In the quiet of the morning, Judge Thomas Longhorne Colpeper uprolled the blinds and took a look at the peacability. From the window of his study, on the top storey of the clapboard courthouse-cum-town-hall, he could survey the Main Street of Spanish Fork, Utah, and be satisfied with the world he had made.
Everything was still except the creaky sign of the Feelgood Saloon, which was electronically jiggered to waver as if in a breeze even when the wind was down. The town slowly came to life. The scissor-legged shadow of Christopher Carnadyne skittered across the street like a stick insect as the undertaker took his morning constitutional. Carnadyne doffed his crepe-ringed top hat to Mrs Dolley Magruder as they met in the street and exchanged pleasantries. Cash crop farmhands with a bellyful of big bean breakfast broke out of the Chow Trough and headed off to the fields for a hard day cultivating the Whoopee Weed. Small children played with dogs. Honest traders opened for business. O'Rourke's Security Goods offered a special summer price on Kevlar.
The judge was proud of the town. His town. He liked to think of Spanish Fork that way. It was certainly the way most folks had come to think of the old place. The judge was a contented man. Spanish Fork was a peaceful community, a friendly town like they weren't supposed to be any more. They had some laws, but not so many a man couldn't cut loose a little. They had a deep-water well which still ran pure and was under 24-hour guard. Murder wasn't necessarily a capital offence in Spanish Fork, but stealing from the well was.
The town had a few deputies who had made names for themselves and decided to settle down. Job Fiske had been with T-H-R until they'd parted company over his disrespectful treatment of a Japcorp oyabun, and Matthieu Larroquette had made the cover of Guns and Killing when he'd brought in the serial killer Hector "Chainsaw" Childress in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Nice, regular, deputy-type guys, they made sure the peace was kept, or at least as much of it as the town decreed desirable.
The sun was high already and Main Street baked. Without the well, Spanish Fork would have parched up and blown away like all the other towns hereabouts. The place had once been called New Canaan – it was in the county records – and the sand had flowered through the miraculous agency of that deep water. Then, the fruitfulness had excited envy and a parcel of no-good Josephites and Indians had fallen upon New Canaan, massacred everybody and razed the place to the ground. There was an ugly memorial by the old corn exchange. Judge Colpeper had learned the lesson of history. This time, Spanish Fork was ready for whatever varmints came out of the Des, sniffing after the precious nectar.
From one end of the street, a figure strode on powerful legs. It was Matthieu Larroquette. In town, he walked everywhere, tireless. The first biker who thought the pedestrian deputy would be easy meat soon learned about the kick Larroquette packed in his amended arm. Things were so quiet, the judge could almost hear the jingling of Larroquette's spurs. Carna-dyne raised his hat and stepped aside, letting the Deputy past; the undertaker's toothy grin suggested Larroquette was good for his business.
You could tell it was a civilised community. Colum Whittaker had a 25-foot polished wood bar in the Feelgood Saloon, the Reverend Boote kept a nice little church nobody shot up too much, Chollie Jenevein ran a world-class auto repair shop with spare parts for everything from a '55 Chevrolet to an orbital shuttle, Dolley Magruder's sporting gents and ladies entertained nightly at reasonable rates at the Pussycat Palace on Maple Street, and Judge Thomas Longhorne Colpeper was in charge of a picturesque gallows with facilities to handle five customers simultaneously.
Just now, Colpeper only had one set of guests to be bothered with and he had a sense that they could be handled.
When the Psychopomps hit Spanish Fork late the night before and headed for Colum's 25-foot bar, Job Fiske had made a personal call to inform the judge. Colpeper considered things a moment and looked up the rap-sheets on the interagency datanets. He didn't consider crimes committed outside the city limits much to do with him, but he liked to keep abreast of things. There was a girl with the 'Pomps, Jessamyn Bonney, who was earning herself a rep. Twenty-three semi-confirmed kills, starting with her own father, and some interesting black-market surgical amendments. She would be a Guns and Killing pin-up within the year.
The judge told Fiske to keep a watch for a girl with one eye, and make sure her lieutenant Andrew Jean wasn't too enthusiastic with the beehive-hairdo-concealed slipknife. A solo Op in Montana had got a nasty surprise from ignoring the orange-haired 'Pomp with the eye make-up and there hadn't been much left to bury afterwards. Otherwise, if the 'Pomps were content to be good customers, and pay for their food, drink, gas, auto repairs and party favours, the judge was content to let them be. The secret of the town's survival was that folks that other communities saw as threats, Spanish Fork treated as customers.
By now. Colum's bartender down at the Feelgood would have told the ganggirls all about him, and maybe, if they were lucky, they'd respect his rep. It had been a while since he'd officiated at one of his special quintuple necktie parties.
Things were pretty quiet. A recorded note from Fiske on his oak desk reported that the Psychopomps had enthusiastically partaken of the fare at the Feelgood and broken a little furniture. Nothing indispensible. Then they'd rented cabins over at the Katz Motel and broken some of Herman Katz's ugly tables and chairs while passing round the glojo Ferd Sunderland mixed up in the back of the drug store. A couple of the hardier boys and nancier girls from the Pussycat Palace had gone back to the Katz for a little Strenuous Recreation with the ganggirls.
The judge had a warm glow as he imagined the fun the boys and girls must have had and still be having in and around the shower units, hot tubs and water-beds of Herman's Party Cabins. They wouldn't be too competent at trouble-making, at least until suppertime.
Judge Colpeper fastened his bootlace tie and put his big silver-banded black hat on his flowing silver locks. He felt his inside vest pocket for the derringer dartgun he habitually carried and slipped polished Colt .45 Pythons into his hip holsters. The guns were satisfyingly heavy, fully loaded with ScumStopper explosive rounds. The weight dragged his pelvis down and back, inspiring him to puff out his chest and walk tall. He settled into his long black frock coat, ensuring the skirts hung properly over his guns. Scanning himself in the mirror, he was well pleased.
Descending from his study to the courthouse steps like God from heaven, he was ready when Larroquette came by to accompany him on his regular tour of the town.
"Good mornin', judge," the deputy said, taking off his Cyberfeed stetson. The sockets on his shaven head stood out raw. He had been scratching them again.
"Good morning, Matthieu. Thank you for the report on the Psychopomp situation."
"Weren't nothin', Judge. Just keepin' tabs, like you always say."
The judge joined Matthieu in the street. Job Fiske, quiet and compact, ambled out of the shadows to join them. Fiske hefted a robobit arm, replacing the one he lost in action against the Clean, and clacked his claws encouragingly. Behind his back, some of the Feelgood boys called him Deputy Lobster, but a nip from the doodad discouraged disrespect.
"Any strangers to report, Job?"
Fiske stood straight, "There's some old cowpoke, judge. On a horse, if you can credit it. He's been seen a couple of times on the outlying spreads. Nowhere near town though."
"Not messing with our weed?"
"Not as far as I can tell."
"There's no trouble from one lone ranger, then. Still, if you can find anything out about him, do so. A man on a horse is unusual round these parts. A man without wheels under him has got to be some sort of weirdo."
"Herman Katz says he passed by the motel two, three days back. Herman says he thought the cowpoke had been out on the trail a long, long time. Covered in white dust, like a ghost."
Colpeper grinned. "Well now, Herman's been a mite touched since that sad business with his mother. It's a shame, but you shouldn't take much account of what he says."
The judge looked up and down Main Street. Ferd was sweeping up out front of the drugstore. Colpeper returned the druggist's wave. The man was a world-class pharmaceutical whiz but he had opted to retire to Spanish Fork for his health and tinker away with his chemistry set. His special Candy Z mixes attracted a lot of customers.
Accompanied by his deputies, the judge walked his rounds. Every day, this gave him a sense of his power, his stability. He knew the solids could set their clocks by him. If they saw him about, they knew the town was still safe.
Kids played by the gallows, throwing stones at the head of the car thief the judge had sentenced yesterday. Damfool had been caught with electronic keys lodged in the shock alarm of the Magruder station wagon. He'd been too stunned shaken to say anything during trial or execution. They never did found out his right name, though he looked a bit like Burt Reynolds. The Judge hated the way the Smokey and the Bandit movies made rural law-enforcement officials out to be pompous martinets; probably been a contributing factor in the severity of the sentence.
Colpeper smiled as the children ran up to him, hands open. He found the bag of Ferd's jujubes he always kept for the little 'uns and passed them out. They ran off again, 'jubes popping as they pressed them to their tiny, happy nostrils.
"You see, Matthieu, Job," he declaimed. "You see what this is all about. What we're standing up for here in Spanish Fork."
Larroquette pulled his Cyberfeed down over his head and drew in his breath sharply as its terminal plugs slid into his sockets. The stetson hummed and the deputy held up his amended arm. Electricity crackled between his fingers and he primed the pump action. He saluted, ready for work.
As they walked down Main Street, the judge bid good morning to various citizens who passed by. Carnadyne lurked by his coffin shop, nodding in thanks for the county fee on the car thief; he'd have the whelp off the gallows and into a lime-pit by nightfall with no ceremony at all. Colpeper bowed to Miss Dolley and told her to report any undue wear and tear on her folks before the 'Pomps left town.
Larroquette's stetson downloaded information.
"Anything new, Matthieu?"
"We got some Josephites coming into town, with United States Road Cavalry escort. It's a motorwagon convoy. They'll be passin' through on the road to Salt Lake City."
The judge pondered and his hand just happened to end up resting on the pearl-inlaid handle of a Colt Python.
"Josephites, huh? This town's got good cause to care very little for Josephites, Matthieu. Too much like Mormons for my taste. All that hymn-singin' and holiness. Mormons used to think they owned the State of Utah, Matthieu. I hear tell that damfool in Washington DC says these Josephites can have it now."
They were passing the Corn Exchange Video Arcade. A wind-worn cross stood, its base bearing a plaque that listed the names of the settlers killed by Josephites and Indian in the Massacre of 1854. You could hardly read the names any more and one arm of the cross was bent since some unwise Maniak used it for target practice. A mangy cat, nesting under the monument, took fright at the approach of the law and slank off towards some shadows.
Colpeper looked at the monument and thought back. Utah folks didn't need to go as far back as 1854 to have a reason not to like Josephites; President North's declaration of last month was enough to set the blood a-boil. When it came to turning over an entire state of the Union to an outside authority, Ollie North claimed he had consulted authorities throughout Utah, but nobody had asked Judge Thomas Longhorne Colpeper anything. And the judge did not much cosy up to the idea of living along the Path of Joseph.
"Matthieu, Job," the Judge said "nobody asked me whether I wanted to be a citizen of Deseret and give up my cup of morning recaff, my slug or two of Colum's whiskey, my shot of Ferd's zooper-blast, or my Saturday evening hide-the-salami sessions with Miss Dolley. And, you know what, boys, I don't reckon I do want to give up those things. And nor, I would certainly wager, does anyone else in this lovely littie city. I'm a peaceable man, but sometimes you have to fight for the little comforts you believe in. Do you get my drift?"
"Yes, Judge."
Larroquette extended his arm, palm flat out, and flexed his bicep. There was a bang and a discharge of smoke, and the mangy cat twenty paces down the road flew to pieces. The deputy bent his elbow, then straightened out again, the spent cartdridge popping out of the hairy slit in his forearm. It fell in the sand. Larroquette primed his pump-action arm again.
"I believe you do, Matthieu, I believe you do."
Jazzbeaux woke in the dark, sunwarmth playing over her. She was out of doors, mainly undressed, hair straggled over her face. On her back under a blanket, she felt soft pseudo-grass and sand beneath her. Through her optic sensor, the sun was a penny of heat in rust-red sky. Someone had switched her patch to cover her good eye. Probably Sweet-cheeks. The dear girl always thought that hilarious.
She sat up, the aftershocks of last night's party still pleasurable as she unwound, and took a look at the heat picture. Recognisable ve-hickle shapes were warming in the sun, hot metal carapaces burning brighter than cool-ish engines. Otherwise, this was terra incognita.
Yesterday, after settling with the DAR, the 'Pomps had hit Spanish Fork and wound up in a motel a klick out of town, getting some serious party favours. Jazzbeaux's nostrils stung, reminding her she had been persuaded to backslide and snort a few jolts. Just Candy Z, she stayed off the zonk. Pretty colours ran across the surface of her occluded eye.
She slipped the patch back to the proper side of her nose and blinked. She had ended up outside one of a row of neat, off-white cabins. Up on a small hill was a gingerbread Gothic house: tall and wood and creaky.
The Katz Motel, she remembered. She toga-wrapped the blanket around her bod; otherwise, all the clothes she had on were go-go boots and a red star choker. The fabulous shades, as she had come to think of the pair scavved from the preachie, were stuck up in her hair.
Images and sensations from the party flickered back through her graymass: 'Cheeks stabbing a ruby pump into the non-abusable screen of the pornovideo, shouting how much she hated that satyrstud Billy Priapus as the set spark-destructed; Varoomschka strapping on a hardy boy, tying his hands to the bedboard with a leather bullwhip and riding him like a bronco for the full twenty minutes; Andrew Jean going weepy-sentimental about being all old and used up and having to be comforted with cuddles and kisses; Sleepy Jane, ripped on tequila, trying to shoot down spysats with a dart-gun; 'Cheeks singing 'Long-Haired Lover From Leningrad' way out of her key as a couple of the hardies tried to unpeel her without using their hands.
Just the regular Psychopomp Victory Good Time.
Jazzbeaux found a black leather miniskirt inside-out on a window-sill. It fit her, so she ditched the blanket. Feeling sunwarmth on untreated nipples, she wondered if this much exposure was good for her. Doctors recommended a six-monthly skinsmear against UV rays. She'd not been near a sawbones since her last amendment.
Thinking of amendments and worrying about her breasts reminded her that Daddy once told her that the Amazon warriors of old used to have one of their tits amputated. That way, the surplus gazonga didn't get in the way of drawing a bowstring and firing off an arrow. Jazzbeaux had used a crossbow a couple of times but never a longbow, so she couldn't tell if the Robin Hood act really twanged a nipple off every time you sank a yardshaft through one of the Sheriff of freakin' Nottingham's Norman dogs. Her rule for amendments was that they were all right so long as they didn't spoil the package. Her eye was an exception, she hadn't chosen to have the thing fished out so she had this hole in her face which needed filling. Doc Threadneedle, her favoured bio-surgeon, could jazz her up inside, but she wanted to stay as human as she was.
She pulled the shades down and took a quick scan at the landscape. Nothing was different. She had tamed the effect.
Humming "I Enjoy Being a Girl" from Flower Drum Song, she thought about her own victory celebration. Naturally, as the heroine of battle, she rated the best of everything: Colombian champagne, non-vat meatburgcrs. pick of the hardies and nancies, first go in the hot tub, and dibs on the cabins.
Jazzbeaux had selected a sweet-faced hardy boy, all cowboy hat and low-slung jeans and wispy face fuzz, and gentled him into the tub for a long, slow seduction. Having been on the road with the girls for so long, the boy was a nice change. She almost lost control when she flipped him over and, just as she was finishing off, kept forcing his head under the ripples. When it was over, she had to squeeze soapy water out of his lungs and give him tongue-to-tongue artificial respiration.
After that, she took her jolts and was carried in triumph around the complex by all and sundry, then turned over to So Long Suin and her acupuncture needles. With three precise jabs, So Long – without otherwise touching – brought her to a cataclysmax which thrilled her entire body. Now the warmth revived tactile memories of the pleasure paths her gangbuddy had mapped on her living body. And unlike the boy, three needles didn't half-drown when you showed them a good time.
She turned lazily around a corner and threw a startle into a birdlike, jittery young man whose face instantly reddened. She crossed her arms modestly and tried to smile.
The young man looked every way but at her, all at once, and stammered into an apology.
"We met yesterday?" she said.
"H-H-H-Herman K-K-Katz, ma'am. Like the K-K-Katz M-M-Motel."
"Ahh," she said, "that Katz."
"N-no ma'am, that K-Katz is my mother," he darted a look up at the old house. "She runs the place, I just help out."
"Dutiful son, huh? A rare thing."
"A boy's best friend is his mother."
Jazzbeaux saw there was an uncurtained window in an upper storey, and a shadow figure looked down. Against the sunglare from the window, she instinctively slipped the shades on and regretted it. A black swirl of deathly evil seemed to pour out of the house, stretching tentacles toward them. Mrs Katz was probably scandalised her little boy was talking with a mostly naked woman. She lifted the sunglasses and let her hands fall to her sides, trying not to smile too broadly. For effect, she licked her lips.
"I, uh, found some, uh, ladies' clothes, strewn around," Herman said. "I guess you lost 'em during the, uh, party."
She shrugged, noting the way Herman's eyes kept being pulled back to her chest. This was pure wickedness, but hard to resist. She never got to flirt much; most people understood her straight off.
"It must be lonely out here, Herman."
"I have my mother, and my birds."
"Birds?" she raised the brow over her good eye.
"It's my hobby," Herman replied. "Stuffing birds. It's fascinating work, preserving life in death."
She was suddenly bored with tormenting this timid, inoffensive character. If anything, she wanted to charge up the hill and face the old lady. That black, swirling cloud must mean some oppressive force, some wrinkled and bony thumb pressing down on a butterfly life. Let the kid go, she should say, it does no good to keep him shackled like a slave. In the end, he'll turn. She was surprised Herman hadn't already followed the Jessamyn Bonney Rid-Yourself-of-a-Cloying-Parent Manoeuvre. Perhaps Mrs Katz was cannier than Daddy Bruno. She was a woman, after all.
All over her Jazzbeaux felt the grit she had slept on. Like a cat, she needed to clean herself.
"I feel like a long, hot shower," she said.
That seemed to excite Herman even more. His mind was easy to read, even without the fabulous shades; every porno-video had a scene where some big-titted fillette takes a shower and gets intimate with the soap.
Amused, she used the glasses and looked at Herman, which was a shock. She expected slobbering prurience but what she got was death, a skin-covered skull with empty sockets. The gaze of the death's-head was stabbing, vicious, accusing…
Lifting the shades, she still scanned something dry and ancient looking out through Herman's eyes.
"There's a shower unit in your cabin," he said, with a slight croak. "We have to pay a huge kickback to Judge Colpeper for use of the well-water, but we offer the only decent facilities for klicks around."
She could almost hear water slicing around her, feel the dirt sliding from the folds of her body, water gathering in her hair and turning it into a heavy tail that slipped down to her waist. In a precog buzz, she heard a strange shrieking and felt a shuddering chill. The skullface she'd seen loomed through shower curtains, blade-like nails shredding plastic and reaching for skin. Gooseflesh pricked her breasts.
"Well if that ain't pretty as a picture," a rich, deep voice said.
At the same time, there was a startled, startling animal sound. A rattling inrush of breath. Jazzbeaux instinctively assumed a fighting stance, hip tilted to launch a kick, hands apart and loose, fingers together like bone-blades. She must scan like an Amazon warrior of old now.
The rattle had been a horse almost whinnying. The man who spoke sat comfortably in the saddle, a roll-up in the corner of his mouth, leaning forward.
Herman shrank back against the bleached wall of a cabin as if he had seen a ghost.
The horseman wore a long duster, which was chalky with desert dirt. His face was deeply lined under his battered old hat, but she couldn't tell how old he was. He looked as if he'd been riding out here since the days of Billy the Kid and Jesse James.
Her Daddy claimed they were kin to Billy Bonney, Billy the Kid, but she'd looked the Kid up in a datanet file and found out his real name was probably Antrim or McCarty. Bruno also mentioned Anne Bonney, the female pirate, as an ancestor. It was a wonder he didn't rope Bonnie Parker and Bonnie Prince Charlie into the family tree.
"Don't see many critters like you out on the trail," the horseman said, grinning. "More's the pity."
Herman Katz had shuffled away. Jazzbeaux didn't feel like a shower any more. She also didn't quite know what had just passed between Herman and her. She thought they were both a little wiser and a little more scared.
"Do I know you?" she asked the horseman.
"Could be you will know me," he said. "Most everybody meets me one time or another. It's what comes with being a saddle tramp. I haven't been out this way in a while."
"You remind me of someone."
"I've got one of those faces, I guess," he said.
"John Wayne, maybe?"
"I don't know the feller. He's from these parts?"
She shrugged. "I don't think so."
He was hunched over on his horse, bent a strange way as if he had taken some bad wounds a long time ago and left them untreated. She was reminded of a lightning-struck tree that grows strong but crooked.
"You should cover up more, girl," he said, wryly. "In the desert day, you forget how cold it gets at night. You're begging for sunstroke or frostbite."
"This is not my normal get-up."
Wandering around in Barbie's Date Rape Outfit was beginning to get monotonous. Somehow, the desert got a lot less deserted if you wanted to sunbathe in the nude.
"I reckoned not, Jesse."
"Jesse?" Nobody had ever called her that before.
"It's one of your names, ain't it? You must have a lot of names, as if you were trying them all on for a proper fit. Like a hat or something."
"Jesse?" she said out loud, thinking about it. Just now, she wasn't really keen on being Jessamyn, and Jesse sounded like a shrivelled version of that.
"Who are you?" she asked. "Who are you really?"
The horseman grinned.
"I've got me a lot of names too. I've been around a while. I figure to move on now."
"No," she said, "who are you?"
The horseman's grin sparkled.
"You got the question right, Jesse. Maybe next time we meet you'll be ready for the answer."
Lazily, without seeming to take an order, the horse moved off. Jazzbeaux stood and watched the horseman ride off into the sand, away from town.
She used the glasses. The picture was exactly the same, only there were scarlet, bloody tracks where the horse's hooves had pressed.
There was a sign up by the roadside, YOU ARE NOW ENTERING SPANISH FORK – A NICE, QUIET, LITTLE TOWN – PLEASE LEAVE IT AS YOU FIND IT. Once the sign was passed, there was a sort of shift and the landscape changed. Brown-orange gave way to green. Large, picturesque houses stood on generous plots of grassy land. Signs on front lawns said keep off the grass,BEWARE OF THE KILLER DOG, ARMED RESPONSE and TRESPASSERS WILL BE INDENTURED.
Yorke slowed and looked over at the Quince.
"Gas stop?"
"If there's a place."
It wasn't hard to find. Just inside the city limits was another sign, CHOLLIE'S GAS AND AUTO REPAIR, THIS WAY, with an arrow pointing to an old square building. Spanish Fork was obviously a big place for signs. Chollie's scanned like a cross between a livery stable, a junkyard and a dirigible hangar.
"This must be the place," Yorke said. Quincannon grunted and tapped keys on the dash.
Yorke turned the cruiser into Chollie's yard and the convoy followed. There wasn't room enough for all the motorwagons on the forecourt, so they spilled over up and down the street.
It was early in the afternoon and quiet, so nobody minded much.
"Do we know anything about Spanish Fork, Quince?"
Quincannon was scrolling through Gazetteer. "Town used to be called New Canaan, a long time back. That rings a nasty historical bell. A bird named Colpeper more or less runs the place now. He calls himself a judge, just like Roy Bean. We don't have anything actually against him on the charge roll, though I doubt if any of these neighbourhood despots would pass muster if we mounted a full inspection. Of course, this is no longer the United States of America, so it's a moot point whether Colpeper is obliged to follow any of our laws on condoning drug traffic or immoral activities."
Elder Seth was outside, knuckles rapping like bird-beaks. It was a good thing the cruiser's screens were reinforced armaplas. Quincannon down-rolled the window and the Elder's face dipped into view. His eyes were black pinpoints in the shadow of his hat.
"Why are we stopping?"
"We need a tank top-up, Elder. Your motorwagons could do with a going over, too."
The Elder thought about it.
"We only have another 50 miles to go to Salt Lake City."
"Fifty is just the same as 50,000 in this country if your auto don't run. Better safe than vulture meat."
The Elder considered a moment.
"What is this place?"
"Spanish Fork, Elder," the Quince said. "As a Josephite, you might better remember it as New Canaan."
Elder Seth's mouth curved into an approximate smile. He walked away without saying anything. Yorke had the odd impression his half-complaint had been for show. There was a quality about the Elder just now that suggested he was home and knew exactly what he was doing.
"He remembers," Quincannon said.
"Remembers what?"
"You'll see. I'll just bet this town has a sign up about it. I never did see such a place for signs."
Nearby, a sign read: FOR YOUR OWN PROTECTION, DO NOT ATTEMPT TO ROB CHOLLIE'S. Underneath the slogan was an airbrushed painting of two crossed pump-action shotguns and a neat row of symbols. Inside barred prohibition circles were startled cartoon thieves with stripy jerseys, domino masks and swag bags. Yorke got the impression the cheery little designs were grave markers.
Many of the resettlers were stretching their legs and kicking tires. More than one radiator was boiling over. Since the business with Sister Maureen, there was less smiling and hymn-singing. Their armour of faith was getting dented out here on the road, but a stubborn backbone of contrariwise determination was being shown.
Brother Wiggs caught sight of a stand of porno magazines and his face bloodied up, as if he were boiling to do some serious preaching and condemning. There was something weird about the Josephites when you looked at them close: Yorke would swear that two days ago, Wiggs had a regular face, with lumps and moles and marks. It seemed to be smoothing into a handsome mask. Maybe the Lord was clearing up the complexions of the chosen.
Tyree and Burnside rolled up and checked the place out. Tyree slipped her cashplastic into a vending machine and pulled out a can of Mountain Dew, which she opened with a thumb press, tested with her pen-end analyser and drank at a draught.
A scrawny kid with coke-bottle-bottom goggles ambled out of the armoured post by the gas-pumps. He wore oil-stained overalls with CHO LIE'S written on them. One of the Ls had peeled off.
"Fill 'er up," Quincannon told him, "and check the oil. What kind of mechanics you got in this town?"
"The best, sir. Chollie don't come cheap, but he don't come shoddy neither."
Another sign read: MOST OF OUR CUSTOMERS ARE STILL LIVING.
"You accept US Cav discount vouchers?"
"How's that again?"
Quincannon grinned.
"You don't mind my amigo Kirby Yorke here rubber-neckin' while you're workin on the ve-hickles and shooting your dang head off if he figures you're sabotagin' or over-chargin'."
The Quince played with his holster flap for emphasis. The kid goggled with respect.
"Sounds mighty fair to me, sir."
"Excellent. Now where can a man get himself some brunch in this burg?"
Something buzzed up and down Brother Wiggs's spine. These days of driving had bent his body into a new position, and it was hard to bend out of it.
The godless display of foul filth at the magazine rack still assaulted his mind. There were copies of Satanist propaganda like Hustler, Big Butts, National Geographic and Split Beaver mixed in with good Christian publications like Guns and Killing, White Dwarf, The Truth and Creation Science Monitor. The glossy covers burned like vile flames of sin, searing his brain, reminding him of all he had abjured.
Sister Ciccone gave him succour, leading him back to the motorwagon and clapping his hands together in prayer, forcing him down onto his knees and making him bow his head against her belly. She shook with the fervour of her prayer.
Together on the filthy tarmac of Chollie's, they conjoined in worship of the Lord. Theirs was the Path of Joseph, and the things of the world were as far gone from him as the sinful flesh from which he had been freed. He felt a strange tingling in his amended groin, as if the rejected meat were knitting together in a new, purer form.
Elder Seth was not in the motorwagon. He must be about the Lord's work in this town. Throughout the nation of Deseret, towns like this must be awaiting news of the convoy's coming. There would be parades and processions and rejoicing.
Under his vestments. Brother Wiggs's skin squirmed and tightened. Months ago, he had been aswarm with bodily hair; now, only the barest wisps remained. Fasting and prayer had trimmed away the subcutaneous fat. His skeleton, even, was changed by the fire of faith.
Their prayer concluded, Brother Wiggs and Sister Ciccone stood and adjusted their garments.
He looked at the magazine rack and felt nothing.
"I thank thee, Sister," Wiggs addressed Sister Ciccone. "Thou art ever my guide on the true Path of Joseph."
Sister Ciccone bobbed and curtseyed demurely, eyes downcast. Then she looked up at him. The woman had a spot – it might have been called a beauty mark – at the corner of her mouth. In his backsliding moments, Wiggs had paid especial note to the black mark.
He reached out with his finger and touched the spot. It came away smoothly, leaving no scar. Sister Ciccone's face was now milky-perfect, lips as colourless as her cheeks, eyes as bright as a doll's.
He looked at the spot on his fingertip and flicked it away.
"We become purer," she said.
For a moment, Wiggs wondered what manner of life the Sister had led before coming to the Path of Joseph. Knowing the worst sinners made the best saints, he suspected she had been mired deeply in filth and fornication.
"We must venture into the centre of this town and spread the Word of Joseph," she said. "Deseret will rejoice at our arrival. This place must be freed from the rule of sin."
They walked past the motorwagons towards Main Street. There were people around. Ordinary, sinning people. Brother Wiggs and Sister Ciccone were courteous. Wiggs touched his hat-brim and the Sister averted her eyes whenever they passed a citizen.
No one stopped to stare but Wiggs fancied a certain hostility from some of the townsfolk.
A sign identified a large building as the old corn exchange video arcade. Outside stood a battered cross. Wiggs bowed his head to the cross.
"Arise and rejoice, thou brothers and sisters of Deseret," Sister Ciccone shouted, her voice strong and pure and almost musical. "The day of your deliverance is at hand. Let this be your holy holiday."
A fat man in dungarees spat a brown stream and looked put out. A small, thin crowd gathered.
"Follow the Path of Joseph," Sister Ciccone sang, "put away fleshly things…"
The fat man snickered. Several people, already bored, drifted away.
"I seen Spanish language cartoons that preach better'n that," the fat man said.
"This land is blessed. This shall be the Land of Joseph."
"I reckon you'd do yourself a big favour by reading that there plaque under that there cross before you mention the Path of Joseph again," the fat man said, snidely.
Wiggs scanned the plaque. It was a pack of blasphemous lies about the Brethren. Deadly drivel, poisoning the minds of all.
"Lies and filth," he shouted.
The fat man just laughed.
The disappointed crowds went about their ways. As the people drifted off, they parted like a curtain. A woman stood still, hands on hips, looking straight at the Josephites. Wiggs recognised one of the she-fiends who had so abused the pilgrims.
She was tall, dressed in transparent sheaths that indecently displayed her body.
"Remember me?" she said. "Varoomschka?"
She was one of the killers. Elder Seth must be told the Psychopomps were in Spanish Fork. He would be interested in recovering his stolen spectacles and cashplastics.
"We have come to the place of our persecution," Wiggs said.
Varoomschka strode across to the monument. The fat man snickered as his eyes followed her long limbs and tight bottom. Wiggs again had a twinge of the old sinful urges, but he conquered them with a blast of fiery purity.
The Psychopomp had a glossy fashion model face, and long, silky hair that looked like an implant. Though tall and powerful, she was dainty, like a dancer.
Varoomschka cupped Sister Ciccone's cheek with one hand and slipped her long fingers into the Sister's bonnet, unloosing strands of mousy hair with her scarlet nails. Shockingly, the ganggirl kissed the Sister on the lips.
Sister Ciccone suffered nobly, eyes raised to heaven. She knew that she would prevail.
"Mmmmm," Varoomschka said, licking her lips with a scarlet tongue. "You taste like a virgin."
"Thou art forgiven, harlot," Sister Ciccone said.
She launched a fist at the Psychopomp's chest. Varoomschka was knocked backwards with surprising force. Her immodest garments showed the plate-sized purple bruise on her upper ribs.
Sister Ciccone was changing. Like Wiggs, she got stronger as she got purer.
Varoomschka scrambled upright, a butterfly knife in one hand. She made a series of slicing passes before her as she moved towards the Sister.
"I'll open you, hagwitch," she said. "I'll drink your kravye with cinnamon."
The Psychopomp struck like a scorpion. The knife slipped against Sister Ciccone's side and slid upwards across her torso. She would be wounded from hip to collar.
Varoomschka stepped back to admire her surgery.
The Sister's vestments were rent and sagged apart. White flesh shone, but no red gash. Sister Ciccone's skin was inviolate and featureless.
"Lady, you ain't got no nipples," the fat man said. "That ain't natural."
Modestly, the Sister closed the hole in her clothes.
"And you ain't got no navel neither."
"What are you?" Varoomschka asked. "Some kind of clone thing?"
Sister Ciccone bowed her head.
"I am a Sister of Joseph," she said.
Wiggs realised his chest was itching and changing, and he felt his own nipples dwindling and receding into smooth skin. He was still flesh, but the flesh was better, stronger, purer. Untroubled by needs, he was fit for the struggles ahead.
The Feelgood Saloon was typical of a thousand other smalltown joints where Tyree had wasted evenings. A couple of gaudy girls were bellying up to the bar, looking for trade. A few old-timers leaned chairs against the walls in the corners, mainlining the poison of their choice. Otherwise, the Feelgood wasn't doing much business this early, so the Cav managed to requisition a table. The Quince sat with his back to a wall and face to the main entrance, a shotgun stowed under his chair. From where Tyree was, she had a good view of the mirror behind the bar and thus of everyone in the room.
A green-faced waitress with vestigial gills took their orders. Some said the mutations were the legacy of those long-ago Bomb Tests, but there must be a reason they had grown more common these last few years.
Quincannon laid out kish for the hundred-dollar grill, while Tyree had the vat-grown eggs and Burnside plumped for gristle 'n' grits. Tyree's tasted OK. They had recaff all round. Fake coffee, but real water, a luxury this far into the sand. The Quince even remembered to have the girl send someone over to Chollie's with N-R-Gee candies for Yorke, who was minding the cruiser.
The green girl was friendly and efficient. It couldn't be easy adapting to an aquatic environment when there wasn't any large stretch of water left in the state.
The Quince lit up a Premier and offered the pack around. Tyree filled her lungs and had a good, healthy cough. She worried sometimes that she didn't smoke enough. Dr Nick said there were no noticeable physical benefits unless you were up to a pack a day.
It would be hours before the convoy could get moving again – one or two of the motorwagons were a refit away from the auto graveyard – so there was no sense in not taking advantage of the comforts on offer. They had been held up burying Sister Maureen yesterday, so they might well be looking to make camp here for the night. Tyree understood there was a motel outside town, so she might have a shot at a real bed.
This patrol had gone on way too long. Back at Valens, she would have earned some extra pay and a couple of vacation weeks on credit. After they'd hand-held the resettlers to Salt Lake, they'd still have to trek all the way back home.
Quincannon was talking ancient history again, not from experience but from books. In his down time, the Quince must be something of a library junkie. Tyree hadn't known that about him. She hadn't read anything except forms, regulations and the odd comicstrip since military school. Burnside asked the sergeant his opinion of the Josephites' chances of making anything out of the Salt Lake valley.
"The Mormons did it once before," Quincannon replied, "round about 1848, just the same as the Josephites are trying to now. They'd been kicked out of everywhere else 'cause they believed in marryin' more than one gal at a time. I reckon they've given that up these days, along with 'carnal relations'. They found a place where nothing would grow and no one would live, and turned it into fertile land. The Lord knows how they did it. That Church was founded by some fella named Smith who claimed an angel gave him some extra books of the Bible and a pair of magical spectacles to help him read it. The Josephites have some similar story. Different glasses, but the same angel. Something like that. Maybe that's why the Elder's so steamed up about that gal who waltzed off with his shades. You notice how that riles them more than the fellers who got killed. More than the cashplastics she scavved. Hell, I don't know. The Mormons were straight-laced, but this lot are unnatural, if you know what I mean. They're like the Mormons, the Seventh-Day Adventists, the Amish, the Moonies, the Scientologists, Jehovah's Witnesses and Stone-Crazed Baptists all rolled up into one. Me, I'm a good Catholic. Religion's been downhill since Martin Luther."
Tyree drank her recaff and ate her eggs. Burnside kept asking questions and passing comments. "You have to admire those old settlers, Quince, making something of nothing like that."
"Well, Wash, there was another side to the story. A side Elder Seth ain't gonna be too keen on hearin' told again. You can bet they'll remember it here in Spanish Fork, though. While the Mormons were settling Salt Lake, the Josephites were carving out claims for themselves in the Indian Territories. A feller by the name of Hendrik Shatner, brother of the Joseph who founded the Brethren, was their head man, and he had some mighty strange allegiances. In the 1850s, federal troops were sent against the Church of Joseph, and the Josephites had a little war with the US of A. It seems the Josephites weren't so all-fired holy back then. No sir, when a group of regular Christian settlers moved in and staked a land claim right here, when this place was called New Canaan, the Josephites got together with the Paiute Indians, painted themselves up like redskins, and had themselves one of the bloodiest massacres in the history of the West."
She hadn't liked to say, but as Quincannon was speaking, the swinging doors opened silently and a tall man walked into the Feelgood. Elder Seth. The Quince must see him but he was into the flow of his story. She knew she should say something, try to shut the sergeant up, but somehow she found herself unable to open her mouth.
With Elder Seth were his two most devoted puppies, Wiggs and Ciccone. They looked different indoors, their faces harder.
Quincannon kept on talking. "Them Josephites carved up those regular Christians like you'd carve up a Sunday goatroast. The Prezz probably don't know much history or he wouldn't be handin' a state to these fellas. Who knows, maybe one day Seth will take it into his head to make war again against the United States of America. Then we'll be in a pretty pickle, 'cause I reckon any man who can haul a bunch of candy-ass resettlers a couple of thousand bloodstained miles through the Des wouldn't be no pushover."
Tyree looked from Quincannon to Elder Seth, comparing the Quince's expressiveness, making handsigns as he spoke as if communicating with an Indian, and the Elder's almost mechanical impassivity. If the Josephite was offended, he gave no indication of displeasure. Indeed, Tyree thought that she could make out a real expression on his face, like the ghost of a smile around the very edges of his thin lips.
…and, in her mind, she had funny pictures. She thought she saw reflections in Elder Seth's eyes, but not the reflections of the saloon and its patrons. Under an open sky, in Elder Seth's pupils, red-smeared savages ran riot, hacking at fleeing men. Flaming arrows struck home, red knives did their work, kids fell under horses' hooves, women's hair came bloodily loose. Tyree thought she heard the echoes of screams and whoops and shouts. And, in the midst of the carnage he had wrought stood Elder Seth, dressed all in black with red on his face, a long rifle in his hands. The ground under his boots was bloodied…
"Leona?"
She snapped out of it. "Sergeant Quincannon?"
"Leona, you were dreaming."
Elder Seth walked further into the saloon, until he was standing directly across from Quincannon.
"No, I…"
The Elder's shadow fell on the sergeant. Quincannon looked up at the man. He held a fork of mule kidney up at Elder Seth, then popped into his mouth.
"I am given to understand the raiders who attacked us on the road are in this town," Elder Seth said, evenly, "staying at the motel. These people have stolen from the Brethren of Joseph. They have important relics. You will help me secure their return."
The Quince chewed slowly. "Hold on a moment. How many of these raiders are there?"
"That's of no matter. Sister Ciccone has already been assaulted by one of their number."
"It may not matter to you, Elder, but I've got a troop strength of four."
"My people will help."
Quincannon swallowed and stood up. He wasn't quite as tall as the Elder but he did his best to look the man in the eye.
"That's a comfort. If it comes to preachin' the crap out of the 'Pomps, I'm sure you'll be a big help."
That shadow smile was back. "In the Bible," Elder Seth began, "it says there is a time to every purpose under Heaven."
"So, now it's fightin' time."
"If needs be."
Quincannon shrugged, and hauled up his shotgun. "OK, Elder, lead the way to the motel. I'll call Yorke in for backup with the cruiser."
Tyree and Burnside stood up, leaving unfinished meals, and unflapped their holsters. Tyree knew her piece was up to standard. She'd cleaned it twice since the patrol began.
"Sergeant, I said the raiders were staying at the motel. I did not say they were there at this moment."
Quincannon had been halfway to the door. He turned, looking highly fed up. Somehow, the Elder had made a fool of him.
One of the gaudy girls turned on her barstool. She had an eyepatch.
"Hello preacherman," she said to Elder Seth, "come for your shades?"
So, she was back here again, facing the preachie. She had his glasses on a thong around her neck. She was horribly tempted to look at him through the shades, but terror prevented her. She remembered Herman Katz's shrivelled skull and the bloody hoofprints If inoffensive things were made horrible, what would be revealed of Elder Seth through his magic mirrorshades? The circuits of her optic implant buzzed, and she had the feeling it was too late, that having looked through the glasses, she would forever see more than she should.
"Hands away from those guns, yellowlegs," she said, pulling the rainbow scarf away from her semi-automatic pistol, "or I'll redecorate the saloon with your insides."
The sergeant and the two troopers held their hands out in front of them and looked at each other. The sergeant carefully set his shotgun down between plates of half-finished food and stood away. Jazzbeaux would rather not fight all three, since she knew a little about the Cav weapons training. Everyone else in the saloon was quiet. The jukebox was running down, some Kenny Rogers number slowing to a growl. The barman was backing away.
"And keep those pretty-pretty fingers off that scattergun you got down in the slops, darlin' dear."
The barkeep slapped his hands on the bar and left them there. Jazzbeaux nodded appreciation and blew him a kiss. He flinched. She turned back to the Elder.
"If you want the shades, you'll have to take them, lover."
Elder Seth walked across the room. Jazzbeaux felt the Psychopomps with her – Andrew Jean, Sleepy Jane, Sweet-cheeks – edge away, leaving her alone at the bar. It was between her and the preacherman. She flipped the safety and chambered a round.
The Elder stood in front of her now. If she exerted just a hint of pressure on the hairtrigger, she'd fill his chest with explosive bullets. He'd be cut clean in two. She had the unhealthy feeling that his face still wouldn't move.
She flicked her tongue in and out. "Come on, preachie!"
He was as close to her as a dancing partner now, the barrel of her gun resting on his sternum. Jazzbeaux felt she was alone in the universe with the man.
His hands came up and he took the shades. She was sure he would rip them away, but he merely lifted them to her own face and eased the bars over her ears. She shut her eye but felt silly, then looked through the glass.
The Elder's face changed in a second. The features became liquid, flowed into each other, and became features again. But different features. He had her daddy's face, she realised. Bruno Bonney's face when he was hopped up on zonk, and pulling his studded leather belt out of his jeans, mishkin drool on his chin, pain in his brain, death on his breath.
"Jessa-myn," Elder Seth said with her dead daddy's voice, "gimme the scav. Gimme the scav now, or it'll go harsh with you."
Her forefinger had gone to sleep on the trigger. She tried to fire the gun but her godrotted finger was stone. It wouldn't move. The gun shook and she tried to gouge into the preacherman's chest with the barrel. His hands were on her now, fingers digging into her waist.
"Jessa-myn!"
Her cheek was wet, she knew. She was crying. No, her optic was leaking biofluid. She tried to singe through the patch, to blast the preacher's hat off. The amendment wouldn't burn and she had a feedback headache.
She had ripped out her daddy's throat when he had tried once too often to take things out on her. That had been her first, and she had done it with just claw-gauntlets. Now, when she needed to kill him again, she had a fine piece of high-precision deathware ready and couldn't bring herself to exert the pull you'd need to open a tube of Pivo.
Elder Seth had his own face back but her Daddy's hung just behind his skin, ready to peer through at her.
Bruno Bonney wasn't done with her yet.
Elder Seth took the gun away from her and put it on the bar, between shot glasses. His other hand crept up her side, sliding through her armpit, reaching around her back, pulling her to him.
He leaned his face close to hers. She thought he was going to kiss her and shuddered at the anticipation of his reptile touch, but he just let his eye loom as close to the lens of the spectacles as her own was behind it.
She didn't want to look into his huge eye. She knew she'd be dead if she did that.
But she looked …
…and she saw such horrors.
Outside everything, the Summoner held the girl by the shoulders and watched her face as the truth crowded into her mind…
After nearly a century and a half, he was back. The name didn't matter: Spanish Fork, New Canaan. The place had other names It was a site of predestined power. Once, he had put his mark here Now, he would rekindle the flame.
Across the featureless, white plain rushed a crimson wave, driving before it hordes of ghosts.
The girl shivered and screamed, pestered by her own phantom. She was crying for her father, or crying against her father. It didn't matter. Nichevo, as she would say.
Horsemen passed by, their eyes shot away. Farmers trudged from the fields, hair askew on encrusted scalps. Pilgrims were borne down under the rush of blood, and embedded into the white sands. An eternal battle continued, as the living and the dead clashed, vast ignorant armies in a war only the Summoner truly understood.
Here, the Dark Ones walked, preparing themselves for the earthly plain. The desolation was magnificent.
This was, for the Summoner, a peaceful juncture, a moment of calm. He was poised on the lip of the next phase of the ritual, the mass spilling of blood. At this second, he was alone with this tiny girl, almost intrigued by the rudimentary workings of her mind.
"Jessa-myn," he said to her, in her father's voice, "now it's just us two, all alone and the evening ahead of us."
She was still horror-struck.
In the girl, the Summoner sensed the seed of something fine, something strong, something strange. When the moment was over, he should snuff her like a candle before her flame grew to a brushfire. It was even conceivable she could hinder him. She had the makings of a spirit warrior inside, as a marble block conceals the statue that must be dug out by the sculptor.
But he would miss her. There were so few in his league. It would be a shame to finish her before she could truly test him.
That was sentimental nonsense. There were others, and they would come forth when it was time. They would give him enough trouble. There was a woman in Switzerland, a man in Rome. And there were men and women in the United States, already bloodied in the Dark Ones' killing grounds. The Op in Memphis, the woman from Denver, the Navajo, the horseman…
He took Jessamyn's head and turned it away from his face, admiring her clean profile as she saw the plain extending away to infinity. Her white face was pinked by the reflection of the crimson wave that towered across the plain, rushing closer…
Jessamyn breathed something that might have been a profanity or a prayer.
In the torrent, creatures danced. They might be called demons and imps. Lost souls were turned inside out and left behind on the sands, exhausted forever. The wave ate everything…The Summoner was unique. He could ride the wave…
Tyree didn't believe it but she saw it anyway.
The Psychopomps – one creature of indeterminate sex with an orange cockatoo haircut, and two shocked girls – stood back and watched Elder Seth go to work on their leaderine. And he just glided across the floor and picked her up like the hero of a romance comicstrip cruising for truelove in the disco hall.
The jukebox was stuttering into life again, some zonked version of "The Tennessee Waltz".
With a deep revulsion at herself, Tyree realised she was actually jealous of the one-eyed 'Pomp. There was something badly wrong, and Leona Tyree was part of it. Quincannon had his side arm out now but wasn't doing anything with it.
Elder Seth, dancin' with his darlin', whispered something Tyree couldn't hear in the girl's ear and put her sunglasses on. Her mouth opened in a silent oval scream.
It was as if an invisible but blinding light filled the room. Tyree found herself blinking, rubbing her eyes as tears flowed. Everyone in the bar was doing the same. But there hadn't been any real light.
The Psychopomp was slumped over the bar, one arm hanging limp, throat exposed. Elder Seth supported the girl and heaved her up onto the stool. She was either dead or in a dead faint. He lifted her head and took her dark glasses off. They were the old-fashioned, metal-rimmed, non-wraparound kind.
He slipped the mirrorshades on and his face was complete.
The Elder picked up the fillette's handbag and emptied it on the bar. The cockatoo laid a hand on him, but backed off instantly, face clown-white under make-up. Elder Seth sorted rapidly through the 'Pomp's belongings.
…Tyree could see the burning village in her mind again. Sod huts, log cabins, cattle and goat pens, all ablaze. Horsemen riding through, whooping, swinging weapons. Men and women ridden down and killed. And the Elder, on his knees, rubbing a small dead thing into the dirt, squeezing out the blood.
Elder Seth found what he was looking for.
"My little demon, I believe," he said to the cockatoo, holding up a cashplastic. He made it disappear in his hand like a conjuring trick. He reached out and picked up the unconscious girl by the throat, hauling her upright as if she were a straw doll. Her arms dangled, her head lolled and her feet scraped the floor. Brother Wiggs and Sister Ciccone held the batwing doors open. Holding the 'Pomp like a plucked turkey, Elder Seth left the saloon.
Quincannon followed him and Tyree snapped to it, followed by everyone else in the saloon.
The sun wasn't yet down, but evening bugs were in the air. The street was crowded. Something had brought the people of Spanish Fork out of their houses. The resettlers were crowded around like a congregation, and a cadre of Psychopomps gathered like a gang spoiling for trouble.
The skies were darkening. There was a tang of blood in the air.
Elder Seth carried his prize through the ranks of parked vehicles and dropped her in the middle of the road. Her head cracked on the blacktop, and she moaned, stirring a little. Blood was smeared where she had fallen.
Six hundred threescore and six! 666!
The Summoner heard the Number in his mind, ringing like a chorus, voiced by a thousand inhuman throats. It had been left for him in the writings of all the religions, a sign to be read.
There was blood on the road. The road to the Prime Site. And that was as it should be. The blood was the main ingredient of the ritual, it was there to guide the Dark Ones, to call them down, to help them gather at the City, the Shining City, the City of Dreadful Night, the City of the Last Days. He had the glasses now, and he had the Key.
He knelt and took Jessamyn's head in his hand, gathering a forelock of her hair in his fist. The girl was unconscious, still terrified on the plain outside space. A pity. It would be better if she were awake. He slammed the back of her head against the hardtop. Her skull bounced a little, like a coconut.
The Summoner smashed Jessamyn's head against the road again. Blood flew, splattering in a neat arc, and sank in like butter on a griddle.
He remembered New Canaan, remembered fighting alongside Old Hendrik Shatner and the Paiute. To him, 1854 was but a minute past. Then, he had been called the Ute. He had pulled a child out of a burning cabin. It had been grateful but started kicking and squealing when his mule-skinning knife came out. Burned flesh was no good to the Dark Ones, only spilled blood.
He had seen so much blood, down through the centuries. He had been born in blood, continually rejuvenated in blood. There were many places, many names, many faces, but the blood was always the same. Whether on the Mutia Escarpment in Africa, or Judea under the Herods, or Pendragon's Britain, or Temujin's Eastern plains or Bonaparte's Empire or the fields of Kampuchea, the blood was always the same.
In the Outer Darkness, the Old Ones heard the call. He spoke the words under his breath as his fingers spread the blood.
He invoked the Names He recited the Nine Names of the Beast. The creatures of the Outer Plains gathered around pricking at the balloon of this reality.
His hands were bloody to his shirtcuffs.
Flat hammers pounded the back of her head. Jazzbeaux awoke to mushrooming pain.
Her mind was blanked. A continent of blood funnelled into her eye and washed everything from her head.
Only fear remained.
A hand held her hair. Her head was being lifted up and slammed down. Again and again.
A black arm was responsible. It was as precise and impassive as a machine component.
More pain cracked inside her head. Something was breaking.
She scanned Elder Seth's impassive face floating above in the distance. The black arm which hurt her stretched up to the Elder's shoulder.
She was getting motion sickness.
The rhythmic pounding echoed, beating time like a metronome. Her nostrils were full of blood.
She sent signals to her hands to come together around Elder Seth's throat, but the rest of her body wasn't at home when her graymass came to call.
The Elder muttered something as he killed her. He chittered like an insect.
"…sicksicksicks sicksicksicks sicksicksicks sick-sicksicks…"
Her right arm convulsed and reached upwards, but Elder Seth brushed it away and bore down on her body with a bony knee. A stab of pain shot through her ribs.
She twisted her neck and her bloody hair slipped through the Elder's greasy fingers. She grabbed the road and tried to pull herself away.
Hands took the back of her neck and the back of her head. Cruel fingers squeezed her wounds.
Jazzbeaux heard herself screaming again.
Elder Seth smashed her face against the road, twisting her head so the brunt of the blow was taken by her eyepatch. She felt crunching in the orbit around her optic burner.
If she could roll over, she could give the scumsucker a blast at the bridge of his cursed shades. She could bore a hole through his head and see the evening sky.
With the next thump, biofluid filled the inside of her patch and she felt the implant shifting, metal digging into her meat. Her nose was completely plugged with grit and blood and she was afraid for her teeth.
After this, she would not be the prettiest girl at the prom.
From her good eye, she saw the cracked ground, decorated with patterns in her own blood.
"…sicksicksicks sicksicksicks sicksicksicks sicksicksicks …"
Elder Seth slammed her face against the road again. And again. And again …
Elder Seth was methodically killing the one-eyed Psycho-pomp, without distaste or anger. As he smashed her face against the road, he looked as if he were baptising the girl in tarmac.
Everyone seemed only too pleased to watch. Tyree had her side arm out but didn't know who to shoot. Sergeant Quincannon had fetched his pumpaction from the Feelgood, but wasn't pointing it at anyone. The Josephites had beatific smiles on their faces, as if watching their spiritual leader kissing a baby. The Psychopomps were appalled but made no move to help their gangbuddy.
"Hold on there a moment, your reverendship," shouted someone.
Everybody turned to scan. Everybody except Elder Seth. He still beat the girl's head against the road. Each blow was like a drumbeat.
A short man, nattily dressed in a frock coat and a big black stetson, stood in the street, flanked by two gorilla-shaped individuals with tin stars and Cyberfeed stetsons. The local heat.
The girl's blood made signs in the cracks of the road.
"I say I don't know if'n you have much familiarity with the law," the short man said, "but we take objection to this here sort of unruly behaviour in Spanish Fork, Utah."
The Elder dropped the girl's head and stood up. His hands were red, but the rest of his outfit was as clean as it ever was. His face was empty.
"Deseret," he said, grinding the word between his teeth. "New Canaan, Deseret."
"We like proper names round these parts," said the short man.
The girl rolled away from the Elder's legs, and the cockatoo creature went to help her. The fillette was still alive but had a bloody dent in her forehead. Her eyepatch was scraped away and and a mechanical doodad hung out of her socket on multicoloured filaments. Tyree would guestimate severe concussion at the least, probably brain damage.
The short man took off his hat. "Permit me to introduce myself. I am Judge Thomas Longhorne Colpeper and we do things my way in Spanish Fork. Job, arrest this man."
One of the deputies lurched forwards, his clapperclawed right hand held out. Circuitry hummed inside the bulky bio-amendment.
There was quite a crowd. Most of the Josephites were there, looking bewildered but not surprised at their Elder's activities. Kirby Yorke was with them, goggle-eyed and slack-jawed, derelict in his duties for leaving the cruiser unguarded. That worried Tyree almost more than anything; it was like seeing a baby crawling in the road. There were more Psycho-pomps, pouting with indignation and fingering home-made shooting and stabbing irons. The townsfolk of Spanish Fork all turned out to see the show.
Shutters went up over breakable windows and guns were banded out like burgers at a B-B-Q. This situation had all the fixings of a medium-sized bloodbath, Tyree thought.
The clawed deputy reached out to take Elder Seth's wrist. With an easy movement, the Elder pushed the big man in the centre of the chest. It looked like a playground shove to Tyree, but there must have been deadly force behind it. She heard bones snapping and the deputy dropped like a felled tree.
Brother Wiggs and Sister Ciccone darted forwards and fell on the deputy. Wiggs' knee smashed into the man's throat and Ciccone's hands dug into his guts. The cyberfeed overloaded and blew its circuits. The deputy's head caught fire, burned bright for a few seconds, then turned into a reeking, charred blob. The rest of him was still twitching.
There was more blood on the road.
Elder Seth said something that sounded like "sicksick-sicks". The resettlers gathered behind him. Wiggs and Ciccone, dirtied and bloodied, were back in line. One or two of the faithful looked scared out of their tiny minds, but they still backed him up. Tyree had to fight the impulse to go stand beside the Elder. She got the impression Brother Bailie, for one, was fighting an impulse to get out of the line-up and stand against Elder Seth. The man had some sort of unnatural influence.
"Get your kicksssss," hissed Elder Seth, "on Route Sicksicksicksss..."
The remaining deputy shot his arm out, flat-handing the air. He had a shotgun implant, an impressive piece of work. There was an almighty bang as he discharged himself. He cocked his elbow, filling the chamber again, and fired a second time.
"…sicksicksicks sicksicksicks..."
He had taken one of the blasts full in the belly. The other had glanced off his right shoulder. Brother Bailie, who had been standing behind him, was on the ground with his face in his hands, trying to press it back onto his skull. Elder Seth was still standing, clothes a ruin, body still whole. Tyree saw patches of his skin blackened from the discharge, but unbroken.
"…sicksicksicks sicksicksicks sicksicksicks sicksicksicks ..."
Elder Seth wasn't human. That explained a lot.
This was the site of the Great Invocation. The Summoner ignored the stinging in his flesh, and advanced on the man with the gun in his arm. Deputy Larroquette reminded him of a Roman legionary he had pulled apart when he rode with Attila. If you lived long enough, everybody reminded you of somebody else. The Roman's insides had felt slippery and yet tough in his fists. He had been less strong then.
He took the next blast full in the face. His hat flew off and he shook the flattened fragments of the charge out of his hair. His spectacles were not destroyed. He fixed the Deputy with mirrored eyes.
The Deputy saw the worst thing in the world and lowered his arm. For Larroquette, the worst thing in the world was a man with two buzzing chainsaws, surprised in the boiler room of an Albuquerque elementary school The Summoner let the man with the chainsaws carve the deputy's mind into sections.
He took Larroquette's wrist and tore his gun-arm off, as easily as he would rip a silk neckerchief in two. He dropped the useless thing on the ground.
The deputy bled from the shoulder, bright jewels splashing to the tarmac More blood for the Dark Ones.
They were in the air now, squeezing onto the earthly plane through rips in the fabric of this reality. He saw them swarming around in multitudes The clawed, crawling, winged, stinging, horned, spiny, toothed hordes. The Vanguard of the Beast
This would have to end now. It was the place of sacrifice, and the time. Those who would not follow him must die.
The deputy, dead but moving, lunged out with his remaining arm and clawed the spectacles from the Summoner's face. His nerveless fingers couldn't grip the sacred objects, which flew away and skittered across the ground towards the crowd
The loss didn't matter. As always, it was temporary.
People were suddenly dying all around Yorke. Attacked as if by invisible creatures and torn apart. It was as if the Dancing Death had descended among them and laid about himself with a vibrating scythe.
Yorke discharged his side arm into the air until his wrist was wrung out, spinning around trying to draw a bead on something insubstantial. Hot cartridge cases pattered around his feet, bouncing on asphalt like Mexican jumping beans.
Brother Bailie, sorely wounded, staggered out of the ranks of the Josephites, sobbing with pain and terror, face leaking through his fingers. He froze and was pulled up into the air. His clothes ripped and red rain fell around him. He twisted in the air as if mangled, and thumped to the ground in several large pieces.
One of Yorke's ankles was kicked out from under him and he went down, eyes hurting as if he had stared full into the sun for a full minute. His head throbbed and someone jabbed him in the side. One of the ganggirls, a weepy-looking fillette with lazy eyelids. As he fell, he lost his grip on his probably empty side arm.
The ganggirl, taking to her spike heels, got about a dozen yards before scratches appeared in the back of her shiny Russian smocktop. Material parted around deep rents in her skin. Her hair was pulled out of its tight knot and ripped up. A diamond-shaped wound appeared in the bare nape of her neck, a tunnel into her graymass. She dropped like a puppet.
Yorke gasped. Someone stepped on his hand and he heard, but could not feel, a crunch. The boot-heel had come down on his plastik fingers.
Scrabbling for his gun, Yorke found something else. The spectacles the shotgun Deputy had struck from Elder Seth's face. Not really knowing why, Yorke opened them and slipped them on.
…and the world looked different.
He screamed. He could see the things that had killed Brother Bailie and the ganggirl.
A fat citizen was covered with the creatures, like a man smeared with honey and left for warrior ants. They buzzed and burrowed, sharp little teeth digging into cloth and skin, a million tiny tears shredding down to bone, verminous little wings crawling. Their buzzing was horribly like cruel laughter.
Because he could see them, they left him alone, left him to watch. In his skull, torrents raged. Synapses burned out. Memories wiped. A scream began in the pulsating centre of his being and radiated outwards, disrupting everything, shaking his graymass into jelly.
He knew the killing things for what they were. The Bible Belt had taught him to recognise the demons of pain and sorrow. They danced and circled in the air, insubstantially hideous, working violence and destruction. They swirled around Elder Seth, alighting gently on his shoulders and outstretched arms like doves flocking to St Francis. They gave him offerings of the dead.
Trooper Kirby Yorke screamed and screamed until his mind was gone, and nothing mattered any more.
Judge Thomas Longhorne Colpeper looked into the eyes of the man who was killing his town, and saw the hood of the hangman. Again, the Josephites had come in blood to Spanish Fork. There would be a fresh plaque on the monument, for this was not a new thing, this was merely a continuation of the massacre of 1854. Then, the Brethren of Joseph had come with savage Indians; today, they came with lawless gangcultists. The blood was the same.
The judge knew what he had to do to end the bloodshed, end the lawlessness, end everything.
His own voice sounded, "You be taken from here to a place of lawful execution…"
He picked up Larroquette's free arm and pressed its hand to his chin. In a reflex, the fingers curled up around his jaw, locking into his mouth. His false teeth shifted. He felt the hot aperture of the barrel against the soft fold of his dewlap.
"…and there you be hanged by the neck till you are goddang dead…"
There was a snap, and another, and another. The sound continued, like the popping of flashbulbs around a celebrity on opening night. Men fell through hatches in his mind. Behind Elder Seth they all stood, heads loose, tongues out, eyes showing only white.
"…and that's m'ruling!"
Judge Colpeper had tried and hanged three hundred and seventeen men, twenty-five women, two indeterminate and one intelligence-raised dog. They all waited for him. They had a necktie party ready.
Elder Seth looked at him, terrible eyes burning. The necktie party crowded in his mirrored pupils.
The judge held Larroquette's elbow in one hand and the ragged stump of his bicep in the other. He pumped the arm, chambering a round in the forearm, and straightened the limb out.
The last snap was louder than all the others.
The judge's hat came off the top of his head with most of his skull wadded into it. He stood for a moment, eyes opaque, and crumpled at the knees. He hit the road before his hat, which plopped with a sickening splat against the side of a wall ten yards distant and slithered redly towards the ground.
Tyree didn't believe what she saw, but took stock of the situation. Kirby Yorke, those strange shades clamped to his head, wouldn't stop screaming. The Quince had his back to the Feelgood and was levelling his shotgun at any who might rush him. Burnside was lost somewhere in the melee. People screeched and died indiscriminately. Buildings were on fire.
The cockatoo creature ran past Tyree, flaps of fair skin falling away as if a flock of invisible, sharp-beaked birds were attacking.
In the midst of it all, the Elder stood calm, surveying his flock. With him stood a small knot, the rump of his faithful and new converts. There were Psychopomps with him, and a few of the townsfolk.
She made a snap judgement, and decided whose fault this all was.
Holding up her side arm with both hands, she circled around the outskirts of the killing zone, shouldering through floundering fools. Quincannon covered her, shotgunning a 'Pomp who tried to get in the way. This was a proper Cav action.
Stepping over the ganggirl, Tyree took careful aim and shot Elder Seth three times in the small of the back. The thing that looked like a man turned and she had the sense not to look into his eyes. That seemed like a good way to go mad or get killed.
But the Mark of Death had been put on her. She knew she could run but she couldn't hide.
One day, soon…
Ciccone flew at Tyree, hands contorted into claws. Tyree shot the Sister in the chest, and what looked like pink plastic exploded through her robes She slowed, but didn't stop. Tyree put a bullet in her head, just above the left eye. She saw the nailhead of the round embedded in the Josephite woman's head. A trickle of clear fluid welled around the wound, but Ciccone just seemed disoriented when she should be dead.
These people were getting less and less human. The Elder put a hand on Sister Ciccone's shoulder and she calmed, bowing her head. He scanned Tyree and smiled.
Unseen claws didn't come to rip her apart. The Elder stretched out an arm and beckoned. Ice-water dribbled down Tyree's spine. Ciccone and Wiggs and the others were smiling, beckoning her. She could be forgiven her sins.
She did not have to die. If she joined the faithful.
Elder Seth was walking away, trailing his flock of resettlers. They were singing "Shall We Gather at the River", with explosions instead of drumbeats to keep time.
Her voice came to her and she found herself singing too. Miraculously, she knew the words…
"…the beautiful, the beautiful river.
Yes, we'll gather at the river
That flows from the Throne of God."
Quincannon, who had broken away from the Feelgood, struggled with a Psychopomp and a little man in a blue suit. They were both trying to get knives into his throat. Tyree shot the panzergirl and the Quince took care of blue suit with a shotgun-stock heartpunch. The sergeant shot her a salute and floored another assailant with a slash from the gun.
She didn't return the salute. She was still singing.
Her gun fell from her grasp and she lurched towards the Josephites as if pulled by puppet strings. Her hair was disarrayed by things rushing through the air. She knew she had to go to the Elder, go with the Elder. Her whole life had been designed to bring her to this point, to set her on the Road to Salt Lake City.
If she went with the Elder, the Mark of Death would be wiped from her forehead. She could live …
Chollie Jenevein's gas tanks went up and fire was falling all over Spanish Fork. A nice, quiet, little town.
She saw Burnside slumped against the drug store, dead without a mark on him, side arm still holstered. Yorke was still screaming. The Elder stood over the trooper and retrieved his spectacles, raising them up to his face like a sacrament. Yorke scratched Oedipus-fashion at his eyes, and kicked at the ground. Elder Seth walked away.
Tyree stood over Yorke, fending off the streams of people with the threat of her gun. Quincannon got to the kid and slapped him, but it had no effect. He dug out a squeezer of morph-plus from his belt-slung medikit and put the Trooper to sleep. Yorke shut up but still writhed. Quincannon tried to get a grip on him.
Tyree still fought the impulse to go with the music. A tall Psychopomp, an elegant girl in see-through plastic, shoved past her and fell in step with the Josephites. She marched off like a catwalk creature. Tyree knew she should follow.
Elder Seth walked towards the city limits, ignoring his flock. Everywhere he went, he could guarantee new converts. Whatever his religion really was, she guessed it had nothing to do with Jesus H. Christ.
She was hearing him right now. "Six six six."
With a lurch, her legs were moving, and she was among the multitude. A ticking calm settled around her. Quincannon and Yorke would be left behind with the dead. If she went with the Josephites, she would be saved, she would atone for her sins. She followed.
The Quince called for her, but she ignored him,
She knew it was madness but she marched with the crowd. They were united by love. She knew she was like them, another sacrificial lamb, more meat for the juggernaut that rolled down Route 666 to the Apocalypse, but she was happy with her lot. There were arms around her. To her left was an old man, a Josephite, to her right the 'Pomp she had seen join the resettlers. Together, they walked towards the desert. The old man fell, and his Brothers and Sisters walked over him. He was still singing, they were still singing, as their feet broke his ribs.
Tyree and the tall, thin girl embraced. Her name, Tyree gathered from the gush of welcome, was Varoomschka. Love was all around, and old enmities were strewn in the blooded dirt. When she stumbled, she was held up by Varoomschka and Brother Wiggs. Both had burned away their sins and imperfections and become beacons of purity.
The Feelgood blazed away like a Fourth of July bonfire, and the courthouse began to smoulder. There was a five-man gallows that would burn up beautifully. It was a shame nobody was in a mood to appreciate the fireworks and bake potatoes in the ashes later.
She saw Elder Seth leading his Indians and his saints away from the blazes of massacre, his footprints filled with blood, spirits in the air. And she saw him now, exactly the same.
Someone had hold of her, pulling her away from the ranks of the pilgrims. Varoomschka tried to rescue her from the new tugging, arms slipping around her neck in a bear-hug. Tyree struggled, possessed by the need to be with the Elder. and took a slap in the face.
She closed her eyes and concentrated hard. She didn't want to be a sacrifice for anyone's God.
The Quince was with her now, red face pale. He was the only other citizen in sight not dead or crazy. He had hauled her out of the procession, and was holding her back.
Brother Wiggs, smiling, reached out for Tyree. Putting all his meat into it, Quincannon stuck a huge fist into the Josephite's face. Wiggs' smile caved in like an abusable teevee screen and cracks appeared, but no blood burst through. He drew in breath and his face filled out, beatific expression popping forth.
The Quince was ready to fight, but Tyree didn't want to be fought for. She struggled to be with Wiggs and Varoomschka and Ciccone and Elder Seth. Most of all. Elder Seth.
Then, it snapped inside. She realised how insane this all was. It would be better to die than go to Salt Lake like a zombie. She clung to Quincannon and scanned the pilgrims with loathing.
As Wiggs began to march her off, Varoomschka mewled for her lost new friend and cried out "suestra, suestra", sister, sister…
Tyree took the fillette's hand and pulled her away from Brother Wiggs. Perhaps she could save someone. Varoomschka squirmed and got loose. She stumbled a few steps, then fell in line with the others. She would find more new friends in the throng.
Damn.
"What…?" Tyree began.
"Hell, Leona, don't ask."
Elder Seth's party were nearly out of sight now, beyond the walls of fire. Shame flooded through her, self-disgust at what she had nearly been. She shuddered and Quincannon embraced her.
The courthouse exploded, and flaming timbers fell out of the sky like pick-up-sticks.
Quincannon hauled her through the fires and into the wake of the pilgrim procession. They found Yorke, still out cold, curled up on the sidewalk. Taking an arm each, they hauled the kid off towards Chollie's Gas and Inferno. The cruiser was parked opposite, unharmed by the explosions, Tyree's motorcyke was melted metal by now, though.
"Burnside?" Quincannon asked.
Tyree shook her head.
Yorke moaned in his troubled sleep. His eyes leaked blood where he had clawed.
Quincannon punched the access code into the doorlock, and the cruiser opened for them. They hauled Yorke into the back and slipped restraints on him for when he woke up.
The Quince sucked in his belly and got behind the wheel. Tyree took the weapons console and fired everything up. Then they drove steadily out of town, careful to avoid the fires in the road. A mass of twisted, smouldering wreckage blocked their way, and Quincannon had Tyree use the directional cannon to blast a clear path through it.
When they were out of range of flying debris, they stopped, and the Quince pressed his head to the wheel. It was cool in the cruiser after the heat of the day and the fires, and the soundproofing cut out most of the noise.
"Jesus, Mary and Joseph," Quincannon said. Before them, on the road, the crowd walked. They were thousands strong, a column winding away into the distance. Whoever they had been before, they were Josephites now, marching off to whatever Elder Seth had in store at Salt Lake City.
Tyree's fingers flexed on the keyboard. She could unloose the chainguns, the maxiscreamers and launch a couple of missiles. She had the impression she would be doing these people a good turn by killing as many of them as possible now.
But she did nothing. Elder Seth followed the Path of Joseph.
Dying is easy, as her old man used to say, it's the coming back that's hard.
Inside her head, there was darkness. A red darkness. She was sinking slowly into it. Her optic implant was dangling useless on her cheek, her durium skull platelocks were bent uncomfortably inside her head. That wasn't supposed to happen. They were under guarantee. Doc Threadneedle had used only the best scav medtech from the Thalamus Corp.
There were deadfolks in the road with her. The Feelgood Saloon was burning, and there were overturned ve-hickles all around. The whole town was going up in flames.
All you need to be a freedom fighter, Petya Jerkussoff sang on his "The World We Have Lost", is a fiddle and a bow and cigarette lighter.
Somewhere in the darkness outside her head, something – an animal or a person – was howling in pain.
There was a dull whumpf! as a gastank exploded. Jazzbeaux felt specks of heat on her face. The blacktop shuddered with the impact of flying debris. She knew she was lucky not to have been cut in half by a razor-edged cardoor playing frisbee.
Her father, of course, was dead. He had never come back.
The longer she lay here, the shorter the odds became…
…she tried to open her eye and found it glued shut. She had blood on her face, dried-up and mixed with grit from the road.
The road. All her pain came from the road.
Get your kicksssssssssssssssss, the preacher had hissed, on Route SixSixSixxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx!
She had a skullcracker of a headache, and guessed she'd been opened in several places by knifecuts, branded in others by dollops of fire…
…she kept losing herself, losing her train of thought She wished she had listened when Doc Threadneedle tried to tell her about her brain. It's where you live, the Doc had said, you should take care of it. Well, she had tried. A durium skullsheath doesn't come cheap. A year's worth of fenced scav had brought her the treatment. It was supposed to be like armour inside your head.
But the preacherman had opened up a crack and got into her graymass. Somehow, he had wormed his way into her private self, the place where she lived. And he had done a lot of mischief in there. She knew her body could be fixed, but she wasn't sure about the important stuff. Doc Threadneedle couldn't replace neurons and synapses. Even the GenTech wizards, Dr Zarathustra and W D. Donovan, could only reconstruct a ruined face; they couldn't do anything about a shredded psyche, a ruptured personality, a raped memory …
…somewhere in the distance, there was gunfire. Shots were exchanged. Then, nothing. She could hear fires crackling. The thing in pain was out of it now. Spanish Fork was another ghost town. She was probably the only thing alive in it. Soon, the predators would lope out of the desert for her. On the road with the 'Pomps, she had seen some pretty weird critters, wolfrat coyotes, subhume vermin, sharkmouth rabbits. They had to eat red meat one day out of seven.
Jessamyn.
Amanda.
Bonney.
She held onto herself, trying to come to the surface of her cranial quicksand.
Jessamyn Amanda Bonney.
Nobody called her that any more. Nobody but cops and ops and soce workers. Not since her old man.
Jessa-MYN, her dead daddy whispered in her inner ear, cain't you be more sociable?
No, not Jessamyn. She didn't live here any more. Jazzbeaux. She was Jazzbeaux. That was her name in the Psychopomps, that was who she was. Jazz-beaux!
She brought her right hand up to her face. A numbed pain told her two of the fingers were broken. She rubbed her eye, and tried to open it again. The blood crust cracked, and she saw the night sky.
Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight…
... pushing hard with her elbows, she half-sat in the road. Her back ached, but her spine was undamaged. That was something. The Feelgood was a stone shell full of glowing ashes. A half-burned corpse sprawled on the steps, the top of its head gone. A wind had come through with the Josephites, and blown away the man's whole world.
…I wish I may, I wish I might…
… the starlight and the firelight went to her head like a blow, and she blinked uncontrollably. Her damaged implant was leaking biofluid. Delicately, with an unbroken thumb and ringfinger, she eased the ball-shaped doodad back into its socket. The connections were loose, and the optic burner didn't respond to her impulse command. No prob. Doc Threadneedle could fix that. At least, he could if the fault was in the machine rather than in the meat.
She found her eyepatch on the ground, and slipped it on over her optic. She pulled her hair out from over the patchcord, and passed her fingers through it. Blood, dirt and filth came loose. Her broken fingerbones ground painfully.
…have the wish I wish tonight.
… she was more in control now. Soon, she would be able to stand up, able to walk out of here on her own two legs.
The Psychopomps were finished, she guessed. Andrew Jean, her lieutenant for the past two years, was a few yards away, skin in shreds, orange beehive hairdo picked to pieces The corpse looked as if it had been attacked by dagger-billed birds. She found So Long Suin and Sleepy Jane Porteous too, both killed. The 'Pomps who weren't dead had gone off with the preacherman…
…citizens, Psychopomps, Cav. There were lots of casualties. Jazzbeaux had been out of it for most of the fighting, but she could tell from the leavings that things had got serious. Some of the people looked as if they had been torn apart by animals with more in the way of teeth and claws than the Good Lord intended for them to have. Sweetcheeks was literally crushed flat into the road, dead eyes staring from a foot-wide face. A farmer was burned to the bone inside his unmarked Oshkosh B'Gosh bib-alls. A black cavalryman was slumped against the front window of the drugstore, dead without a mark on him. She unbuttoned his holster, and took out his side arm. She had lost her own gun back in the Feelgood.
The official killing iron was heavier than she was used to, but it would do the job. She unbuckled the yellowlegs' gun-belt, and cinched it around her hips.
Then, she picked up a half-brick and threw it through the drugstore window. Picking the glass away from the display, she reached for a squirter of morph-plus. She exposed her wrist, and jabbed the painkiller into her bloodstream.
Her head clearing slightly, she filled her jacket pockets with pills and jujubes. She popped a glojo capsule into her mouth, and rolled it around on her tongue, not biting into it. The buzz seeped through her body. Some of the pain went away. Some…
…There was a well nearby. Her waterdetector – now lost – had twanged when they crossed the Spanish Fork city limits. She would need a drink soon, and food.
She couldn't find a ve-hickle that worked. Her prized Tucker Tomorrow was somewhere in a block-sized scrap metal bonfire. She supposed Elder Seth must have taken everything with him when he left in his motorwagon train. He would be half-way to Salt Lake by now.
Now, she was coming for him. He had done his best to destroy her, and she was still here. She was still Jazzbeaux.
She squatted by the mess that had been Andrew Jean, and said her goodbyes. Andrew Jean had been a good 'Pomp, a good gangbuddy. Nobody deserved to die like that.
Except the preacherman. Elder Seth needed to die slowly. He had been invincible earlier, when he had changed – the real self pushing out from behind his human mask – but now he was her meat.
The preacher had taken a girl out to kill her, but made of her a weapon which could be used against him.
Jazzbeaux walked away from Andrew Jean. Just off the main street, she found the first of the carrion creatures. It was a bad one, a mew-tater. There was some kind of housecat in there, but it was the size of a moose, had white skunkmarks down its back, and the buds of vestigial extra heads hanging in its neckfur. It had gathered three or four corpses, and was playing with them, slicing them out of their clothes. Its saliva was corrosive, and etched patterns in the pale, dead skin of its supper.
Jazzbeaux stretched her fingers and lightly rested them on the butt of her scavved gun. The creature turned its head to look at her with slit-pupilled eyes the size of saucers. It showed its needle-sharp teeth, and flared a furry ruff. It could have leaped. With her broken fingers, she probably couldn't have outdrawn the thing.
But she met its eyes. It recognised a fellow predator, and backed down, returning its attention to its food. She walked away.
For the first time since she iced her dad, Jazzbeaux felt she really had a purpose on this dull earth.
She hoped the old man would be proud of her.