu, warm yiu at our fire, play yiu our museec. Yiu most pay os back weeth a story, a song, a dance. Sometheeng to pass ze naight-taime."
Krokodil was smirking, stretched out like a cat.
'Ti-Mouche knew what to do. She took a battered guitar from one of the band, and laid it in front of him.
"Yiu most play," Zhille said. "'Ti-Mouche wishes eet."
Krokodil sat up, interested.
Elvis ran some chords. It was an old instrument, but a good one.
It was as if the music had never gone away.
"Welllll," he began, "since my baby left me…."
Raimundo Rex brought Spermwhale Visser into Shiba's office, and towered over the Good Ole Boy, dripping saliva. Everywhere inside, Raimundo had to hunch over, and still his huge, rough-skinned head scraped paint off ceilings.
"Good morning," Shiba said to the trembling security man.
He had had to wrench the back off his chair to accomodate his tail, and rip out the seats of all his pants. He would be making little adjustments like that for a long time. But he was already used to his new self. The tail apart, his suits still fit him, and he didn't have to worry about the heat or the insects any more.
"An interesting thing about alligators, Mr Visser, did you know that…"
Visser spat blood and teeth. "Can it, Nip!"
The Good Ole Boy was pushed down into a chair by Raimundo's feeble hands. Visser glowered at Shiba, and wiped his bruised face. Raimundo was clumsy by nature, and prone to over-using his teeth and talons.
"Eh, Fatty," Raimundo said, "doncha show no disrespeck for the maaan, else maybe yo' cabeza an' my stomach get together for a leetle cha-cha."
The saurian laughed, and flapped an arm.
"Mr Visser, there is no reason why this interview should be unpleasant."
The Good Ole Boy grunted.
"I am no more responsible for my condition than you are for yours. Indeed, if responsibility is to be handed out, you should perhaps step forward to accept it."
Visser fidgeted. He took out a packet of Hi-Tars.
"Kindly refrain from smoking."
Raimundo reached down and lashed the cigarettes out of Visser's hand.
"Don' damage yo' health, Fatty…"
Shiba straightened the files laid out on his desk. He had been making full use of Dr Blaikley's cardkeys. One of the Suitcase People had been a hacker, and he had got them into the compound's datalink records. Shiba was appalled at how much had been kept from him these past few months. If he had been apprised of the nature and history of Dr Blaikley's project, he might well have done the unthinkable and questioned an order from GenTech central. He certainly wouldn't have come to Florida if he had known what the effects were likely to be. Of course, he was not yet sure how much of the story Dr Blaikley had chosen to share with the corp.
"Your predecessor. Captain Marcus, has been most informative…"
"Freakin' reptile!"
Raimundo growled, and Visser slumped again.
"It seems that you were brought in after Dr Blaikley's first little disaster. A shame. You have done little to prevent the second unfortunate incident…"
"Freakin' mad scientist bitch!"
Shiba was offended by the disloyalty.
"But no. Only now do I fully understand the late doctor's genius. Am I not…improved?"
"You're a freakin' monster, Shiba."
Shiba laughed. "How little you understand. It is a pity that you cannot share my condition…"
Visser blanched.
"I know all about the drugs Dr Blaikley has been giving to you, to make you immune."
Visser looked mutely hostile.
"You should, of course, have shared your supply, shouldn't you?"
Raimundo scratched the wall with his hindleg, leaving five deep clawmarks.
"You should have made sure that I was immune, and the indentees…"
Visser's piggy eyes were open, defiant.
"But you have been profiting from your supplies, haven't you? How many of us are as we are not through Dr Blaikley's designs, but through your greed and carelessness? Oh, I admit that when the changes began, the doctor invariably took advantage of the situation. She never investigated your affairs too closely…"
"She was a cuckoo, Shiba…"
"She was under pressure. After the first outbreak of spontaneous mutation, and the mass escape she must have realized the project was under threat. She stepped up the work. A shame that she died before she realized how well she succeeded."
Shiba stood up, his tail dragging as he walked, and paced the office. Beyond the windows, he could see the Suitcase People basking in the morning sun. How many were there? It was hard to tell. Marcus's group had split up in the swamps. Some had swum towards the coast, others struck south for the Everglades. The rate of change differed from subject to subject. Some evolved naturally, without the need for surgery, but some had been jumped through several stages by Dr Blaikley. It wasn't quite a disease, but it spread from long-term contact among other factors. You had to live in the swamp with the infection in you for at least six months, but when it came upon you the change was quite rapid. Startlingly so, in fact.
"The indentees took a vote, Visser," Shiba said. "They want you and your crew to be weighted down and thrown into the swamp. Some of our reptile brethren think that would be wasteful. They want to…it pains me to say it, but be said it must…they want to eat you."
Visser was sweating. Raimundo chuckled through a thousand teeth. He was whistling "La Bamba."
"What do you want, Shiba?"
"An apology would be nice."
"Sorry."
"Thank you. I appreciate your sincerity."
Shiba nodded, and Raimundo dragged Visser out of the room.
"See yo' later, alligator," Raimundo said.
Shiba smiled, and replied, "after a while, crocodile."
The saurian was surprised he knew the come-back.
"I made a study of American culture at GenTech college in Japan, Raimundo. Bill Haley, Mickey Mouse, Ernest Hemingway. I know all the greats."
"Right onnnn, maaan!" Raimundo made a tiny fist in the air, and shuffled off, the complaining Visser in front of him.
Shiba really had no idea what to do with the Good Ole Boys. He had not yet resolved the question of how to conduct himself, to decide where his loyalties lay. Captain Marcus was confirmed in his old job, replacing Visser as security chief. He had posted guards, and was even supervising the repair of the compound fences. Together with the indentees, many of whom were already showing signs of changing, the Suitcase People were working hard. Some of the indentees had fled into the swamps, but most had stayed. They reasoned that the Suitcase People were at least better company than the Good Ole Boys had been. Shiba was touched that he had always been singled out by the workers for his fair-minded treatment of them and, just as long as he was in charge of the compound, they would elect to stay under his protection. Reuben, a full-jawed Suitcase Person, was their representative, liaising with Shiba and Marcus. The compound was being run more efficiently now that Blaikley and Visser were deposed.
There was a new factor in the area. A group had moved into the abandoned launching site at Cape Canaveral, and Marcus's people had had several clashes with them. Shiba was shown a black-clad corpse. It had been one of a party from the Cape who had ventured inland to hunt down Suitcase People. The clothes had been unusual, with pegs instead of buttons, no pockets, large stitches. Certain fundamentalist American sects favoured such clothing. Marcus had suggested fortifying the compound against a possible mass attack, and Shiba had authorized the work. He had also organized patrols and sent them out on reconnaissance sweeps through the swampland. He wanted to know the disposition of any hypothetical enemy.
Few of the scientists had survived the attack on the compound. Old scores had been bloodily settled. Shiba had interviewed a lab assistant and a specialist with a tunnel vision knowledge of recombinant DNA and an incredible ignorance about everything else. He had tried to understand Dr Blaikley's idiosyncratic experiment log, written in her own peculiar and profane shorthand, but it was beyond him. Clearly, the death of the scientist did not curtail the experiment. Shiba felt a duty to his employers and to science, not to mention the memory of Mary Louise Blaikley, to continue the collection of data. Any findings would be named after her, he had decided. The Blaikley Effect. The Mary Louise Syndrome.
He would have liked to contact Kyoto and give a full report, but the satellite link radio had been destroyed by an explosion and was beyond repair. He could have used the GenTech intelligence nets to fill him in on the Cape Canaveral situation. But the Suitcase People were on their own until Dr Zarathustra or someone noticed the compound had not been heard from. Then, Shiba would decide whether he owed loyalty to the corp or to his new race. Again, he recited his Blood Banner Oath.
He came to a decision. It would be best all round if Visser were quietly killed without ceremony.
He lashed the intercom buzzer with his tail.
"Marielle," he said to his green-faced secretary, "rustle me up a firing squad, would you?"
He felt hungry.
Elvis felt different this morning. He had woken up with the music in his head again. It was as strong as it had been in the early days. Before Parker and Seth turned it all bad with B-movies and pep pills.
The Cajuns had listened to him play for over an hour. The words of the songs all came back as if he had sung them the day before, rather than forty years ago. "Blue Suede Shoes," "I Don't Care if the Sun Don't Shine," "Love Me Tender," "Long Tall Sally," "Blue Moon," "Guitar Man," "Good Rockin' Tonight," "Baby, Let's Play House," "Mystery Train," "Remember to Forget," "Lawdy, Miss Clawdy," "Don't Be Cruel," "Poor Boy," "When My Blue Moon Turns to Gold Again," "Blueberry Hill," "Mean Woman Blues," "Jailhouse Rock," "Crawfish," "Fever," "Are You Lonesome Tonight?," "Love is Strange."
He tried the songs he'd never sung before, just heard over the years. He approximated a few Petya Tcherkassoff numbers, strangled his voice around "Don't Stop the Carnival"—the one Ken Dodd song he could stand—riffed jokily through Lesley Gore's "It's My Party," taken a shot at the Mothers of Violence's "Tas" and wound up croaking, banging his bleeding fingers against the silver strings as he went through the other Mississippi singer's repertoire. "Crossroads," 'Terraplane," "Walking Blues," "Me and the Devil."
The elation that had had the Cajuns dancing now evaporated, leaving only the chill of the encroaching night Elvis had imagined Robert Johnson himself standing outside the circle of the light, knowing the hellhound was on his trail, listening to the white boy sing his songs, too bone-weary to react.
When he sang "Me and the Devil," Elvis remembered Mr Seth. He had been a sharp-suited, well-spoken huckster. Now, he was an all-in-black preacher. Elder Nguyen Seth.
It was creepy. That Krokodil and he should have the same Devil. 'Ti-Mouche said he had magic and she had a demon. Something had brought them together.
They had slept in the boat, huddled together under a blanket. At least, he thought Krokodil had slept. He could never be sure.
Once, fighting a dream, he had found himself struggling with her. He had been running through the darkness, trying to keep up with Jesse Garon. She had soothed him like his Mama used to, and quieted him down.
Now, as direct sunlight woke him up, he was alone. His throat was sore, but the real pain was in his fingers. The strings had worn grooves, opened the old wounds.
A hand shot out of the water and grabbed the side of the boat. He made a grab for the Moulinex machine pistol.
A head broke the surface, and Krokodil pulled herself out, naked but not shivering. She towelled herself on the blanket, getting the algae out of her hair.
"You can swim in that muck?"
"1 wouldn't advise it for everybody."
"Ain't that the truth."
Dry, she dressed herself. Again, Elvis looked at her body. She looked real. Marie Walton had looked like a cyborg. But Krokodil seemed like a real woman.
"We've got to be on our way. We've waited too long."
Elvis took a hit from the canteen, and swilled the distilled water around his mouth, licking his teeth clean. His tongue was still burned.
Krokodil was checking their weapons. She paused in her task.
"Elvis?"
"Yes?"
She looked at him. "I just wanted to say you sing very well."
"Thank you, ma'am."
"No, I mean it. Your old records don't do you justice. You could have made something of yourself."
"Maybe, maybe not"
There was an early morning fog. It was going to be a hot day. Now, it was pleasantly cool.
"No, really. Why didn't you stay with it?"
He'd been asked that before, but he'd never answered as truly as he did now. "I don't know. Maybe, I wanted to keep a piece of my soul for myself."
"I think I know what you mean. I wasn't always like this. My father…well, you don't want to know about him…it's all ancient history. I'm not even the same person. Not even physically."
She held up her hand, as if trying to look through the skin.
"Durium-laced bones, you know," she said. "And the whole catalogue of doodads. I've got a sponge in my heart that can change the pattern of the beat."
"There's something else, though. Last night, the witch, she said…"
"That I was possessed? Look around you, who isn't?"
"Your soul is all you own, Krokodil. It's worth more than the Devil's hundred dollars."
She smiled. "Is that the going rate?"
"It was for Robert Johnson, they say. A hundred dollars and all the music."
"That sounds like a better deal. All the music."
It really was surprisingly cold. The blanket had been heavy with dew. "Not really."
"But you could have changed the world. You could have been Petya Tcherkassoff."
"Petya Tcherkassoff? Ma'am, you are showing your youth."
"How do you mean?"
"You ain't hardly heard of me, have you?"
"You were very highly recommended. Not many Ops…"
"No, not for the Op Agency, for the music. I don't mean any more to you than, uh, Glenn Miller or Al Jolson?"
"Who?"
"That's what I mean. Who? Lady, without me there wouldn't have been a Petya Tcherkassoff. You know his 'Don't Be Cruel'?"
"Sure. You sang it last night. Pretty well."
"Krokodil, I sang it first. He copied me. Here in the USA, I'm forgotten, but all those Sove musickies remember. My old records were smuggled into Russia in the '50s. I started the whole thing."
"Come on, now."
"No, really. Once I had this bodyguarding job. A feller called Lennon who came over from England for some UN conference. He's head of their Labour Party. That's the opposition, or something. He ain't got much power or influence or anything, but he's there to speak against the Prime Minister, What's-His-Name Archer. He knew who I was. Back before he was a politician, he used to have all my records. He said that he'd been a musician too. He said that if I hadn't given up, he might have stuck to it despite all the discouragement. But however it turned out, I touched his life. That's a hell of a responsibility, and I ain't sure I really want it. I don't know why it's important I tell you this. I'm just an old man with a trunk full of memories, but you must know that this is the plain truth. I was big, and I walked away from it"
"Why are you telling me? Why is it important?"
"Because of what 'Ti-Mouche said. The thing in you. Don't sell out to it. I had years of that, years of selling out."
"To some crooked manager, sure, but…"
"Seth. He was one of them. He's the Devil, ain't he?"
Krokodil was affected. "Yes. I think he is."
"Damn. I knowed it. I knowed it back in '56 when Colonel Parker took me up to his red-carpeted office and showed me the contracts. I knowed it, I knowed it, I knowed it…"
"You hiring me? It wasn't no accident, was it?"
Krokodil sighed. "No. I don't think so."
"What made you?"
She tried to speak, but found it difficult. "The…the thing in me. It brought me to Memphis. It made me seek you out."
"You don't need a nursemaid. You can take care of yourself. You could have brought your Indian."
"That's true. But I think I need you, Elvis. I don't know what for. It's maddening sometimes. It's not like knowing everything you need to know. You only get little bits and pieces. I keep having visions…waking dreams, whatever…and you were one of them. Hawk tracked you down. He's a dreamwalker, a Navaho witch doctor…"
"These visions, am I…what?…fighting? Dying?"
Krokodil smiled again, a tight and quiet little smile. Her remaining eye twinkled. "No, Elvis. You're singing, playing the guitar. What the hag said last night was true. That's your magic."
"I can't figure this. It's just plumb crazy."
"I've had to live with it since I was seventeen. You can get used to anything."
"You must have had some life, sister."
"Yeah, I must, mustn't I?"
"Well, if it's the Lord's will, I guess we gotta go with it." He looked up at the skies, but only saw a ceiling of fog. "Jesse Garon," he said, "sometimes I wonder if it wouldn't have been better if I'd died, and you'd lived…"
Gently, Krokodil kissed his lips. He put his hand in her hair. She tasted like a real woman. He opened his eye, and saw her patch pressed near his cheek. They clung to each other, trying to shake off the fear.
She pushed him away, alert. She had sensed something. The Moulinex was in her hand, her thumb on the safety. The boat rocked gently. Elvis put out a hand to steady himself.
A figure slipped out of the mists. It was 'Ti-Mouche, her face newly painted. She was carrying the guitar Elvis had played last night.
The witch woman looked at the pair in the boat Krokodil returned her gaze confidently, refusing to be spooked.
Elvis wondered about the demon inside his employer. Whatever it was, he couldn't imagine it being worse than the things that had inhabited Donny and Marie Walton. And he knew there were worse things ahead, at the Cape.
'Ti-Mouche knelt by the water's edge and gave him the instrument.
"Cadeaux," she said, "a present."
"Thank you kindly ma'am, thank you."
He laid the guitar on his lap, feeling the music vibrating sub-audially through the wood and wire.
"Sorciere, use the magic…"
She stepped back into the fog, and became indistinct. Elvis had the impression she was not alone. A manshape stood by her, and he recognized the dreamshadow of himself he knew to be Jesse Garon.
"Elvis," said Krokodil, "what is it?"
"A ghost, ma'am."
"There are lots of ghosts here, you know that."
"Yes."
He ran his fingers across the strings. The chords rung in the air, dissipating in the mists.
The figures—'Ti-Mouche and Jesse Garon—were gone. The chill was being burned off the swamp.
The sun broke through.
Simone knew that the mad old man could see the ghosts too. They were the spirits of all the astronauts who had died in space, or on the ground, or under the sea. They were the original sacrifices that had given the space program its brief burst of power. Now, Roger was recharging the voodoo batteries. She understood more than she told. Her aunt had been the mama-loa of the community. She knew all about the spilling of blood, the making of images, the establishment of power.
She wondered if she should tell Roger about the ghosts. She owed him something for taking her out of New Orleans. She was still a 'denty, but now she was a 'denty in three-hundred-dollar dresses, and treated like the First Lady.
The Josephites didn't approve her. She didn't mind that, but she would have to make sure it didn't get in the way. If she paraded herself too much, even Roger couldn't protect her. She knew how small she was in whatever Grand Design was being worked out here at the Cape.
For the most part, while Roger and the mad old man were working in the bunker, she was left to her own devices.
She didn't dare wander too far. The patrols reported that there were a lot of the Suitcase People beyond the perimeter. One of the parties hadn't come back. She was fascinated by the creatures who had been captured and sacrificed. If you looked at them from certain angles, you could see only the reptile. But then, if you shifted your head, you could see the person they had been.
Her life had changed a lot since she hit on Roger in Fat Pierre's. But she was still a 'denty, still a slave.
Her great-great-great grandparents had mainly been slaves, she knew, and now she was following in the tradition. American history seemed to have hit a peak in 1930, and now it was rolling backwards. Eventually, everyone should pack up and set sail on the Mayflower for Plymouth. Or the slave ship for Africa.
The shift changed in the bunker, and Roger came up with the morning crew. She could tell from his face that they hadn't got the Needlepoint System working yet. She had only a vague notion about the System, but she gathered it was a way of channelling the lightning, to smite from above like God.
The black-clad Josephites trooped off in a glum bunch towards the chapel to pray for the success of the project. Roger saw her, and trotted over, trying to smile. He really was quite handsome in a foreign, whitey sort of way.
He kissed her on the lips, and she responded professionally. He used her two or three times a day, always carefully. It wasn't unpleasant.
Without telling her how the work was going, he walked her to the bungalow.
There was a stick figure, oxygen mask welded to its skull, standing by the bungalow. It waved at her, and she shuddered…
"What is it, Simone?"
She couldn't tell him. She couldn't risk being rejected just yet.
"Someone walked over my grave."
The dead astronaut leaned against the whitewashed wall, depressed at failing to make contact. It had a bulky pack burned to its back, and thick, blackened boots. It was still smoking.
Inside the bungalow, Simone took off her dress and lay on the bed.
Roger paused. She said nothing, neither inviting nor forbidding. It was safest to remain neutral. Some of them liked to think you loved it, loved them; others needed your hatred, your resentment, your disgust. She hadn't worked Roger Duroc out yet. She probably never would. He was too cool.
He pulled off his shirt. She had never worked out how old he was, but his body was hard, tough. He had scars, but didn't appear to have any bio-implants.
He bent over her, and stuck his tongue in her tiny navel, pulling at her panties. She ran a hand through his hair, and thought of the ghosts. They were converging on the place.
There were more of them now than there had been when they arrived.
Roger was on the bed with her now, his hands kneading away, his mouth pressing on hers. She moaned ambiguously.
The Suitcase People were more active, too. Everyone knew things were coming to a head.
She gasped as they joined.
On the opposite wall was a framed religious picture. Elder Seth entering Salt Lake City at the head of his multitude. Simone loathed it, but couldn't understand why. It was something about the Elder's thin face and beetle-black glasses.
Roger was finished. They broke apart and lay still for a minute. Sweat dried on her body. She listened to the whirring of the fan, and the beating of her own heart.
Roger sprang off the bed, and walked into the bathroom. He always showered afterwards. He was as clean about himself as he was about his precious weapons.
Simone opened the wardrobe, and picked a dress she had never worn before. They had gone mad with cashplastic in the New Orleans boutiques. She chose a violent orange-and-turquoise sheath, with a matching headscarf. With barely enough material for a pillowcase, the dress had cost more than a contract killing.
The phone rang. She picked it up.
"Elder Duroc's bungalow," she said.
"Get him," snapped a voice. Simone recognized Sister Bethany Addams, and felt the hostility oozing over the line.
"I'll see if he's available. Roger…"
She held out the phone.
Dressing as he talked, Roger propped the phone between shoulder and cheek.
"Fine," he said, ending the conversation.
Simone had poured out some iced tea.
"They're nearly ready for another test-run," he said. "Fonvielle says he's sure."
Roger took a deep swig of his tea.
"I don't know, Simone. I think he's cracked. This is a bad business."
She was not required to say anything.
"And the Suitcase People are swarming out there. I'm having some heavy firepower imported. We need to get those lizards flushed out."
Simone agreed with that.
"I've got hunter-killer teams out there, but we can't divert enough personnel."
"It's bad gris-gris," she said.
He knew what she meant.
"Yes, that's it exactly."
He set his hat on his head, and left her.
She spilled a little tea on her chest, and let the cold soak through the dress, enjoying the sensation…
Po' little 'denty, she thought.
They were making good progress. The guitar sat in the stern, and Elvis imagined it was singing at him, reprimanding him like a long-neglected lover.
Krokodil was different today. She would never be communicative, but by comparison with her previous form, she was almost chatty, almost nervous. It was nice to know that she had human parts, but also a little frightening. He conceded that there was something attractive in the idea of putting all your trust in a cyborg fighting machine while staying in the bushes and laying down cover fire. He could see the gang-girl coming through now.
She told him things in bits and pieces. She told him about her meeting with Elder Seth, and the spectacles that had changed the way she saw the world.* She told him that she had spent time wandering in the desert, living like an animal, barely clinging to her sanity. And then she had been worked over by Dr Simon Threadneedle, a world-class bio-surgeon who had made her the Frankensteinian thing she was. After that, there had been many battles, many casualties. Armies had been sent for her, and formidable assassins. She had remade herself spiritually, she said, with the help of Hawk-That-Settles and a channel had been opened up to the beyond, through which had come a powerful manitou that had nestled inside her. It was dormant now, but it could be summoned up. There had been a monster at Santa de Nogueira, a monster she was unable to describe. It had been vast and devastating, and it was banished now, by the slightest of miracles.** Elder Seth had been around for centuries, and sometimes they spoke inside each other's heads. He had to get rid of her, and she had to stop him before he ended the world.
*See "Route 666" in the Route 666 anthology.
** See Krokodil Tears.
In a way, Elvis wished he didn't know all this. He had seen enough to make him believe her, but he wished it were three weeks ago and all he had to worry about was the Good Ole Boys trying to yank his license or coming home some night to find a hoodhead bomb rigged inside his fridge.
"One thing, lady?"
"What?"
"That million dollars? It ain't enough."
Krokodil laughed. "You want more. Ten million? We've got it. Gold bullion, cashplastic, jewels, negotiable information…"
"How did you get it?"
"I'm Frankenstein's Daughter, remember? Hawk and I stole it from corp convoys. GenTech and Winter can spare it. After all, it's in a good cause."
"I suppose so, if saving the world is a good cause."
"Don't think I haven't thought about it."
They were winding between islands, not pushing the boat too much. Elvis had been aware for an hour or so that there were creatures out there in the swamp. They might be human, they might not. They didn't want to be seen, and that meant he didn't want to see them. Last night, the Cajuns had told him about the babies lost to the local spooks, the Suitcase People.
"Maybe the Prezz will drop all the charges if you pull it off."
"No chance. I don't expect gratitude."
"What do you expect?"
"Honestly? To be dead."
"But what if you come through?"
"Then I just want peace and quiet."
A roaring split the air, and the boat started rocking violently. The waters up ahead broke and a huge head loomed out of the swamp, mud pouring from its mouth.
It was a dinosaur with a headband.
Krokodil had the Moulinex up, but something struck the bottom of the boat. The gun went off, bullets spraying the cypresses.
The dinosaur strode forwards. It was smarter than an animal.
Krokodil was off-balance. Elvis reached out, but she went over, splashing as she hit the swamp.
Green arms went around her, and she was dragged under.
"Hey," the dinosaur said, "leetle maan, behave, okeh?"
Elvis was trying not to be tipped out of the wildly shifting boat He didn't make it.
"I tol' you so, maaan."
He was struggling in the filthy water with something rough-skinned and cold.
He was pulled under, and took a lungful of ghastly-tasting liquid. He fought for the surface and tried to cough it all out. Clawed hands held him fast.
He elbowed his assailant where the kidneys would have been if he were a man, and was rewarded with a satisfying grunt of pain.
Jaws snapped by his head and, holding his breath, he dived under the water.
He had lost track of Krokodil.
There was gunfire. He recognized the distinctive burp of the Moulinex, even distorted by the water. Krokodil was up and fighting.
He tried to find bottom, and just found the swamp getting thicker. His lungs were straining now, and he could only see blurred shapes in the murk.
"Where ees the maan, Frankie?"
Frankie growled in answer. He didn't know.
Elvis kicked, and swam away from the shapes. He would have to surface soon, or die.
He pushed upwards, exhaling steadily. His head above the water, he breamed again.
He could hear the Suitcase People, but not see them. They made a lot of noise as they crashed through the swamp.
Something took a bite out of the flesh of his arm, and he swallowed a yelp of pain.
He turned, his knife drawn, and stabbed out. He was worried that he'd have to face another one of the man monsters.
The knife speared a trilobite against the bole of a tree. The big louse wriggled and died.
"Prehistoric bastard," he whispered, pulling his knife free.
There wasn't any more gunfire. Had Krokodil got away?
He wanted to get some solid, dry-ish soil under him. He pulled on the lower branches of the tree, and found himself an island.
The mud dried on his pants and jacket. He hated looking and feeling like this. He had been dirty enough as a kid, always running around in ragged blue jeans. He wished he had left all that behind.
Something moved in the water, and Elvis gripped his knife-hilt harder.
It bobbed into view, and he let out his breath. He fished the guitar out of the swamp. It didn't even have any water in it.
He cradled the instrument in his lap like a baby. It was silly, but he felt better with 'Ti-Mouche's gift.
A huge shadow fell over him.
"Hey, Guitar Maaan, how about givin' us a song?"