The fort had changed. Nothing had exploded in flames. The consoles weren't spitting out showers of sparks. Blood was not running out of the shower-heads. Lauderdale's cadre of armoured android "pacifiers" had not turned on their masters and put every human being in sight to the electrosword. Apart from Younger's jammed elevator, nothing was obviously malfunctioning. But something had changed. Captain Cat Finney was running a complete systems check, and nothing irregular was showing up. The big input had apparently vanished.
Colonel Rintoon was still going around muttering "monitor error," but Finney wasn't swallowing that. If there were false readings, they were getting them now rather than earlier. What would the Mullah I Naseruddin do, she wondered? Probably give up until it went away.
"The corps still don't want to mix with us," Lieutenant Rexroth told her. "ITT won't even talk to us on the telephone, and GenTech just barred us from the fax machine."
"Looks like we have a dose of the computer clap."
Rexroth didn't smile.
Finney went along with it. She was a good sufi. This shouldn't bother her. What was that phrase her counsellor kept using? "It's all part of life's rich pattern." In everything, there is a harmony.
Yeah, right.
"How are we at home?" she asked.
"Hanging even. No anomalies."
"And what does that tell you?"
The young man looked baffled. “Er…that we're running steady?"
"Let me put it this way, when was the last time you can remember that this place was running steady, with no anomalies?"
"Er…"
"Never, that's when. We're here to watch for trouble. And, as this blighted century draws to its blessed close, there is always trouble."
“I'll run the checks again."
"You do that."
Finney tried a few rear-entries of her own into the system, and got the same predigested answers. Even the spyholes she had put in place for her exclusive personal use weren't showing up anything out of whack. She was the best programmer and analyst in Apache, but just now she thought what was needed to deal with the machines was an exorcist.
"You know," she said to nobody in particular, "sometimes I think that maybe brown rice isn't enough."
Captain Lauderdale came over. "Cat, the post office just pulled out. It's just us and the RCs."
"Great. Have you talked to the cardinal or whoever?"
"It's hard to establish territoriality. I never knew the Catholic church was so complicated. St Columba's in Phoenix keeps trying to refer us to some spick bigwig in Managua."
"Archbishop Oscar Romero?"
"Yeah, that's the guy."
"So, get Romero."
"But he's the former head of state of a confederation hostile to the United States of America. We don't take our troubles to guys like that."
"Give me the strength, Lauderdale. This isn't something much affected by lines on a map."
Lauderdale was annoyed. "Tell it to Colonel Rintoon, Cat. He wants to keep this an Arizona thing. He'd bust us to latrine orderlies if he thought we were going to Texas for help, let alone the freakin' CAC!"
"I'm sorry, Lauderdale."
"Yeah. Everybody's sorry."
Finney had noticed how on edge Lauderdale had been since this thing started. It was getting to everyone. There had been more minor arguments in the Ops Centre than were usual. People were getting testy, locking horns, ruffling feathers. She hoped she was above and beyond that, but her nerves were fraying too.
It would be nice if she could see what was wrong, rather than just feel it.
"Maybe the place is haunted?"
Lauderdale raised a lip.
"No, really. We're slap next to a chunk of ancient history, Lauderdale."
"London bridge?"
"Yeah. Its stones must be soaked in blood. You know London. It's the most haunted city in the world, they say. Plagues, fires, the blitz, massacres, murders. Jack the Ripper, Christie, Dracula, Burke and Hare…"
"Edinburgh."
"Huh?"
"Burke and Hare killed in Edinburgh."
"Whatever. Maybe they imported the ghosts along with the bridge."
Lauderdale raised his hands and shook his head. "Cat…"
"Yes?"
"Have you been having enough sex recently? You've been getting some…pretty damfool ideas, you know."
Finney slapped him across the face. He smiled slowly.
"That's it, sufi. Get in touch with your emotions. Let a few of them out."
"Captains," shouted someone. Rintoon had come into the room. Finney and Lauderdale saluted in unison.
"I don't care what's going on here. I just don't want to see it again, okay?"
"Sir, yessir."
"Fine."
Rintoon's hair was uncombed, and his tie loose. Those were firsts. Finney knew the world was felling apart.
"Finney, we need you up in the shaft. We've cut through to the back-console, but it's flashing at us. You know all the codes."
"Yes sir."
"Any contact with Major General Younger, sir?" Lauderdale asked.
"Brevet Major General Younger, Lauderdale. And no, he's observed radio silence ever since the Unknown Event."
The Unknown Event. The UE. That was how Rintoon was dealing with it, slapping a military label on the thing, tying it up with jargon and filing it away with all the other UEs he didn't have to think about.
Finney ceded her console to Lenihan, and went with the Colonel. Lauderdale came along. Passing from the white-walled, immaculate and ordered corridors into the thickly-grimed liftshaft, with its dangling cables, unidentifiable accumulation of detritus and shower of sparks was a shocking lesson. This was what it was all like under the surface. Finney liked machines. They did what they were told. But even machines had a subconscious these days.
Climbing the access ladder to the stalled elevator was like trudging through the forgotten dreams of the fort. She wondered if she'd be able to get her hips through the open panel in the bottom of the cage, but didn't have any trouble. Two techies pulled her up with a minimum of scraping. She realized that these greasy-overalls power toolmen had been able to order Rintoon to go and fetch her. On some jobs, a colonel was surplus personnel.
Rintoon and Lauderdale joined them in the elevator. It was slightly uncomfortable. The techies had exposed all the workings of the door, and pulled out a spaghetti tangle of wires. An LED redstrip blinked a row of eight eights. The memory had been wiped.
"That shouldn't happen. The doors wouldn't open because the mechanism no longer recognized the c-i-c's code. But even if the central computer goes down there's a failsafe. The code is wiped but automatically replaced by the simplest possible combination. Eight zeroes. This won't even recognize that."
"So?" asked Rintoon.
"So," she replied, twiddling the master that, "we program in a code. One two three four five six seven eight."
The numbers appeared, and were held.
"Then, we punch the code." Finney pressed the buttons sequentially. "And, voila! The doors open."
The lift doors opened.
"Jesus Christ!" someone said. One of the techies vomited through the hatch in the floor.
Younger was scattered about the kitchen in pieces. His appliances were humming. There was a lot of smoke about, and a power point was sparking, but nothing had caught fire. A still vibrating electric knife was stuck through Younger's chest. His head was black and smoking in the microwave oven, lids shrunk away from dead white eyes like hardboiled eggs.
"The Major General's been…dismembered!" stuttered Lauderdale.
"Brevet Major General," corrected Rintoon.
No one got out of the elevator.
The Gaschugger girl primed the pumpgun, and found herself looking down the barrel of the SIG 7.62. "Don't," Chantal said, staring at the child's face. She had tattoos on both cheeks, and hair in rat-tails. The 'chugger dropped the gun. "Kick it over to the Trooper."
The girl followed orders. The Trooper picked up the weapon, and stopped looking frightened. He wiped blood off his face with the back of his hand, and stepped over the dead man.
Chantal had followed her training, and had made a snap judgement. But that didn't do anything about the guilt.
The man on the floor joined all the others in her collection of night horrors. Eventually, there would have to be a reckoning. A hyperactive little 'chugger pulled a sharpened screwdriver from his toolbelt and tried to stick it into the Trooper's ear. Chantal trusted the Cav man to take care of that. The Trooper ducked under the thrust, and jammed the butt of the shotgun into his assailant's chest. Then, when the 'chugger was doubled over, rapped him smartly on the back of the skull. He fell over his dead leader, insensible. "Seen enough?" she asked.
The girl shrugged and looked at Chantal. There were centuries of something in her eyes. "You and me," the girl said. "We're the same, aren't we?"
"I hope not," said Chantal, ignoring the little fishhook tearing at her heart. "I certainly hope not." The others picked up their dead and wounded. "Now, go home."
The Gaschuggers left the saloon. The girl was the last. She turned and waved to everybody. "G'night, all!"
Then the gang were gone, swallowed up by the darkness outside, saloon doors swinging behind them. Chantal holstered her pistol, and walked over to the bar. "Lady," said the Trooper, "can I buy you a drink?"
"Water."
"Even that. Nothing but the best. Pedro, you chickendirt, get us a couple of waters. Make them pure or I'll promote you from innocent bystanding coward to accomplice in my report."
The bartender shuffled along behind the bar, and produced two glasses and a bottle.
"The Gaschoggers are regular customers, Senor. I can't do notheeng that'd bee bad for beesneess."
"Yeah? Do you have many 'trials' in this place?"
Pedro grunted noncomittally.
Chantal sipped the water. It was pure-spring, uncut.
"Trooper Nathan Stack, at your service ma'am," said the Cav man. The name had been in the initial report.
"You were with Tyree?"
A look of pain came into his bruised nice. "Yes. How d'you know about Leona?"
"I'm from Fort Apache."
"You weren't there when I left. I'd have remembered."
"I got in just yesterday. My name is Chantal Juillerat."
"I beg your pardon."
She spelled it out for him. "Juillerat. It's Swiss. I'm working closely with your government and with Major General Younger. Here is my authorization."
She handed him the papers countersigned by the State Governor, General Haycox and the President's representative. He whistled through his teeth, then winced with pain. He must have taken quite a battering.
"What happened to you?"
Stack gulped his water, but didn't say anything.
"As you can see, I am authorized to take your report. What happened to you? Where's Tyree? Where's your vehicle?"
Stack took another drink, and signalled the bartender for the bottle. The man handed it over, and Stack poured.
"Leona Tyree is dead, Ms Julie-Rat. The cruiser is up at the church, stapling a dead priest to his altar…"
Chantal's eyes must have given her away. Stack dropped his precious glass of water and grabbed her shoulders. He started shaking her.
"This means something to you, doesn't it? What's happening? Why did the cruiser go psycho? Why is Leona dead?"
She took his wrists and forced his hands away from her.
"You're not cleared for that information," she said. "Besides, I don't really know myself. In the morning, well go to St Werburgh's and examine the site. Then maybe we can isolate the problem."
Stack obviously wasn't happy.
"Tomorrow, I'm getting out of here. I have to call in to Apache. I'm days overdue."
"No problem. I have a radio in Federico."
"Federico?"
"My car. I've been in contact with Fort Apache all day."
"Well hell, lady, why didn't you say? Can I call in now?"
"Certainly."
"First, I have to settle up. Pedro?"
The bartender cringed, and failed to look Stack in the face.
"How Much Do I Owe You, Pedro?" Stack asked deliberately, staring at the man.
Pedro was sweating, looking at the floor. There was blood over the bar. Stack's, and the Gaschugger's.
"N-n-nothing, Senor…. eet ees all on thee house."
"Thank You Kindly."
Pedro slunk back, passing a damp cloth over the spilled blood.
"We'll Come Back Soon."
"Good night Senor, Senorita."
Stack left the bar, paused as his pains hit him, and limped towards the doors. Chantal reached out and stopped him.
"You must be tired, Trooper."
He looked puzzled. Then, it hit him. "Yeah, I…I wasn't thinking. Sorry. Thanks."
Chantal walked carefully to the door, unfolding her IR shades. She slipped them on, and the darkness outside went away.
"The one with the claw…"
"Shell."
"Is that his name? Like the oil company? He is crouched down by the row of cykes. The girl…"
"Miss Unleaded."
"Very amusing. She is up on the roof of the abandoned feed store with some sort of rifle. Nothing too high-tech. The others are there too, somewhere."
"Five to two. Those are lousy odds."
"You are right," she said, taking the pumpgun from him, "they hardly have a chance. I shall try not to cause further loss of life."
Stack's jaw dropped.
From her position just by the doors, Chantal had a clear shot at Shell. He was uncomfortable crouched behind the cykes, and kept shifting his weight. The claw must be a recent implant. He wasn't used to carrying it yet. She wondered if he got an unscratchable phantom itch where his fingers used to be. That was supposed to be the insoluble problem with bio-implants.
"Throw something heavy through the doors, please."
"Whatever you say, Ms Julie-rat." Stack picked up a barstool and slung it at the doors. Miss Unleaded's rifle cracked, hitting the stool in mid-air, and Shell stood up, a six-gun in his good hand. When the doors had swung back, Chantal fired low.
The gastank of the first cyke exploded in a brilliant blossom of flame. The whole row went down like dominoes, each tank exploding in turn. Shell was splashed with the burning liquid and ran off, screaming, waving his robobit like a firebrand.
"No wheels, Miss Unleaded," Stack shouted, "how'd you like that?"
A shot ploughed into the hardwood floor of the saloon by the doors.
The small 'chugger Stack had butt-thumped earlier came hurtling through the doors, screaming and firing wildly.
Stack drew his side-arm and plugged him under the right eye. He staggered backwards, his face on fire, already dead as the flames caught his gas-soaked hair and clothes.
"Darn," he said, "I guess I just lost me some life."
Outside, on the porch, the Gaschugger exploded.
"People who drink gasoline shouldn't smoke cigars," Stack said.
No one spoke for a minute. There were shouts outside, and people running away.
"It's clear," Chantal said.
Pedro rushed out from behind the bar with a bucket of sand and doused the burning corpse on his wooden porch, kicking the fire out and the 'chugger into the street. The cykes were still burning, and he had to call for someone called Pauncho to help him put that blaze out before it spread to the saloon.
Stack and Chantal left the saloon. Pedro swore at them in Spanish. Chantal was amused by the range of his imagery.
Federico was parked just across the street. When she had arrived in town, the Silver Byte was the only place lit up and she had gone there for directions to the church.
"Is this your car?" Stack asked.
She nodded. Stack whistled again.
Chantal tapped in the entry code, and Federico's driver's side door raised with a slight hiss.
"Federico."
"Yes," it said, switching to English for Stack's sake.
"Contact Fort Apache."
The automatic signal was sent out. There was a pause. Across the street, Pedro and Pauncho had the fire under control but were still swearing.
"Fort Apache does not respond."
"That's not possible," said Stack.
"Repeat: Fort Apache does not respond."
Chantal's hand went to her throat. She fiddled with the chain of her crucifix.
"Attempt to override. Try the personal channels for Brevet Major General Marshall Younger, Colonel Vladek Rintoon, and so on down the chain of command."
Federico worked in silence, a few lights on the dash going on and off.
"No response registered."
"Is Fort Apache down?" Stack asked.
"Fort Apache reads normal. It does not respond."
Chantal knew that this was what she had been sent to America to deal with. She had a moment of doubt. She tried to overcome it.
"We can't do anything until morning," she told Stack. "Let's get some sleep. Get in the car, and I'll drive you to the motel. You are staying at the motel?"
Stack was thinking five minutes behind. He shook his head.
"Yeah…uh…"
"Good. I'll take a room. We can be at the church tomorrow."
She got behind the wheel, and opened the passenger door. Bewildered, Stack got in. By the time they reached the motel, he was asleep—unconscious?—in his seat, head hanging against the safety belt.
She left him there and, unable to find a nightman, broke into a room.
Lauderdale was inspecting his androids. The whole troop stood to attention under the cellophane shrouds in the store-room. Seven-feet-tall, andiropomorphic and faceless under their helmets, they looked a little like the robot in the movie The Day the Earth Stood Still, but slimmer and battleship grey. The only customised touch was the US Cav yellow stripe down their legs.
The Robo-Troopers were Captain Lauderdale's special field of expertise. The Cav didn't use them that often any more, following the wave of anti-android feeling that had swept the nation after the Governor of Los Angeles send them into the Watts NoGo to break up a peaceful demonstration against the USA's links with Greater Rhodesia. Some programmer's minor error had led to an override of the androids' prime directive and a massacre of 1594 people. Most Agencies had quietly scrapped their android programs after that, or diversified into different branches of robotics. Hammond Maninski Inc., out of the fortress city of Pittsburgh, was rumoured to be experimenting with the Donovan Treatment, putting human brains in android bodies—as in the British police teevee show, Dixon of Dock Green—and putting them in the field. Lauderdale knew that was a bad move. The human brain should be well removed from the field of combat, watching the action on all the monitors, playing God, not stuck inside a tin can waiting for the first lucky home-made frag to burst its eggshell.
He ran a systems check on the master control console. The androids hadn't moved since the last inspection. Really, Lauderdale ought to detail someone to dust them down more often. They hadn't been used in action for eighteen months, and had only been trotted out for parades and display inspections after much nudging. Lauderdale resented the downplaying of his discipline. He felt like a spare man at Apache, assigned to odd jobs like looking after official visitors rather man performing the duties he had signed up for.
Colonel Rintoon had ordered everyone to double-check their own areas of the fort. He believed there was a murderer loose somewhere, and that he had gained access to and exit from Younger's kitchen by some as-yet unknown means. Everyone was supposed to be searching for clues. Lauderdale agreed with Captain Finney's diagnosis. Younger had been killed by his own kitchen equipment. The physical presence of a killer hadn't been necessary. Finney had explained that a murderer could tamper with the kitchen by tapping into the central system of the fort, but Rintoon insisted on believing the evidence of the power outages and the thats and maintaining that Apache was inviolate. Rintoon was near the edge. Problems were popping up beyond the parameters of his programming.
None of the androids had bloody fingers. Then again, Lauderdale hadn't expected them to.
He took one last look around the store-room, turned off the lights, and stepped outside into the corridor.
Lieutenant Rexroth was running by, a print-out streaming from his hand.
They bumped together. Rexroth saluted.
"Sorry, Captain."
Lauderdale was irritated. "What's the hurry, Rex?"
"Major Faulcon has to see this."
They walked, almost jogging, along together.
"What's important?"
"Younger's orders. They were sealed in his own terminal files. Captain Finney gave me the codes and told me to access them. They're germane."
"Shouldn't you be taking them to Colonel Rintoon then?"
Rexroth stopped short. Lauderdale could tell the cmer officer was conflicted about something. He wanted to talk, but thought he shouldn't.
"What is it, Rex?"
Rexroth looked at the print-out, and over his shoulder. There was no one else in the corridor.
"What did Younger say?"
"I…I can't follow it…it's about chain of command."
Lauderdale took the print-out. Rexroth didn't fight him for it. Lauderdale started reading from the top.
"Directive Five, sir."
Lauderdale looked down for it. It was triple-starred.
"It was scrambled three times. And marked MOST URGENT."
Lauderdale read. "IN THE EVENT OF MY DEATH OR INCAPACITY," Younger had written, "COMMAND OF FORT APACHE IS TO DEVOLVE TO MAJOR HENDRY FAULCON. UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES IS COLONEL VLADEK RINTOON TO ASSUME TEMPORARY OR PERMANENT CONTROL OF THE OUTPOST."
"I don't understand," Lauderdale said. "This is against all procedures."
"Look down again. It's in the notations at the bottom."
Here it was. "COLONEL RINTOON'S LATEST PSYCHIATRIC PROFILE SUGGESTS HE IS SUFFERING FROM EXTREME STRESS. HE IS NOT TO BE ADVANCED IN RANK. HE IS TO BE REMOVED FROM ACTIVE DUTY AS SOON AS AN OFFICER OF EQUIVALENT RANK CAN BE BROUGHT IN FROM FORT COMANCHE. A PRELIMINARY DIAGNOSIS SUGGESTS INCIPIENT PARANOIA, COMPULSIVE HOSTILITY, FRACTURED PSYCHE. COPIES OF THIS REPORT HAVE BEEN DESPATCHED TO GENERAL ERNEST HAYCOX, STATE GOVERNOR TOLLIVER." It was dated two days ago. So much for timing.
Rexroth was fidgeting with his lip. "We have to do something, sir."
"Colonel Rintoon has assumed command. There was nothing to suggest that he shouldn't. Younger should have suspended him from active duty immediately if he believed this."
"But he didn't. We have to talk to Major Faulcon. You, me and Finney. Rintoon has to be relieved of his command before something goes seriously wrong."
The corridor was still empty. .
"Something already is seriously wrong, Rexroth."
"Yes sir, I'm sorry sir."
Lauderdale drew his sidearm, pressed the barrel to the fleshy part under Rexroth's jaw, and fired, twice.
"The Rath of Joseph is thorny," he whispered.
Then, he raised the alarm.
They were having real coffee on the balcony of their hotel, overlooking the pleasant central square of Managua. It was the flower festival, and the square was multi-coloured with the heaps of blossom placed at the foot of the equestrian statue of Augusto Cesar Sandino almost up to his saddle. The smiling faces of Daniel Ortega and Archbishop Romero shone down from a three-storey poster. It was the middle of the morning, but they had only just had their breakfast sent up. A band was playing the songs of the Revolution, and a young girl was singing about wheat, love and her thirty-thirty ammunition.
"Trente-trente?" said Leona, the slight breeze shifting her shining hair as she dissected her grapefruit with a serrated spoon. "I got guns, you got guns…"
A flight of birds shot up from the square. Stack sipped his coffee, sacriligiously despoiled with Sweet 'n' Lo.
"…all God's chillun got guns."
Leona wasn't really bitter, he knew, but back in the States there were duties waiting for both of them. Both felt guilty about snatching this downtime for themselves.
He set his cup down and walked round to her side of the table. He smoothed her hair down, and kissed the top of her head. She relaxed and stroked his wrists, and he massaged her neck.
The girl was singing only of love now, of the children she was expecting from her soldier boyfriend, of the bright future tfieir struggle had won for the country. She sang of their defiance of the Yankee tyrants and the multinat octopus. Everybody down here had been friendly, but the papers, the teevee shows and the songs painted all Americans as villains. After years of recaff, Stack, with the rich taste of coffee in his mouth, could see why some thought the CAC a paradise on earth.
Stack slipped his hand into Leona's dress, and rubbed his thumb over a nipple. He bent down and kissed her grapefruit-flavoured lips.
She sucked hungrily at his tongue.
A cheer went up from the crowds outside as Oscar Romero appeared on his own, much grander, balcony, arm-in-arm with the new Pope of Rome, Georgi. Stack and Leona ignored the speeches.
Leona stood up, and pressed her body to his. They danced together, to the National Anthem of the Central American Confederacy, their bodies responding warmly.
He smelled the traces of perfume in her hair, and the soft female musk of her body.
Stack wasn't sure whether he had manoeuvered Leona back into their room and pushed her down on their bed, or whether she had done it to him. They were on the bed now, gently pressing against each other.
Their dressing gowns were getting in the way. They broke apart, unknotted their belts, and threw the gowns away. Naked, they embraced again. He kissed her neck and chin. She stroked his back, and sides.
She slid under him, and he looked into her eyes as he lowered his face to hers.
They kissed…
Stack's heart leaped as he started awake. His neck ached where the seatbelt had cut into it, and his entire face throbbed. His head was still bruised from Exxon's fists. Hardly an inch of his body wasn't in one kind of pain or another.
Chantal was shaking him. It was her subtly different scent he had smelled, not Leona's.
"Time to wake up, Trooper Stack."
His wounds came back to him. His body felt like a baggy diving suit. He would have liked to go to Doc Zarathustra and traded it in for a new, more durable model. Hearts, he remembered the Wizard of Oz saying, will never be a practical proposition until they can be made unbreakable.
He rubbed the grit from his eyes, and looked at the woman. "I was dreaming."
Chantal stood up, and backed away from the car. "I thought so. I'm sorry for disturbing you. You were REMming."
He tried to stretch, to lift the imaginary weight from his shoulders.
"You were smiling."
Stack sighed. "It was a nice dream."
"So I noticed."
Chantal was almost smirking. Embarassed, Stack realized he had a generous erection straining the crotch of his Cav britches. He adjusted his position to de-emphasize his bulge, and waited for his arousal to die down.
Chantal slipped into the driving seat, and flicked switches. Federico reacted with lights and instrument evaluations.
In the light of day, Chantal wasn't the woman she had seemed last night. Appearing in the Silver Byte with her cannon and steely determination in her eyes, she had looked to Stack like Redd Harvest on steroids with a touch of Clint Eastwood and Annie Oakley thrown in. This morning, in the same outfit, she seemed more demure. Passive, restful, even. There was something kittenish about her unconscious pout, and a certain unassailable balance in her disposition. She was younger than he had thought, too. Maybe twenty-four, twenty-five. She gave the impression that she could hardly lift the heavy side-iron she was packing, let alone squeeze off a ScumStopper and hole the target dead centre. Stack knew better.
Quite apart from the fact that she had saved him twice from certain death, there was something very attractive about Chantal Juillerat.
"Good morning to you, Ms Julie-Rat."
"Everybody calls me Ms here in America. I am not used to it."
"Would you prefer to answer to Madam-weasel?"
"Chantal, please."
She pressed the auto-ignition.
"Nathan."
"Thank you, Trooper Stack."
Federico rolled forwards. This was a righteous piece of rolling stock. Its elegant curves made the typical US Cav cruiser look like a dray horse next to a she-panther.
"Do we get breakfast?"
"There are some N-R-G candies in the glove compartment. Oh, and some cherries."
Stack pulled the bag of fruit out, and chain-popped cherries until his mouth was full of stones.
"You must be loaded, sister."
She shifted her shoulders. "I'm on generous expenses. Fruit is essential to a balanced diet."
"Essential it may be, but that doesn't make it cheap."
She shrugged again. That was a characteristic European gesture, Stack thought, the famous ca va shrug.
He spat the stones into his hand, and threw them out of the window. Maybe they would seed the desert.
"Now," she said, "where's the Church of St Werburgh's?"
"You see that half-destroyed building over there?"
"Yes."
"Well, like they told me, follow the trail of death and destruction through town and you can't miss it."
"This may be boring for you, I'm sorry. I shall take you back to the fort when I've finished."
"I'll come along for the ride. I don't mind."
"That's good then."
They drove slowly over the bumpy, wreckage-strewn ground.
"Federico," she said to a voice-activated console.
"Buon giorno, sorella."
"Good morning. Could you book me a satellite channel, please. I'm going to want to talk to Rome. If you can raise DeAngelis, I would be especially pleased. If not, Edwina will do."
Federico beeped an affirmative, and got working on it. Stack realized he was flying in very high circles. He doubted if Brevet Major General Younger could as casually get airtime on a satellite link.
Chantal gasped, as if someone had slapped her across the face with a rope-end. Stack followed her eyeline.
She was looking at the raped ruin of the church.
Rintoon had doubled the guards, but that hadn't stopped the murderer or murderers from striking nine more times during the night. Cat Finney had retired with an automatic pistol under her pillow, her cubicle lock scrambled and a desk against it. She hadn't slept much. No one who had got a good look at Younger's kitchen would sleep well for months.
At the morning briefing, Rintoon gave a report.
"Rexroth is an unconfirmed kill. It is possible, indeed probable, that we should count him as a suicide…"
"In that case, sir, where's his gun?"
"Good question…er…Badalamenti. His weapon may have been…er…appropriated by personnel unknown prior to Captain Lauderdale's discovery of the body."
Finney was in yesterday's uniform. It was still discoloured from her climb up the liftshaft. Slung over the back of a chair, it had been the easiest thing to find this morning. She didn't want to admit to it, but her childhood fear of the closet might just have come creeping back. All through the night, she had been waking up and looking at the slats of the closet door, wondering absurdly if the killer might not be lurking within. Her clean uniforms were in the closet, and they would probably stay there until the crisis was over. Rintoon hadn't slept at all, and was looking wilder by the minute. She found it difficult to connect the hypertense, unshaven, neon-eyed c-i-c of this morning with yesterday's smug, complacent, new-pin-neat Number Two. There was something increasingly familiar about him, though, as if he were metamorphosing into a different, truer, more immediately recognizable shape.
"So, if we leave Rexroth out of the reckoning, and setting aside Brevet Major General Younger, we have eight more VUEs to log and deal with."
VUE. That was a new one on her. Captain Badalamenti, obviously too smart for his own advancement, questioned the acronym.
"VUE, Badalamenti. Violent Unknown Event."
Major Hendry Faulcon, next down the chain of command after Rintoon, was a five o'clock shadow man. He shaved two or three times a day. He had had late duties last night, and had tried to shave at about eleven-thirty. As far as anybody could tell, the electric razor in his quarters had slithered out of his grip and buzzed halfway down his gullet. He had died of a combination of suffocation and drowning in his own blood. A typical VUE.
Major R J. "Howling Raul" McAuley was dead in his shower, microneedles peppering his torso. Dr Wilma King, the fort's senior medico, had rotted away from exposure to a source of intense radiation in her surgery. S. M. "Max the Bax" Baxter, a middle-management Op at T-H-R mopping up the paperwork after the joint action, had been put out of commission by everybody's favourite murder weapon, the unidentified blunt instrument. Captains Garnett and Stableford had been napalmed in their bunks—and they'd taken the same precautions Finney had. Top Sergeant Alexander Stewart was crushed under the wheels of a cruiser whose transmission he was supposed to be fixing. And Trooper Charlie Stress, in the guardhouse for mouthing back to Sergeant Quincannon after a twenty-mile forced march through the desert in full pack and gear, was mysteriously gone from his cell leaving only a couple of severed fingers, some cabbalistic symbols traced in blood and a chunk of what had tentatively been identified as a pancreas.
Everybody around the table was looking ill. There were more than enough empty places in the briefing room. Badalamenti was nervously tearing a page of notepaper into animal shapes. Captain Lauderdale and Lieutenant Williford had turned out in combat gear, M-29s and all, obviously assuming that Fort Apache was on a war footing. Lieutenant Colosanto—who had been bunking with Rexroth—was chewing aspirin as if they were mints. Finney was on her third cup of recaff, and she usually couldn't finish her first.
"I have come to a conclusion," Rintoon began.
Everyone grudgingly paid attention.
"This post is under attack."
The disappointment was palpable.
"And I am reasonably certain that I have isolated the culprits."
Everyone perked up again. Lauderdale straightened his rifle on the table in front of him, ready for action.
"I believe…"
Rintoon took a gulp of cold recaff.
"Yes?" said Badalamenti.
Rintoon swallowed. "The Maniax are responsible."
Badalamenti rolled his eyes upwards, and pointed to his head. Rintoon didn't notice, and continued…
"The joint action has hurt them, and this is their last ditch attempt to break the US Cav."
"But…" someone said before catching the glint in Rintoon's red-rimmed eyes.
"It was Baxter's death that tipped their hand. He was materially involved in planning the strategy of the joint action. He must be a prime target for the Grand Exalted Bullmoose and his remaining followers.
"Baxter was a pen-pusher, sir," said Badalamenti. "He was just processing expenses and payments. He never went into the field in his life."
Finney fought to keep her control. The recaff had done its damage. She felt as if she had been punched in the kidneys.
Rintoon smiled at Badalamenti, and Finney felt the ice seep through her veins. The smile widened to a grin, and the eyebrows flared.
Finney realized where she had seen a face like that before. Rintoon was looking more and more like Jack Nicholson in the last scenes of The Shining. The scenes where he goes after his wife and child with an axe.
"The Maniax are guilty, Badalamenti. Guilty, guilty, GUILTY!"
Badalamenti stood up. "The Maniax are finished, sir! We creamed 'em. We broke their central structure. We blew up their munitions dump. We rounded up the chapter heads."
"There's still the Bullmoose!"
"There's no such animal! All the ringleaders, they were all the Bullmoose, sir. It was a floating office. They've admitted as much."
"Sit down and listen, Badalamenti, or I shall be forced to discipline you immediately. I will not tolerate these outbursts. I will not, not, NOT!"
Rintoon thumped the table. Ralystyrene recaff cups jumped. Finney mopped the mess spilling towards her lap up with her sleeve. Badalamenti looked around for support, found none, and slumped back in his chair.
"The Maniax are clever," continued Rintoon. "Yes, they are. They've sustained a killing blow. We can credit ourselves with that. But this is their last mission. They're going kamikaze. They've infiltrated spies into the fort, and subversives and assassins and agents provocateurs. It's the only feasable explanation."
No one said anything. There was a dribble of saliva dangling from Rintoon's mouth, tracking through his stubble.
"The supposed Swiss woman, Juillerat, was one of them. She was there at the original UE, when she influenced the instruments. It was monitor error, as I always insisted…"
All Rintoon needed to complete the picture was a pair of ball-bearings to clack together in his hand.
"And Rexroth was in it too. He was unable to live with the guilt, and shot himself. And Stross, who was killed by his confederates because he was about to talk. I have determined the existence of a conspiracy of treachery on a scale unheard-of since the 1950s."
Colosanto bit down loudly on a pill. Badalamenti shoved his paper animals about on his blotter.
"And I shall not rest until I have rooted out this conspiracy and exterminated it down to its very last member."
Lauderdale was easing his rifle off the table. Was he planning to scrag Rintoon? At this point, he would have won a vote of confidence if he did.
"I believe there are Maniax among us, even in this room."
Everybody sat up and looked at each other. Then, they looked to Rintoon.
"By his words and his actions this morning, he has given himself away. They think they're clever, uiese hophead damfool gangcultists, but the zeroids never reckoned they'd be coming up against Vladek W. Rintoon. No siree. Ole Vladek W. Rintoon has them outfoxed eight ways from sundown." Badalamenti was statue-still now. "Yup, there's a Maniak at this very table." Badalamenti very slowly spread his bands out before him. Rintoon looked at everyone in turn. Finney tried to look away from his shining, moist eyes, but couldn't. He seemed to see clearly right through her, to sense every petty dereliction of duty, every resistance to command, every infraction of the rules, every sinful course carried through or merely considered. Then, his terrible gaze was gone, and it was Colosanto's turn to sweat.
Finally, Rintoon grinned his feral sardonicus grin and almost whispered, "Williford."
The officer sat bolt upright, rifle raised in the present-arms position in front of him.
"Williford," Rintoon cajoled, "Simon says 'take your rifle…"'
He had the gun to his shoulder now, and was standing up. "'…and execute Captain Badalamenti.'"
Chantal spent a few minutes kneeling by the priest's corpse. She seemed to be looking into his dead, open eyes, as if trying to get him to reveal something to her through telepathy. It made Stack feel uncomfortable. Flies were buzzing around the body. In this heat, they would have to get him in the ground quickly. Finally, the woman got up, and gently shut the corpse's eyes. She muttered somethng and crossed herself. She walked around the cruiser, and the wreck of the altar.
"Careful," he said. "It was quiet yesterday, too, but I got a nasty shock."
"Yes, you would have. Don't worry. It's gone now."
She was at the altar now. She had it working.
"It got into the system here, from your cruiser. But how did it get into the cruiser?"
"It?"
She waved him away. "I'm sorry. I was thinking aloud."
Some of the altar's functions were down. The screen flashed green at her. She experimented with several buttons, and finally it turned off. Stack nerved up the courage to approach the cruiser. He touched it. He felt the bullet-scars in the hood. Someone had used pretty major firepower against it.
Chantal was asking a question. "Before the…uh, change…before that, what exactiy was happening to the automobile?"
That seemed like a long time ago. He remembered Leona walking around the car. Ken Kling—the poor obnoxious dead bastard—had called her "cowgirl" and asked her to get him somethng, a co-cola. She had hoped to have some of Slim's B-B-Q.
"Gas. Slim was filling the gastank."
"Hmmn," Chantal was pensive. "No. It couldn't be in the gas. Wrong medium. Was there any other kind of contact?"
"Just the usual systems check. Slim was on the yaks' payroll. His place was well set-up. We always had him look at the cruiser's whole works."
Chantal snapped her fingers. "That would be the point of possession, then."
"Possession?"
Chantal was bent down by the crushed front of the cruiser now, tapping at the spike linking it to the altar.
"Yes, possessed. Your car was under the influence of a demon."
This was crazy.
"Like, Linda Blair or something?"
"Something like. A demon is a lot of things. You might like to think of it as a computer program that infects a given system and changes its function."
"Like a virus, or a sleeper?"
"Yes, very good. Exactly like a virus. An engineered virus, of course. This was a deliberate act of aggression. Not a chance mutation."
Stack was having difficulty keeping up. Chantal had raised the hood, and was poking around near the engine.
"Ingenious adaption. It leeched surplus metals from the body of the cruiser and melted them down to form the channeling spike. It must be a fast-breeder. It'll be replicating like a plague out there."
Stack's head hurt. It usually did when he had to do any serious thinking. "Let me get this straight? There was something in the works at Slim's?"
"Undoubtedly."
"That makes sense. He said his hardware had gone crazy. And this…demon…downloaded into the cruiser, and made it run amok."
Chantal raised a finger like a teacher correcting a point. "Not amok. It was very purposeful. It came straight here, to this church, and insinuated itself into the altar system. It did exactly what it was invoked to do. It's deep in the datanet now, and it has to be stopped."
"This demon? It's just a computer virus, right? No spook stuff?"
Chantal looked at him. Her expression was serious.
"There is spook stuff."
She nodded. "I'm afraid so. You're not going to find any of this easy to cope with. Do you have any religious faith?"
"Daddy was a Baptist. I guess I'm not anything."
"Well, in that case, a demon is a computer virus."
"Come on, Chantal."
Patiently, she sat on the ruined hood of the cruiser and explained it to him. "And it's also a supernatural entity, an immortal creature, a servant of the Devil. It was summoned from Hell by a powerful diabolist, and it has been deployed in a deliberate attack on the Catholic Church and upon the information exchanges of the United States of America. It will remain in the channels until it has been exorcised."
"Sister, who the freak are you?"
Chantal looked at him as his question echoed. Somewhere, water was gushing. Holy water, he remembered. Chantal sighed, and shook her head. She was having trouble putting the words together.
"Nathan," she said, "I'm a nun."