"That's some story, sister," said Stack after Chantal had finished telling him why she was in Arizona. "I suppose that's right, isn't it. Sister? I should call you sister."
She stood up and stretched, catlike in her uniform. "It'll do, but my name is still Chantal. We don't give up everything."
She walked towards the entrance of St Werburgh's, and was haloed by the sunlight. It was going to be another hot day in the desert. Flies were beginning to buzz around the dead priest.
"But…but you're an Op."
"It's a very old Agency. The church has always had soldiers. Father O'Pray was one, too."
She went outside, found something, and came back. She had an old shovel over her shoulder.
"Now, we bury him."
Stack looked at the mess. "You'll have to get him loose first."
The woman—the nun—set her mouth in a straight line, and tossed Stack the spade.
"I have a handlase in Federico. You find a clear spot outside, and dig a grave."
Stack reckoned he had the easier detail, but didn't speak up about it. He had the impression that Sister Chantal wouldn't go much for gallantry.
Outside, he picked out a plot away from the church walls, shucked his shirt, and set to digging. Inside the church, he heard the hiss of the lase cutting through steel, and the creak of machinery falling apart.
He was six feet into the sandy soil before Chantal brought the body out. She had tried to do something about the hole in O'Pray's chest, buttoning his coat over it, but nothing much could disguise the terrible wound. She had to wrestle his stiff limbs into a position of repose on his chest.
"That's deep enough, Stack."
He climbed out, and took his shirt from the gravestone he had draped it over. Chantal cast her eyes over his wounds.
"Don't you need any medication for those? Federico has a full field hospital in his trunk."
"I was drugged out yesterday, thank you. I'll let nature take its course."
"There might be infection."
"Nahh, US Cav morph-plus is two parts penicillin to one-part pain-killer, and I was tripped out on that for more than a day."
The sun was overhead now, its light falling on the graveyard like a blanket of heat. Chantal had dirtmarks on her face and hands. She wiped them with a dampraguette, cleaning away the filth, and flexed her hands.
"The bellrope was burned."
"So?"
"O'Pray died well, he should have the bell tolled. He should have a funeral."
Stack looked up at the tower. The bellhouse was undamaged, apart from a few cracked slates. The bell hung motionless.
He drew his side-arm and shot it. The noise was unnaturally loud in the still quiet. The bell shifted, but didn't peal. He fired again, and scored another hit. This time, the clapper was displaced and Stack was rewarded with a resounding clang. He looked at Chantal. She unholstered her SIG, and pumped the whole clip at the bell, which swung vigorously, sounding out. The din was almost painful, and yet there was an aptness about it. Stack hadn't known anything about the dead man, but he felt that anyone who would choose to pursue his calling in Welcome would appreciate the rough music of ScumStopper and cast iron.
People appeared in the graveyard. Armindariz was there, sheepish and hung-over, and Tiger Behr, favouring his robo-leg over his real one. Pauncho the chef wobbled his belly up the low hill to the church. A tribe of children came in a column, led by a dignified woman in black. Sandrats shamefully detached themselves from their boltholes, shaking the dirt and dust from their domes, hanging their heads. Stack thought of checking IDs against the Wanted sheets back in the wrecked cruiser, but decided to offer a morning-long amnesty in honour of Father O'Pray. A cyke with a sidecar drew up. Shell and Miss Unleaded got off and out. They held their hands away from their guns and came into the churchyard. Shell raised his claw in front of his face to shield his eyes from the sun.
Chantal signalled to Armindariz and Pauncho that they should take the shovels. She went to Federico, and pulled out a loose black robe, more like a monk's than a nun's, which she tied about herself. It fastened around her neck, and left her face a white mask. The change was quite startling. Stack derived a perverse enjoyment from observing the expressions of those who had been in the Silver Byte last night. Even Miss Unleaded's impassive little face registered something approaching shock and surprise.
Chantal started speaking in Latin. It was the Mass for the Dead, Stack supposed. Some of the words sounded a little like Spanish, but he couldn't make much of it out. Wherever responses were expected from the mourners, he left them to the extensive Armindariz family. Father O'Pray's parishioners were used to funerals, he realized.
When she was finished, Chantal had Armindariz and his assistant sexton fill in the grave.
"Make him a headstone," she told the saloon keeper, "and rebuild the church."
"Bot, there ees no more Padre Burracho… no more priest."
She ripped her robe away, and scraped her fingers through her hair. "A priest will come. Where one was, another springs up."
Chantal got into Federico, and switched its systems on. One or two of the congregation had been eyeing the car lasciviously. They would have to be watched closely.
"Buonjuorno, sorella," the Ferrari said. "My senses indicate demonic activity within the immediate vicinity. Hostilities will be commenced within thirty seconds. You are advised to take evasive action at once."
Chantal had her gun out. Stack looked around. The mourners were either shocked or bewildered by what must seem to them a sourceless voice. The children were huddled to their mother.
Armindariz paused in mid-shovel.
"What did that there car mean, Trooper?" asked Tiger Behr, hobbling to Stack's side. "Demonic activity? What kind of rap is that?"
Stack turned to the old cyborg to explain.
Behr gasped. His eye widened, and his whole face thrust forwards, as if someone had just taken a sledge-hammer to the back of his head. He was choking.
The hostilities had commenced.
"Behr," Stack said, "what's wrong?"
The old man's robo-arm leaped out. Strong, durium-boned, leather-coated fingers seized Stack's throat.
Stack tasted his own blood, again.
Lauderdale watched closely as the techies pulled away the panels in the Ops Centre and snipped the relevant wires. Colonel Rintoon had given him a field promotion to Major, and put him in charge of sealing off Fort Apache against aggressors. All unauthorized communications with the outside world were forbidden, and Rintoon had posted loyal guards outside the Ops Centre with orders to summarily shoot dead anyone who tried to summon aid from any quarter. Rintoon believed that the rest of the US Cav was rotten with Maniak infiltrators. Lauderdale had asked for permission to deploy the android cadre, and the Colonel had put the suggestion on hold. Soon, Lauderdale knew, his androids would be in action.
"There, sir," said a tech. "No one can talk to anyone except through this room, sir."
"Good job."
The tech didn't say anything. She packed her tools and left. Lauderdale didn't like techs. They jealously guarded their specializations, throwing up an aura of mystery to exclude others. Of course, androids were different. They were supposed to be secret, supposed to be frightening.
It had been easy rising to his current position.
Williford had refused to execute the traitor Badalamenti, and so the task had fallen to Lauderdale. When it was accomplished, Rintoon immediately jumped him to Captain and had him execute Williford too, the Lieutenant having revealed himself by his defiance of authority to be another Maniak in blue. After that, Rintoon had made him a Major. Lauderdale had wondered whether to have the rank insignia sewn on his old tunics, but fortunately the late Majors McAuley and Faulcon had been about his size, and so he was able to commandeer their wardrobes.
Rintoon was in the process of recalling all field units to the Fort. Their positions were lit up on the map, moving back towards Lake Havasu. The cruiser patrols were being logged in as and when they arrived. The Fort was on a war footing. The Colonel was expecting a Maniak assault at any moment. Lauderdale smiled at that. He wondered how his superior would react when he found out precisely what was attacking Fort Apache.
The Colonel had spent the whole morning weeding out traitors, and having them executed. He had found thirteen in the fort's compliment of three hundred and two. What with the other casualties, the fort's tiny morgue was packed to capacity, and the corpses were having to be stored in the hospital beds. Lauderdale noticed that, apart from Colonel Rintoon, none of the other officers had chosen to talk to him since Badalamenti. It didn't matter.
Captain Finney was at her regular console, and seemed to be under control, but Lauderdale knew he had to watch her. She was too in tune with the computer systems. He intended to recommend to Rintoon that her access to them be restricted, or perhaps denied entirely. Still, according to Elder Seth, the thing in the database could take care of itself.
"Cat?" he asked.
"Major," she said, not looking up.
"All systems A-OK?”
"Sir, yessir."
She punched keys, and sine curves revolved on her screen.
"You've run the projections the Colonel wanted?"
"Sir, yessir." She handed him a sheaf of papers.
"Good work."
"Sir, thank you sir."
Lauderdale pretended to look at the print-out. He couldn't understand any of the figures. But he knew that the Call of Joseph was nearly upon him.
It was a full three hours since he had last spilled blood. And the blood was an essential part of the ritual. Elder Seth himself had explained it to him on his last covert visit to Salt Lake City. Only through the constant spilling of blood could the Dark Ones keep their purchase on this plane of existence. For them, each sacrifice was like a handhold in a sheer rockface.
Lauderdale considered Cat Finney. She was dangerous to him. He could easily convince the Colonel that she had been a Maniak, that she had been gnawing away at the cybernetic foundations of the Apache database. His hand went to his sidearm.
No. There were too many other operators in the centre.
Finney had too many friends. Lauderdale's position as Rintoon's second-in-command was precarious. There was no telling who the old man would listen to in any given argument. He could as easily be persuaded that Lauderdale was a Maniak as Finney.
"Keep it up, Cat, keep it up," he said.
"Sir, yessir," she replied.
He left the Ops Centre, and hurried through the corridors. He hummed to himself, Neil Sedaka's "I Love, I Love, I Love My Little Calendar Girl". He reached into the tunic, and felt the switchblade snug in its harness under his arm. The next person to come along would do, he felt sure…
A Trooper rounded the corner. Lauderdale didn't know him. That was good. Personal feelings tainted the sacrifice. It was important to spill the blood without hate, without love, without emotion.
"Trooper."
"Lieutenant…Major, sir."
The Trooper stood to attention.
"Name?"
"Brecher, Michaeljohn T., Company B Smoke-Generating, sir."
Lauderdale prowled around the Trooper. There was no one in sight. He looked at Brecher's broad back.
"You're out of uniform, Trooper. Look, your shirttail is loose…"
Standing behind the man, he drew his knife. The blade silently appeared. With its point, he tugged at Brecher's shirt, pulling it free.
"And here, you have a button missing from your epaulette…"
"Sir?"
He cut the button off. It bounced on the floor and rolled away. There was a touch of perplexion in Brecher's eyes as Lauderdale pricked the side of his throat.
"You're a mess, Trooper," he whispered into the man's ear as he eased the knife in through his jugular vein, wiggled it into his windpipe, and scraped it against his vertebrae.
Lauderdale stood back to avoid the arterial spray.
The Maniax had struck again. He went to the wall and sounded the alarm.
The dead man's throat kept pumping a red tide onto the dirty white floor until the guards came.
As his prosthetic hand ground into Stack's neck Tiger Behr was babbling, "It's not me, mister, I ain't doin' this, it's not me, it's not me…"
Chantal brought her gun up, but there were too many people in the way. The Armindariz children had flown into a panic and were running, screaming, around the place like cats on fire.
Chantal made her way through them, gun still raised.
Stack was bent backwards at the waist, limp at the knees. He was feebly scrabbling at Behr's metal-ringed wrist.
Chantal had a good shot now. She took it.
The gun clicked. She remembered she had emptied it at the bell. There was no time to reload.
Through Behr's tattered shirt, she saw a patch of scrawny skin unprotected by fleshplate armour.
She braced herself against a tombstone, and vault-kicked with both feet.
Her kick landed hard, and gouged a gobbet from Behr's back. But she didn't knock him off his footing, and the jolt shocked through her feet and legs. The tombstone tipped over—the sandy ground was too loose to be an anchor—and she fell on top of it, hurting her hip.
Behr straightened, and turned robotically. He held Stack at arms' length, lifting him off the ground. His face was greyish now, and he was bleeding where Behr's fingers were sinking into the flesh.
"What'd ya do that fer, lady," he asked. "I tole you it weren't me. It's these damn doodads. I cain't control them all uv the time."
She tried a double karate chop, either side of his neck. Behr cried out, but didn't die.
His half face was crying, she saw. The pain and the frustration must be intense. But his electronic eye was glowing evilly.
"Tiger, did you have an optic burner implanted?"
The old Angel looked awesomely fed up. "Dad blast it, I did, lady. I wish it weren't so, but…"
The glow turned red, and Chantal cartwheeled out of its path. Behr's head wrenched around on his neck, soliciting a shout of pain from him, and the beam raked the graveyard. A stone crucifix exploded into shrapnel fragments, and weather-beaten 19th Century wooden markers burst into flames.
The mourners had mainly taken cover in the church. Those that were armed had their guns out.
Bullets rang against Behr's armoured chest.
"Careful," shouted Chantal, "you'll hit the Trooper."
No one seemed much to care about that. A long-haired old man in torn leathers jumped out of Father O'Pray's grave with a shotgun, and primed it. Before he could fire, the optic burn had caught him in the centre of his chest, and he tumbled backwards, dead.
Chantal danced around Behr, realizing that she could move faster than be could turn, and that his range with the burner was at best 120 degrees of his eyeline. She got in close, and struck wherever she saw Behr's original body.
He continued to complain. "Don't hurt me, sister. Hurt this thing!"
She had to do something about Stack.
"Shovel," she shouted. Armindariz was cringing between a pair of tombs, still clutching the spade. "Shovel," she repeated.
Armindariz stood up, and lobbed the spade to her. It spun end over end until she snatched it from the air. She got a good hold and swung it two-handed at Behr's flesh-and-bone elbow.
Behr screamed as the blade sliced through, breaking the brittle bone.
"Sorry, Tiger," she said.
Stack fell, gasping for bream, detaching the severed robo-arm from his throat. It continued to clutch automatically as he smashed it against the ground. Wires and transistors leaked from its stump.
Chantal took aim at Behr's head and swung again. The optic flashed, and the spadehead exploded into red-hot shards. She was left with a burning pole, which she shoved at the cyborg's torso. It splintered against his dented chestplate.
Through the glass, Chantal could see red blood leaking into Behr's mechanism, shorting out some of his electronics.
She ducked under the swing of his left arm, and threw herself against him, hoping to open a crack with her shoulder.
She felt as if she had tried to tackle Notre Dame. The cathedral, not the college football team.
She rolled away from the cyborg: The beam was getting too close.
A huge figure loomed up behind Behr, and a claw locked around his throat. Shell had stepped in. Sweat ran from his ebony-muscled arm and blocky face as he exerted pressure.
"Hold on there, sonny boy," Behr spluttered.
Shell had his real hand pressed against the back of Behr's head, to keep the cyborg's burner pointed away from him. Behr's head was still turning, inexorably. Chantal heard the old man's vertebrae straining inside his exoskeleton.
"This freakin' hurts, ya know," Behr shouted.
Shell was grunting now, losing his fight against Behr's neck. There was a sudden crack as Behr's spine snapped.
The Gaschugger relaxed, but Behr's head kept turning, until it was seeing backwards, his dead face against Shell's living one.
The optic burned, and Shell fell away from the cyborg, a ragged, smoking hole where his eyes and nose had been. Chantal glimpsed daylight through the headwound as the 'chugger fell. In the church, someone—Miss Unleaded?— howled with unfeigned grief.
What was left of Behr was unsteady on its feet. Chantal stood up, and waited for it to bring its face to bear again. Behr's tongue lolled from his mouth and his real eye was fogged. The optic was burned out, its solid cell used up on Shell. Inside all the bio-mechanics, he was dead, but the robot half of him was still going to kill her.
It raised its hand to its face, and pushed its tongue into its mouth. Then, using three fingers, it propped its jaw open. Behr had had a partially synthetic voice-box.
"Helllloooo, bayby-beach!" it said.
"The Big Bopper," she snapped. 'IP. Richardson, 'Chantilly Lace,' 1958."
"Highest chart position. Number Twelve." The mechanical voice grated. "Trust the Sister from Switzerland to have a photographic memory."
The dead man lurched forwards, arm out like Lon Chaney Jr as the Mummy. She realized the thing was blind, but guessed it would have some kind of sonar or heat pattern sensor inside it.
"Who are you?" she asked, stepping backwards a pace.
"My name is Legion…" it said.
"…for you are Many. That's an old joke."
"The oldies are the goodies, don't you think, mon petit choux."
It was using her father's voice.
"That's an old trick, too. It didn't work in California, and it's not going to work here."
It took a step, and changed voices. "Chantal, come back," it said in Italian, in Marcello's whine, "don't you like me any more?"
She kicked it in the throat. It was less steady now.
“I'm still dead, daughter," said her father. “I'm busy ducking rocks in Hell. And what have you done about it?"
Her foot hurt. That last kick had been rash.
"Ahh, the Sin of Pride," said Father O'Shaugnessy, "that was always your failing, Sister Chantal, always overreaching, always overconfident."
Someone rushed at the thing, screaming like a banshee, and was bent into broken halves in an instant. It hadn't been anyone Chantal had noticed before.
"Call me Georgi," said the Pope, "and come to bed."
She landed the heel of her hand on the glassex chest. It cracked.
The thing coughed mechanically, and she could see the wheels going round. She punched the crack, and it widened. Something was broken inside.
The people were creeping out of the church now. It must be obvious that the fight was between Chantal and the thing in Tiger Behr's body. The Behr creature wouldn't mimic life long after it had killed the nun. Stack was down and out of it, fallen in a swoon by the grave.
Chantal sucker-punched the thing, without any notable effect. Her hard knuckles were bleeding.
She pulled her bowie knife, and embedded its point in the crack in the demon thing's chest, working it back and forth. It laughed, and took her neck from the back, hugging her to him. The knife wedged into the chest cavity.
"Come to Papa," it cooed obscenely. She felt nails dig into her.
Then they were both falling into the grave, another active body pressed down on top of them, shrieking.
It was Miss Unleaded, a ladies' revolver in her little fist. Chantal pushed herself away from the Behr creature, and found herself bunched against Father O'Pray.
Miss Unleaded was pushing the cyborg's face into the grave earth. A band of peeling skin showed between the helmetlike exoskull and the slatted plates across Behr's clavicles. The Gaschugger shoved her gun against the gap and emptied it. Some of the bullets must have torn through to the mechanisms, because the creature jolted and jerked, sparks spitting from its wounds. Miss Unleaded cried out and stood up, electrical arcs sparking between the creature and her revolver, her earrings, her overall buckles, her dental fillings. She broke the connection and collapsed, her exposed skin blackened.
The creature stood up, smoke and flame belching from its ruptured torso. Chantal tried to get upright, but the gravewall behind her gave way as she tried to put her back against it.
"Come to Papa," its hand extended, fingerends turned to bloody spearpoints.
It took a step. Chantal could smell the melting plastic and putrefying flesh inside it.
Its fingers lightly brushed her throat. Site chopped at its wrist, but its claw kept coming for her.
"Come to Pa…"
There was an explosion, deafeningly loud in the confines of the grave, and the cyborg's helmetlike head burst like a dropped watermelon. The creature stood for a moment, then collapsed at Chantal's feet.
She looked up, and saw Trooper Nathan Stack, a newly-discharged shotgun smoking in his hands.
"The US Cav to the rescue," he said, priming his pumpgun again.
"Help me with the girl," Chantal said.
Miss Unleaded was whimpering. Chantal hugged her, and passed her up to Stack, who laid her out beside the grave.
Chantal pulled herself up. The headless cyborg kicked, a last mechanical reflex, and burned steadily.
She knelt by Miss Unleaded, feeling her pulses and her heartbeat.
"Well?" asked Stack.
Chantal snapped her fingers in the air. He was good. He knew what she wanted, and put it in her hand.
Miss Unleaded was gasping, trying to talk, but nothing was coming from her throat.
Chantal stuck the morph-plus hypo into the 'chugger's neck, and squeezed. The girl's eyelids fluttered.
"Water," Chantal said, "from the church."
"I don't think she'll be able to swallow. Look at those convulsions."
"Water," she said. "Not to drink."
"Oh," Stack said, running off.
Chantal held the writhing girl down, and tried to smooth her hair out of her eyes. Her heartbeat was irregular now. The discharges must have shocked her to the bone.
Stack came back with a leaky hatful of water. He put it down beside her. She dipped her fingers, and began the ritual—the familiar ritual—dabbing the girl.
Chantal gave Miss Unleaded the last rites.
The Gaschugger persisted in trying to talk.
Finally, when Chantal was finished, the girl got her last word out.
"Ma…maaaaa…"
Chantal crossed herself and stood up, beating the dust from her domes.
"Armindariz," she said, "dig some more graves."
Quite apart from everything else, there was something badly twisted deep inside the system. Finney ran her checks again. Everything was responding perfectly. All the connections were solid. There were no apparent glitches. But there was still something wrong. It was working properly, but there was still something wrong.
The responses to her interrogation were a beat slower than they should have been. And too many files were refusing to open for her. The whole system was clamming up, keeping itself to itself. That was bad. She felt as if she were questioning a well-behaved child she knew was responsible for a series of atrocities. It was coming up with well-reasoned, plausible, rational excuses while sharpening a carving knife behind its back.
She had been sitting at her console for six straight hours now, testing everything. It was her way of keeping her head down and trying to live out the crisis.
Rintoon was stone crazy, and seemed to be taking Lauderdale along for the ride. All the people who had spoken up when there still might have been a way to end the craziness at Fort Apache were dead. It seemed that new corpses were felling out of the closet all the time. Finney hadn't expected to wake up alive for this shift.
Colosanto called the names of the units still out there. Almost everyone had returned to base by now. She listed Tyree and Stack as overdue, even though everybody had given up on them by now. They were dead, for sure.
Finney's screen lit up green, with four inch-high wavering letters picked out in black.
HELLO, it said.
HELLO, CATHERINE.
She started, and looked around. The other operators were absorbed in their own work, or staring disconsolately off into space.
IT'S JUST YOU AND ME, CATHERINE, the screen said.
"So?" she tapped.
SO, LETS PAAAARRTEEEE!
Sunbursts went off behind the writing. Skulls, bats and party hats danced in the comers. A deathshead blew a vibrating raspberry.
"Who are you?" she typed out.
THAT'S FOR ME TO KNOW, AND YOU TO FIND OUT.
"Jesus Christ," she breathed.
GOOD GUESS, BUT WRONG, WRONG, WRROONNNNGG!
"Please identify yourself."
FREAK OFF, RATSKAG!
"Lauderdale?"
KEEP SPINNING THE STRAW INTO GOLD, MY PRETTY. RUMPLESTILTSKIN'S NOT TELLING.
Site turned in her chair, and considered calling someone over. She decided against it. This weirdness was way off the scale. Colosanto finished her List, and sat down again. The Lieutenant was near the breaking point, Finney knew. It was surprising that so few personnel had gone Section Eight.
She looked back at the screen. A dog like the one in the Tom and Jerry cartoons was battering a cartoon cat with a baseball bat. The cat's head was knocked shapeless with each blow.
HERE, KITTY, KITTY, KITTY!
The cat's head blew up like a helium balloon and floated off. The dog growled and vanished in an iris.
I TORT I TAW A PUTTY TAT!
"Why are you here?" she asked.
…TO PLAY THE DEVIL.
The printer started up, and Finney could have sworn she heard a mocking laugh in its noise. Or the "Th-th-that's All Folks!" tune from the end of the Warner Brothers cartoons.
It was printing out a complete listing, in alphabetical order, of all the personnel in the fort. It was mostly in regulation black, but certain names were printed red.
She recognized them. They were the dead ones.
I'LL SAVE YOU, the screen offered.
Finney furrowed her brow. Why was whatever was lurking in the machine offering to save her?
I'LL SAVE YOU TILL LAST.
"Fort Apache does not respond."
"That's not possible," Stack said.
Chantal accelerated as Federico hit the flat. They were out of the mountains now, back in the desert proper. The road ahead was clear. There was no traffic at all today. Even the road-rats were laid up somewhere. Not that any of them could have given Federico much of a chase.
"But it is so. I've tried all the frequencies. None of them are open."
"Let me try."
"You are welcome."
She handed him the laptop, and he punched in his Cav callsign. A code number flashed.
"It's acknowledging, but it's not putting me through. It's like we've been put on hold, at the back of a queue."
"Freak."
"I didn't think nuns used language like that."
"You've obviously never met one before."
"That's true."
Federico held the road superbly. Stack envied Chantal her vehicle.
"It is possible that all the fort's communications channels are in use to deal with some emergency," she said.
"But unlikely."
"Even so, it's possible."
"I've never heard of anything like that, and I've been in the blue for fifteen years."
"In that case, the demons are in control of the fort. That's bad."
"You're telling me."
"No, it's worse than you think. Fort Apache is a node on the datanet. It's more complicated than St Werburgh's. The systems all interface. If our enemy builds up significant strength, it can launch an attack on El Paso, and if El Paso falls, then all of Central and South America will fell."
"Serves 'em right."
"Spoken like a true American. Do you really imagine that national boundaries count for much in Hell? If your neighbours go down in flames, they'll drag you too. El Paso is strategically placed for plenty of databases within the United States as well."
"I've got a legitimate grievance against the CAC, Sister. My father died in action in El Salvador in "73."
His Dad had been career army. He had been killed in a battle with socialist guerillas during the Intervention. It wasn't even supposed to be a shooting war.
Chantal was quiet for a moment. "My father, too, is dead. I'm sorry."
Stack caught something new in her voice, a touch of doubt, or fragility.
"When they shipped him out, he knew he wasn't coming back. Don't ask me how, he just knew. Before he left. Dad told me to do anything with my life except join the army. And here I am with stripes down my legs and none on my shoulder. Your old man, how did he feel about your…your calling?"
She flicked a row of switches on the dash. The windshield darkened against the glare of the sun. "I did not develop a vocation until after his death. He was not especially devout, but I hope he approves of my life. He too was a soldier, in a manner of speaking…"
"You said you were Swiss, didn't you? I thought Switzerland was neutral?"
"Switzerland, yes. My father, no. He was, in his way, a crusader. He fought in the international courts for a better world. His name was Thomas Juillerat. He was murdered. Perhaps you've heard of him?"
"No, I'm afraid not."
"It doesn't matter. Europe must seem very remote from here. I think my father made a difference. I think he did something for the world."
"The world, huh? The same one you've retreated from?"
She turned to him. "I am not a member of a sequestered order, Stack. I'm as much in the world as you are."
"You sure aren't like Sister Bertrille."
Chantal laughed. "Sally Field, The Flying Nun, 1967 to l970. Not one of the finer moments of American popular culture."
"Is there anything you don't know?"
"The future."
"Yeah, that…"
Lauderdale was washing his hands under the tap in the storeroom. He was being wilfully wasteful of the fort's recycled water. There was no one to stop him.
He could do whatever he wanted now.
His androids were still stood to attention. He saluted them, and laughed. The GloJo he had popped was taking effect. He needed the extra buzz. He had been under a lot of strain recently.
Under its dustsheet, one of the androids saluted back. Lauderdale jumped, his heart catching, and reached for his side-arm.
There was someone under there posing as an android.
He fired, and heard the slug ricochet off a durium skin. It was a real android, all right. The spent bullet spanged against the wall and fell to the floor.
With his gunbarrel, he tore the polygene away from the saluting form. It was an android all right, faceless and expressionless.
Could there be a malfunction?
Carefully, he approached. He had his access cardkey. The inspection plate was in the small of the thing's back.
"Yo, there major, gimme some skin…"
The flipper-hand descended from its salute and struck the hot gun from Lauderdale's hand.
"Yo, bro…"
"What?!"
The android stepped off its podium, loose-limbed and gyroscopically balanced.
"It's me, Gilbert the Filbert, the Colonel of the Nuts!"
The android clapped its hands and stamped its feet. The metal floor shook, and the noise rung in the air.
"You been doin' good work, sonny. Lots o' nice blood spilled. Jus' the thang for a long, hot afternoon. A tall, cool drink o' deepest-crimson gore."
The android hand-jived to an unheard tune. Its head nodded in time to the rhythm. Lauderdale backed against the door. He fought his fear.
"It's you, isn't it?" he said.
"Who were you expecting? Perhaps, Frank Sinatra?"
Lauderdale sank to his knees, and prayed. He gave thanks to the Summoner.
"Dooby-dooby-doo," sang the demon.
"Praise be to Joseph."
"Aww, quit grovellin', babe. That's such a bring-down. It ain't lawful to be that awful. Lawdy-lawdy, Lauderdale, get yo ass in gear or face the fear."
Lauderdale stood up, unsteadily. He looked into the metal face, trying to see the ghost in the machine.
"That's better, hepcat."
"The power. You have built up the power?"
"Ain't yet, but it's gonna be…"
The plan was going perfectly. Soon, El Paso would fall. And then the Continental Americas would be easy meat. The Hour of Joseph was within sight. Lauderdale felt a great thirst, a ravening hunger, an unquenchable lust, a ferocious aggression, a delicious need for food and drink and women and blood. He remembered Elder Seth's promises of a future untrammelled by laws, restraints and codes, when the strong would have all their desires effortlessly fulfilled, and the weak would exist only to serve them. He could taste it in his dry mouth. "When?"
"Soon, son. But we ain't had all our fun here yet. Are there or are there not people still walkin' around alive in this place?" Lauderdale was overcome by the magnitude of the entity before him. His mind opened in all sorts of interesting ways, and he tasted the rewards that would surely be his before the day was done. The GloJo had loosened him up, but this creature was pulling him apart. The old Lauderdale, the yessir nossir pleasemaylkissyerasssir Lauderdale was as dead as…As dead as Rexroth, Badalamenti, Willeford, Brecher…As dead as all the others.
"Let's get down and boogie to the band, Lauderdale," said the demon. "We're expecting company. Won't that be a treat? A nice lady. She's from Switzerland. A nice country, Switzerland. Lots of nice people live there. Her name is Chantal Juillerat, and she's a nun. A nice name for a nice nun. Isn't that nice, nice, NICE? I want you to do this one little thing for me, I want you to help me kill her. Do you think you can do that?"
Lauderdale nodded. He was nearly at the door. The wallpanel was open. The console humming.
"Goooooood!"
Lauderdale threw the switches. Slowly, the androids began to stir, to throw off their transparent shrouds, to line up behind their leader.
"Sir?" Lauderdale asked.
The android was straight and tall, its mechanisms ticking gently, the cadre lined up behind it.
"Sir?"
The android saluted again, but it was an automatic response.
The demon was in some other part of the fort. The killing machines waited patiently for his orders.
Chantal let Stack drive. Federico did most of the work, adjusting to the Trooper's slightly different style in the helmet. She was amused to note the Ferrari was slightly more curt with Stack than it usually was with her, as if bridling under a new master.
In the passenger seat, she tried to clear her mind. Mother Kazuko had taught her zen meditation techniques, and explained the equivalence with Western forms of prayer. It was at once a form of self-hypnosis and of devotion, a purging of physical and emotional pains, and a preparation for combat, or for death,
She wished the Mother could be here. She had come through in California last year, at great personal cost. After this was over, if she was still alive, Chantal would visit Kazuko in the San Clemente Retreat.
There was no shortage of parent figures in her life, she realized. Thomas and Isabella, for all their railings. In the church, Rape Georgi, Father Daguerre, Mother Kazuko, Father O'Shaughnessy. Outside, Mlle Fornier, Isabella's admirers, Thomas' bodyguards. Even Federico could seem paternal at odd moments. Of course, there was Our Father Who Art in Heaven. And, though she had never yet met him race to face, there was the Evil Father in Salt Lake City who had probably been distantly involved in the California business, who was certainly the prime mover in the current possession. Fathers, mothers, teachers, confessors. Good parents, evil parents.
She prayed for guidance. She prayed for strength.
If she were to die, she would leave so much undone. She would have liked to have found her father's murderers. Not for vengeance, she told herself, but for Justice and to do his name honour. She would have liked a genuine reconciliation with her mother, to have found in her own prideful heart a way to forgive Isabella her shortfallings. She would have liked to have helped Father O'Shaugnessy find that point where the cybernet and the earthly plane intersect with the Divine. She would have liked to see the church grow under Georgi to the point when it no longer needed to deploy those with her special skills. Then, perhaps, she would seek out an enclosed order and atone for her sins by putting aside computers, martial arts, weapons and learning and devoting herself to tilling the soil.
In her mind, she saw herself as a tough old lady in a nun's penguin suit, working with the sick, wresting crops out of rocky ground, singing in the choir rather than as a soloist, perhaps married, probably not…
"You are an ace, not cannon fodder," Father O'Shaughnessy had told her once, "a gunslinger, not a grunt. And you must live with that for the rest of your rife, always trying to live on a level with the rest of us. It will not be easy."
She prayed wordlessly, inviting God into the void within herself.
She floated back, and found herself cross-legged in the passenger seat, her hands loosely together in her lap.
"There," Stack said, "up ahead. No place like home. Fort Apache."
"Colonel Rintoon," said Lieutenant Colosanto, "we have a ve-hickle on the approach road."
"One of ours?"
"No, but it's been logged out of the fort. It's the Ferrari that came with the Swiss Op, Juillerat."
"She was a Maniak spy. It must be an attack."
Finney swung round in her seat, and saw the Colonel, wild-haired and red-eyed, bending over Colosanto's console.
"Sir," she said, "Juillerat has diplomatic immunity."
Rintoon stared at her balefully. He hadn't shaved, and his stubble was mostly grey. He had bitten his forefingernails to the bleeding quicks, but curiously left his other fingers alone.
"That's what I said, Finney. She's an agent of a foreign power. She is on a mission to subvert this command. I will not be subverted. I will not be liquidated. I will not be terminated. They'll rue the day they crossed swords with Colonel Vladek W. Rintoon!"
Finney observed that Lieutenant-cum-Major Lauderdale had his holster flap undone. The uniform he had scavved from a dead officer was a size or so too large on him. He looked like a little boy dressed up in his father's domes. His face was impassive, as if Rintoon were running through a list of toiletry items the fort needed to restock on. She wondered which of her superiors was the more cracked.
"Colosanto, are the fort's defensive systems operational?"
"Yes sir."
"Then do your duty. Protect us from this aggressive enemy."
Finney got up. Colosanto looked at her, chewing her lower lip.
"Snap to it, woman," spat Rintoon.
Colosanto brought up the defence menu on her screen. In an inset, the bridge road appeared in an aerial view. A blip was advancing along it, tripping a succession of alarms. It wasn't moving with any particular speed.
The lieutenant looked unhappily at her console, as if selecting a course of action.
A light flashed. Colosanto heaved a sigh of disproportionate relief. "Sir, they're trying to open a channel of communication. It's not an attack. It's not an attack."
Rintoon exploded, spittle flying. "Oldest trick in the book, woman. Attacking under a flag of truce. Typical Maniak strategy. Never appease, never compromise, never surrender. Be a good girl, and get me some weapons systems on line."
Colosanto's face fell.
"Come on, come on you freaking hagwitch. Do I have to do everything here myself?"
The Colonel was drooling. Everyone in the Ops Centre was huddled around Colosanto's console. Finney took a look at Lauderdale, who was observing with a bland lack of interest. Colosanto's fingers hovered in the air above her keyboard. "What is today's attack codeword?" Rintoon asked.
Colosanto was still frozen. Finney saw she was crying. She was sobbing quietly. Her hands shook, and fell to her lap. "The codeword, soldier? Now? Cough up!" Rintoon cuffed the back of Colosanto's head. The lieutenant's hair fell over her free.
"The codeword?"
Colosanto snuffled something.
"What was that? Lauderdale, on the count of three, shoot this officer unless she tells me what I need to know."
"Yes sir."
Lauderdale's put his gun to the back of Colosanto's bead.
"One!"
Her face was in her hands, and her shoulders were heaving. The blip was on the bridge.
"Two!"
Jagged, painful sobs escaped from Colosanto's lungs.
"Three!"
An eternal second passed.
"SWORDFIST!" Finney said.
Lauderdale's gun jerked upwards, bumping the back of Colosanto's skull but not discharging.
Rintoon and Lauderdale looked at Finney.
"I know the codes," she said. "SWORDFIST is the defence systems keyword today."
Lauderdale pulled Colosanto's chair away from her console arid spun her across the room. Then he put his gun down, bent over the board and typed. A dull tone sounded. Lauderdale had scored a MISS.
"She lied," he said, reaching for his gun. "SWORDFISH doesn't load."
"Another Maniak unmasked," crowed Rintoon. "Well, shoot her dead, my boy. No, perhaps we ought to teach her a lesson first. Get me a whip and some rope."
"What did you type?" Finney asked.
"SWORDFISH, ratskag! Like you said. It wasn't acknowledged."
Lauderdale's knuckles went white as he gripped his gun.
"SWORDFIST, Lauderdale. SWORDFIST."
Lauderdale made a gesture of exasperation, and typed in the correct codeword.
The screen changed colour. The HIT beep sounded, playing the first few notes of "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon".
"Attention, attention," cooed the seductive, recorded voice on the tannoy (the US Cav had hired Lola Stechkin for the purpose), "this facility is now under attack. Everyone will report to their battle stations. Thank you for co-operating."
"What do you want to try first?" Lauderdale asked Rintoon. "The rockets, the lases, the napalm or the mortars?"
Rintoon was standing to attention. There must be an incredible band playing inside his head. He raised his hand in a slow salute.
"I think we should all take a moment to talk to God, soldiers," he said. "I think if Jesus Christ were here today, He'd be urging us on to Victory. We should Love our Enemies, soldiers, for without them we have not the chance for Victory."
"Colonel?" said Lauderdale "What about the androids? I have them operational?"
"Everything," Rintoon said, "hit the scum with everything."
Finney helped Colosanto up off the floor. The lieutenant clung desperately to her, shaking with hysteria.
"God forgive me," Finney said to herself. "God forgive me."