"C'mon, Jesse Garon, don't fail me now…"
Whenever he was alone, which was most of the time, the Op talked to Jesse Garon as if his brother were there. In a sense, he was. In the backwoods, they said that when one of identical twins died, the survivor would carry the baby's soul for the rest of his natural life.
"C'mon…"
Despite his thick leather waders, the cold of the Mississippi Delta swamp was seeping into his legs. He had been in one place for over two hours, since before sundown, waiting for the attack to come.
On a still night, you could hear the helicopters coming from a long way away. He had enough time to take the rocketlauncher out of its watertight case, and load up with a GenTech one-shot Ground-to-Air missile. The weapon was heavy on his shoulder, but he stood his ground, putting up with the ache, his right eye to the nightsight.
Around him in the swamps, the cicadas trilled. There were water moccasins weaving across the surface of the rancid waters, and he had heard that the 'gator population was rising now they were raising the reptiles for food. But he'd been trailing through swamps all his life, and nothing had bitten him to death yet.
He wore a heavy black leather jacket, zipped up to his chin. Underneath, his shirt was a vivid pink. He didn't want that flash of colour in the night, marking him out as a target for the CAF. His face and hands were camouflage-streaked.
Finally, he heard the whup-whup-whup of the spidercopters. The CAF nightriders were flying out of Vicksburg in precise military manoeuvers, raiding, extracting tribute, coralling a load of indenture boys and girls, and retreating. They were connected in the state legislature, the Op knew. Indenture was a profitable system for the corps and politicos. In boardrooms across the world, they had wet dreams about workers you don't have to pay. The swampies had tried to get some official law in to deal with the Confederates, but no one was interested. They had had to pool their money and hire themselves some protection.
When he was first mustered out of the army, back in '60, he had gone to a Western movie with his Mama Gladys and the Original Colonel. The Magnificent Seven. In that picture, a group of poor Mexican fanners were being terrorized by a gang of bandidos led by Eli Wallach. They put all their money together and appealed to some American gunfighters to come and help them out. Although they had very little, the cowboy heroes agreed to fight and mostly die for the farmers. Back then, when he was taking down $10,000 a week, he hadn't believed those seven gunfighters would really take the job.
But here he was, nearly forty years later, with a rocketlauncher cricking his neck, preparing to go into battle with a couple of chopperloads of Klan-hooded killerscum for what amounted to a potful of beans and some used-up cashplastic tokens.
He could see the spidercopters now, stealthing their way across the bayou, ripple-patterning the waters. They were painted with the stars and bars, and they were packing enough hardware to burn out a small town. Which, since Mayor Kettle had refused to pay tribute or hand over any more young people as indentees, was exactly what they planned to do to what was left of Yazoo City.
The New South was full of factions like the Confederate Air Force, semi-official gangcults with some money behind them. With the gradual erosion of centralized government and the permeation of the state law-enforcement agencies by the big corps, a whole slew of patriotic warlords had set out to carve themselves little empires.
The Commander-in-Chief of the CAF was a dyed-in-the-wool white supremacist fanatic called Burtram Fassett whose last gangcult had called themselves the Knights of the White Magnolia and operated out of Phoenix. Turner-Harvest-Ramirez had broken up that crap game in the early '90s, but now he was in the bigotry and intolerance business again, lording it over a cadre of tightly-drilled white trash soldiers dreaming of white-columned, ivy-swathed mansions they'd never get their dirty boots into. Robert E. Lee would have had them shot down like dogs, but they sang "Dixie," "The Bonnie Blue Flag" and "I'm a Good Old Rebel" while they were burning out black churches and families, and could recite all the dialogue from Gone With the Wind if prompted. The South had always raised as good a crop of hatred as of cotton.
There were three spidercopters, moving in the classical arrowhead formation. The Op had flown similar ships in Central America in the '80s, and remembered how devastating it had been when the Sandinistas got hold of weapons like the one he was hefting right now. He grinned at the memory of high-tech engines of death crashing in flames in the jungle. It was time the CAF birdmen got a taste of their own napalm…
The young men of Yazoo City—despite its name not much more than a collection of swamp-harvester's huts these days—were spread out through the swamp, hefting rusty burpguns and flamethrowers. The Op had drilled them for a few weeks, and knew they would do their best. They couldn't hope to stand up to Fassett's forces for any length of time, but he was counting on the CAF being so spooked by meeting any resistance at all that they went to pieces. That was more than likely. The fanatics were always the first to run when you shot back. He remembered only too well being the only one to stand tall outside Managua when the government troops popped out of the ground. Those Contra yellowbellies Uncle Sam had had him supporting probably hadn't stopped running.
The lead copter hovered, and its attendants held their places in the formation, noses slightly down, weapon arms bobbing. The Op had the flying machine in his sights, and initiated the launch sequence. The LED below the sight counted down from twenty. He found himself twitching to the beat of the LED, his hips moving in his waders, his free hand clicking his fingers to the music only he could hear. The music he had heard all his life. A hatch opened in the spidercopter, and the cross speared down into the swamp, rooting itself deep into the mud bottom, only slightly askew. The Op raised the rocketlauncher as the chopper lifted up. The cross exploded into flame, and stood there burning.
Thirty yards to the left, William Soule swore. 95% of the citizens of Yazoo City were poor and black, and that put them high on the CAF's list of undesirables.
The spidercopter to the left squirted bunting napalm in a high arc over the swamp. The CAF knew there were people down in the waters waiting for them, and were trying to end it early. Large things crashed through the burning waters, and the Op hoped his line of defence would hold. It was time. It was time to rock and roll. The rocket whizzed out of the launcher, and he had the weapon back in its case before it struck home. The pilot saw it coming too late, and tried to take evasive action, but the missile's inbuilt homing system adjusted its course. It exploded dead centre on the spidercopter's nose, and the craft's napalm tanks went up. It was like a small sun for a moment, and then fell in fiery metal chunks into the swamp. The Op held a clump of hanging moss as the wave hit him at chest-height. Water slopped into his waders, and he was nearly knocked over.
The other copters were rising out of range, computerized baffle systems coming on-line to defer any further high-tech assaults. The Op didn't mind that. He knew he would only have one shot with the tube. The baffles meant that the CAF couldn't use any of their smart missiles on him either.
Unslinging his G-Mek Rapide full-automatic machine gun, he sloshed across the swamp towards the island where the first wave would be coming down. It was the only semi-solid footing for a mile or so, and the CAF commandos would naturally strike for it.
There were bursts of flame as the CAF blundered into the booby-traps they had set earlier.
"Whoo-eeee," yelped Soule, punching the air. "Gonna fry us some hoodhead honkie ass tonight!"
The Op signalled to Soule, and the kid passed the order on. The Yazoo Krewe were to move in.
One of the spidercopters was over the island, men on ropes abseiling down from it. They were mainly frozen in mid-air since the first explosions, but a few of the hoodheads on the ground were calling for back-up. The other chopper had withdrawn to a safe height and was laying down more napalm.
People were screaming, trying to get the stuff off them. The Op knew that was hopeless. The best you could hope for with a GenTech napalm product was a quick death from traumatic shock. This new stuff was bio-based and bonded with your tissue on first contact. It burned inside you until there was nothing left to burn. And it burned underwater, so pulling yourself into the swamp was no help. He hoped the Yazoo Krewe hadn't lost too many.
The CAF was laying down conventional fire now, but they hadn't got the range yet. Bullets threw up little splashes twenty feet behind them.
"Pore-ass motherfreakers," Soule yelled. "Ofey ratskaggers, lowbrow cornhole connoisseurs!"
The Op wished the kid would concentrate on the action, rather than taking the time to use his extensive vocabulary.
"Shape up, Soule," he shouted. "This is serious."
"Yes, Colonel," the boy snapped.
The Op sighted on a hoodhead who seemed to be directing the ground troops on the island, and took him apart with a burst. That should throw some confusion into the ranks.
Matthew Croke, the Yazoo City selectman who had visited him in Memphis, floated by, half his head shot away. He rippled through the reflection of the burning cross.
Soule saw the man in the water, and swore again. He lifted his 'gator-baiter rifle and sniped three hoods in a row, bringing them down with precise heartshots.
They still couldn't decide whether to land more gunmen or pull out entirely. The spidercopter was hovering indecisively. Its lase swivelled, and burned a line across the ground. The grass singed, and smoked.
The Op whistled, a pre-arranged signal, and the Yazoo Krewe stormed the beaches like John Wayne hitting Iwo Jima. The Op rapid-fired his weapon, jitterbugging a group of hoodheads.
Soule and three others were assembling a mortar under the cover of a dead tree. The Op gave them some covering fire while they got the thing put together, and took a couple of shots at the copter. A hoodhead fell from his rope, and splashed into the swamp. Someone up there—probably chickenheart Fassett—made a decision to cut the ground troops loose and make a tactical retreat, and the copter shifted in the air, its updrafts humming.
Come on, Soule.
"On line. Colonel," Soule shouted.
"Take the bird down," he ordered.
The kid's grin was a line of white in the night, and he worked the lever.
The shell rose in an arc, and peaked a few feet too low. It came down on the other side of the island, exploding shrapnel into the thick greenery.
The spidercopter was still lifting, not yet up to speed. Its blades rhythmically sliced the air.
"Give it another fifty feet," he judged.
"Sure thing, Colonel," Soule replied.
The adjustment was made, and the next shell exploded in the belly of the copter. The left nacelle, which housed the lase and the napalm squirters, was dislodged and tumbled downwards, flames flickering around it, the stars and bars peeling.
"Down," the Op ordered, throwing himself to the soft, muddy earth and sinking his face into it.
He heard the explosion as the napalm tank burst, and felt scraps of fire on the back of his jacket. He rolled quickly back into the water, and stayed under, holding the air in his lungs.
This wasn't doing his clothes any good.
His eyes open, he realized that above him the surface of the water was a dull orange. The area was on fire. He heard the blood pounding inside his head.
He kicked and swam until there was a cool darkness above him, and, chest bursting, spluttered his way to the surface. He coughed and spat water and shook his thick hair. He had been born with blondish-brown hair. It might be greying now, but he'd been dyeing it black since his early twenties. His years in the army and, then, the Op business, had kept him in trim. But all the regen treatments in the world and the personal attention of Dr Zarathustra couldn't take the years away. His face was unlined, but he was 64 years old.
The copter was coming down in a lazy spiral, burning hoodheads bailing out, splashing into the pool of napalm. The cicadas were quiet now, and there was only the sound of human pain to disturb the swamp. Quite a few of the Yazoo Krewe would have been killed by the exploding napalm tank. The Op blamed himself. He should have known what would happen. There was no point in winning the battle if there was no one left at the end to get the benefit.
Guns still chattered as Fassett's hoodheads and Soule's Yazoo Krewe exchanged fire between the hanging curtains of Spanish moss.
A man on fire ran at him, firing wildly, and he put a shot in his head. Camouflage robes tented around him as he sank into the dark waters.
The Op realized he was up to his neck in the swamp now, and that his footing was none too good. The napalm had driven him further away from the island than was advisable.
He struck towards the shore, avoiding the floating patches of fire, shaking the water out of his guaranteed moisture-proof Rapide. Something crashed out of the swamp a few feet away, and he swung around to open fire. The gun squelched as he pulled the trigger, and he swore to get his money back.
The hoodhead was huge, easily six-seven, and built like a professional wrestler. He had IR shades over his cloth face, and was holding up a two-foot-long dagger with a wickedly serrated edge. They sure grew their rats big in Vicksburg.
The Op had his combat knife out of his belt, and held it just under the water. The hoodhead slipped himself onto it, taking the steel up to the hilt in his hard belly, just under the ribcage.
He screamed in rage, and blood darkened his hood over his mouth, but he was still slashing wildly.
The Op got a lock on the hoodhead's wrist, and tried to crush the bones, but they felt durium-laced.
"Nigra-lover," the hoodhead spat.
The Op carved into the man's gut, feeling the entrails uncoiling under the water like anemone tendrils.
His enemy had lost the dagger, but got a surprisingly strong grip on his throat. The Op corded his neck muscles, and kept the air passage open. He had Zarathustra threads in there, and could lock his pipes open. But the hoodhead was more interested in pulling him under the water than throttling him.
The Op struck a couple of karate blows to the hoodhead's neck, and felt the grip relaxing, but only slightly. Out of the water, his karate training would tell and he would be able to use the man's weight against him. Here, they were just a couple of scratching and biting animals.
The 'gator came from somewhere, and latched onto the hoodhead. It must be the intestines trailing in the water, calling to predators, signalling the presence of something mortally wounded and edible. The Op kicked in the water, and swam away from the thrashing mass where the reptile was clamping its jaws into the hoodhead, tearing limbs free, scattering blood in droplets. A hand reached for a frag, and flipped the top.
The Op threw himself under the waters again, as his merciful grenade blew hoodhead and 'gator to pieces. The Shockwave knocked him off balance, and he felt his hand sink into the mud as he tried to steady himself. His Rapide, still slung around his arm, floated on the surface, pulling him up.
He broke the waters, and struggled towards the island. The fighting was dying down.
The third spidercopter was gone. The CAF had been stung badly, and were withdrawing.
There were dead and burned people floating thick around the island. With their skins and clothes napalmed off them, they all looked the same colour.
The gunshots weren't so frequent now. The fighting was more or less over. The cross had burned itself out. There was a half-hearted cheer as it toppled hissing into the swamp.
The Op pulled himself out of the swamp, water cascading out of his clothes, and walked across the island. Soule was down on one knee near the crashed chopper, a friend trying to tighten a tourniquet around his leg. His boot was exploded, and three of his toes were gone.
Soule grinned, and gave the Op the thumbs-up.
"We rocked," he said. "We rocked and rolled!"
His leathers heavy with water, his hair over his face, the Op walked towards the wreckage. The Yazoo Krewe were clustered around a few wounded and captured hoodheads, prodding them with rifles, kicking them with steel-toed boots. The CAF were yelping as they took their punishment. Chickenhearts to a man, the Op guessed.
Ellroy Kettle, the Mayor of Yazoo City, was laying into the head of a fat man in a muddy once-white sheet.
"How yo like that, massah?" Kettle shouted, tears running into the brown creases of his face. "That 'nuff cotton plucked fo yo, Mistah Rhett Freakin' Butler? Yo want some iced lemonade on the freakin' verandah, massah?"
Earlier, the Mayor had spoken with a cultivated Harvard accent. Now, he sounded like a cross between Stagger Lee, the badass dude who took his razor to every whitey sheriff who came after him, and Stepin Fetchit, the scaredy-cat pop-eyed slave of all those Hollywood movies.
"Hold on there, Mr Mayor," the Op said. "The fight's over."
A couple of younger men tried to hold Kettle back, but he was carried away. The last time the CAF flew against Yazoo City, they had harvested a crop of "indentees," young people conscripted to work as cheap labour in the corp-run factories and fields of Alabama and Georgia. Kettle's daughter Rosaria was one of those indenture girls, and she had died from a smacksynth overdose in a whorehouse in the Montgomery NoGo. Some Japcorp honcho had been dissatisfed with the services and shot her up with enough Hero-9 to cardiac-arrest an elephant. The Confederates had managed to bring back at least one of the South's cherished antebellum traditions: indenture was just a gussied-up name for slavery. Old times, they were not forgotten.
Kettle kicked the fat sheet wearer in his hood. There was blood dribbling from the eyeholes.
The Op stepped in, and laid his hands on the Mayor's shoulders. The man stopped kicking, and his face fell. He was crying uncontrollably, now.
"My little girl…my little girl…"
The Op hugged the Mayor, and let the man cry, feeling his chest-heaving sobs run through both their bodies. The Yazoo Krewe stood around, sobered, the exhilaration of battle sapping away. The Op had seen this before, in South and Central America, in the Middle East and in the Good Old U.S. of A. There were lots of people crying, with pain, fear or fatigue. It had all been over in less than twenty minutes, but everyone alive would carry the marks for the rest of their lives. Either the marks on their bodies, or the marks on their souls.
Dr Ali Bales, the nearest thing to a medic in Yazoo City, was going around looking to the wounded. She was passing out squeezers of morph-plus to everyone who showed her blood. Soule took Kettle away from the Op, and the Mayor went along quietly.
The hoodhead on the ground squealed, his flabby fingers clawing at his mask.
"White robes, huh? Must be a Grand High Exalted Something-or-Other," said the Op.
A sixteen-year-old swamp fighter, gangcult scars on his brown cheeks, tore the mask away, and they all saw the battered face of Burtram Fassett. The Confederate spat out teeth and insults. There was drying blood in his white goatee beard.
"Nigra vermin," he choked. Something about the man reminded the Op of the Original Colonel. Maybe it was the beard, maybe it was the fat.
Someone raised a gun, but the Op waved it down.
"Under the Enderby Act, I am obliged to tell you that you have just been made the subject of a legal Sanctioned Op's arrest. You will be charged with crimes against the constitution of the United States…"
"Yankee trash," Fassett spat.
The Op resented that. He had been born in Tupelo, Mississippi.
"You have the right to remain silent while white-hot pokers are shoved up your ass," he shouted. "You have the right to have an attorney present when they snip your fingers with carpetshears, and if you cannot afford an attorney the court will toss you into a plague-pit with fifteen psychopathic killers until it can get around to spitting in your face. Do you understand these rights?"
Fassett wasn't hearing anything. He was breathing, but unconscious. Broken, he looked like a dandified Santa Claus on the night the reindeer rebelled and trampled him into the snow.
Suddenly, the Op felt tired. His back stung from the napalm spots, and his neck ached from the giant hoodhead's killer grip.
"We whipped 'em," Soule was shouting. "We whipped em good, didn't we?"
Bales was searing the open wound on Soule's foot with a lase scalpel, and shooting morph-plus into his ankle. She'd been a Combat Physician with the Voodoo Brotherhood gangcult in Detroit. She was calmly used to this.
The Op nodded at the boy.
"They won't come back to Yazoo City, no more, no way, now how, no sir!"
Soule was flying as the morph-plus hit his system. The Op wondered how the boy would feel tomorrow when he woke up and saw the crutch.
Bales gave the Op a clenched-fist salute, and took the next squeezer out of her mouth to shoot up some other kid.
He yanked Fassett upright, and bent the Confederate's arms back so he could slip on the thumbcuffs. Fassett woke up when the pain hit him, but sagged again.
If he could push the case through the FBI or some independent agency, there was a chance that the CAF's highplaced buddies wouldn't be able to save him. There were still plenty of incitement and extortion beefs against the old IGW in Arizona, and the Op was sure he could scrape up a few extra charges. There might even be some bounties on the bastard's pointy head. The spare change would come in handy. He had been doing too many of these charity cases recently, and the coffers could do with some heavy replenishing.
The Yazoo Krewe were busy with their wounds, and with mopping up. Later, they'd probably all get drunk and sing songs. The Op remembered the early days, when he'd heard the Mississippi songs. And later caught up with the great bluesmen: Robert Johnson, who some say sold his soul to the Devil to make the music, Arthur Crudup, who wrote "That's All Right (Mama)," Johnny Ace, who shot himself playing Russian Roulette just as "Pledging My Heart" hit the charts in 1954, Kokomo Arnold, who wrote the original "Milkcow Blues Boogie," Junior Parker, B.B. King, Rufus "Bear Cat" Thomas, Big Memphis Ma Rainey, Hardrock Gunter, the Ripley Cotton Choppers, Big Bill Broonzy, Howlin' Wolf…
The music was faint now. It had been a long time. Forty years. But you couldn't ever burn it out of you. If you were born with it, it was always there.
He heaved Burtram Fassett towards the powerboat, and dumped him in. He'd make his way back quietly to Yazoo, and lock the Confederate into the reinforced trunk of his Cadillac convertible. Then, he'd head back to Memphis.
"Hey, Colonel," said a sharp-looking young swampy, tightly curled masses of hair pulled back by a rubber band, "where you goin'?"
Elvis Aron Presley, Op, shrugged, and said, "Home, I guess."
The sinking city smelled of dead fish, Paris perfume and easy money. Every time the waters rose, the locals just added another layer to the sidewalks, and shored up all the buildings below the waterline. A few months ago, the wall of The Crab Shell, a famous nightspot, had given way and a roomful of high-rolling gamblers had drowned. The New Orleans canal-rats had been scooping poker chips, jewellery, fancy hats and sodden paper money out of the drainage sluices ever since. Roger Duroc knew Venice well, and recognized the odours of damp and corruption as the encroaching swampwater ate away at the foundations of this city. One day. New Orleans would just collapse like the House of Usher, and disappear under the stagnant waters. He wouldn't be sorry.
Before leaving Salt Lake City, he had had to take a course of innoculation shots that still made his arm itch. New Orleans was the disease capital of the South-East, and he didn't want to bring away any of the wide variety of rots, agues, fevers or plagues endemic to the city. Most people on the canals wore breathing masks. Given the high proportion of criminal elements in the city—it was wide-open, a PZ in name only—Duroc assumed that they were as much for disguise as for protection. Some of the masks were carnival fashion accessories, with tinsel whiskers stuck out of the breather snouts and twirled spangle eyebrows above the eyeplate dominos.
Duroc sat in Fat Pierre's, a fast-food joint, spooning thin hot gumbo into his mouth, and listening to the owner's teevee. Dressed in the black suit and wide hat of a Josephite elder, he was mainly ignored by the hustlers and hookers who made up the rest of the clientele. That was fine by him. A hugely obese chef, presumably Fat Pierre himself, was stirring his bottomless pot of gumbo, dropping in huge slabs of vatgrown Boosted Rooster from time to time and generously sinking okra into the gloop.
On the teevee, Lola Stechkin was hostessing a documentary about the rash of inexplicable phenomena that had been sweeping the world for the past year. They had footage of the ruins of the Monastery of Santa de Nogueira in Arizona, which had last December been the focus of an inexplicable devastation the news people were trying to pass off as a freak meteorological occurrence. A British science-fiction writer wearing a circus-tent sarong was talking to Lola about rains of frogs, the tracks of Bigfoot, and Buick-sized lumps of ice falling in the desert, while a tattooed astrologer was waving an hourglass and trying to get in on the act. There were all sorts of experts on the inexplicable, and they were always on the teevee these days.
Duroc suppressed a shudder. He hadn't been there, but since Santa de Nogueira, his worldview had not been the same. All his life, he had known about the Dark Ones and the powers that had run in his family for centuries. Always, Nguyen Seth, the Elder, had been there, talking of things beyond anyone's comprehension. Seth the Summoner had always been with his family, down through the centuries, ageless and unchanging, stalking the back alleys of history. And, in his dreams, he had been with his ancestors in the dungeons of the Inquisition, Place de la Guillotine, Dien Bien Phu. But only when the thing called the Jibbenainosay squeezed itself into the universe and joined in combat with the woman-shaped fiend Krokodil had Duroc really been forced to accept the reality.
With the Jibbenainosay towering above him in the Salt Lake Tabernacle, vast and alive beyond the reach of his mind, he had known the truth of the catch-phrase people had been using recently. Quoting Judy Garland's words in The Wizard of Oz, people would react to each new wonder, each new horror, with "Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas any more."
From Santa de Nogueira, Lola cut to a more recent Arizona disaster site. Fort Apache, where madmen had run riot, and strange presences had infiltrated the computer system. An expert was blandly explaining how close to holocaust the economic and information systems of the entire country had come.
Duroc had been mixed up in that, too. He hadn't been there, of course, but he had carried in his body the demon that had attacked the fort. The pain was still with him.
The gumbo scalded his mouth, and he washed it down with a swallow of mineral water.
Lola segued into a commercial for the GenTech biodiv, and a trustworthy-looking actor in a white coat was holding his midriff open so you could see how well his vat-grown liver was working as it dealt with a bottle of triple-strength vodka.
Duroc thought of the women he had never met, but whom he had tried to kill. Chantal Juillerat, S.J., Swiss national, Op and exorcist. Jessamyn Amanda Bonney, alias Jazzbeaux, alias Krokodil, former juvenile delinquent, current host of an entity so alien that it made Nguyen Seth seem like a human being. These women, and their men—Trooper Nathan Stack, Sergeant James Quincannon, Cardinal Fabrizio De Angelis, Hawk-That-Settles—had interfered in the business of Elder Seth, and would inevitably die. They could not hope to survive against the Dark Ones.
Lola came back, and her Serious Expression evaporated into her Smiley Face as she started boosting the ZeeBeeCee Blotto Lotto. "Who knows," she was saying with moist lips, "maybe you'll be the lucky winner…"
What kind of a country was this? They took the mind-stretchingly unimaginable and spat it out in three-minute chunks before doing a money-making link into a pie-in-the-sky game. Don't worry about the End of the Universe, because you could be the LUCKY WINNER!!!!!
Lola was talking with a robot-voiced computer named RaLPPH, as it went through the arduous process of selecting the citizen who would be the beneficiary of the teevee station's giveaway. Stock shots of poolside mansions, hunks and bimbos in immodest swimming suits, piles of sparkling gems, gleaming sports cars and screen-filling stacks of high denomination bills appeared. The dreams of America were so petty.
"Say, m'sieur," began a coffee-skinned indenture girl, slipping onto the stool next to him, "are you lonesome tonight?"
Duroc looked sternly at her. She was young. She wore a filmy dress which changed colour as she moved. It was slit to the thigh, and cut low on her neck. Her hair was short and brittle with setting gel. Her lipstick and eyeshadow were vivid scarlet.
He shrugged, and nodded to the gumbo chef.
"Anis," he said, holding up two fingers. "Deux."
Fat Pierre grunted, and reached for a dusty bottle. They called themselves French in the sinking city, but couldn't make a proper anis.
"I'm Simone Scarlet," she said, shaking her blood-red nails.
"Enchanté," he replied.
"Are you a preacher?"
"Would it matter?"
The girl smiled. "Preachers are just men like others."
"I'm not a preacher. I'm an Elder of the Church of Joseph."
The drinks arrived. He sipped his. He had to fight to stop his hands shaking. The shadow of the Jibbenainosay was still in his mind. It could never be banished.
Simone Scarlet drank. "You're from Salt Lake City?"
He nodded.
"And does the desert really bloom?"
"It does."
Duroc put her age at about seventeen. She was a little undernourished, her silky limbs a shade too meagre, her skull a touch too apparent under her velvety skin.
Simone Scarlet sighed. "I'd love to become a resettler. It looks so exciting on the newsnets. As if you're really doing something, not just sitting here while the waters rise."
He laid a hand over hers. She was warm to the touch.
"There are always places for the pure in heart, child…"
Her face fell. "Pure…some chance, huh?"
"Pure in heart."
He touched her breast, and felt her fragile heart beating birdlike under her ribs.
She saw something in his eyes he couldn't keep out of them. Her heartbeat increased, and there was a spasm of fear tugging at her mouth.
"You're not…"
"A preacher?" He smiled. "I told you that."
She was trying to back away, but he held her. She looked across the room at a flashily-dressed young black man with an electric blue velour jumpsuit, a mink-banded cowboy hat and more gold in his teeth, on his fingers and around his neck than you'd find in a federal reserve. He nodded to her, urging her on. Simone Scarlet wasn't sure…
Duroc kissed her, hungrily. When he shut his eyes, the Jibbenainosay expanded in his mind, and terror gripped him. He lost his interest in the girl, and let her go.
She looked at him with eyes older man her body. She was torn between being frightened of him and feeling pity.
He called for more anis, and his hands shook.
"What…what is it?"
"Time, Simone," he said. "It's out of joint."
"I don't understand." She laid a hand on his shoulder, massaging through his shoulderpad.
He remembered his business in the city. It was urgent. Nguyen Seth was expecting the best of him. The Path of Joseph had been thorny these last few months. Krokodil was still a nuisance, and the failure of the demon download at Fort Apache had been a severe disappointment to the Dark Ones. A lot of blood would have to be spilled to win back the favour of the masters.
"M'sieur," she said. "I have an apartment nearby. It is above the waterline. Very little damp."
He finished his drink, and handed his cashplastic to the chef. He slipped it through the machine and returned it to him.
He opened his wallet, and slid the cashplastic back into its slit. It didn't quite fit.
He looked at Fat Pierre, who was stirring the steaming gumbo.
"Hand it over," he said.
The chef shrugged, and kept stirring.
"You know very well what I mean, salaud. The American Excess card. Give it back to me."
"I already did."
He took out the fake and crushed it in his fist. It dropped on the counter.
Simone Scarlet was shrinking away again.
"Why you do that?"
Duroc let out a stream of French abuse at Fat Pierre, switching between Parisian gutterspeak and authentic Creole.
He wrenched the card-processing machine off the counter, and pulled it apart. His card, along with several others, was in a compartment at the bottom of the thing. It was a clever device, which reproduced the impressions of the code numbers on a blank plastic chip and turned out an almost-perfect fake in seconds.
Fat Pierre reached for a large knife that was hanging on a rack, but Duroc got him by the scruff of the neck with a strong grip. He swung himself over the counter, and got the chef in a necklock.
Everyone in the diner was looking at him.
The chef tried to ram an elbow into his stomach, but he dodged. He wrestled the burly man over to the stove, and shoved his head into the boiling gumbo.
Fat Pierre's screams bubbled out of the pot. Duroc let the man go and, a towel pressed to his scalded face, he slumped to the floor, whimpering.
Simone Scarlet's mouth was wide open.
Duroc came out from behind the counter, and took Simone's elbow, helping her on with her fakefur wrap.
"Your apartment?" he said. "Can we walk there?"
She nodded.
He steered her past the young man with the golden accessories, and out onto the street.
"Toto," he said, "I don't think we're in Kansas any more."
There was music playing in the distance. With the ripples lapping the kerb, they walked three blocks to Simone Scarlet's apartment house.
As the sun went down, the stench got worse.
"Hey, Elvis," said Nick Papageorgiadis, "va-va—vooooom!" Tired, the Op flashed his one-sided sneery grin at the mechanic, and dutifully answered, "Yeah, va-va-voom…"
He was wearing a clean black leather jacket over one of his trademark pink shirts, black pants, black leather boots and a black string tie. His jacket was an Op special, cut loose around the chest to hang unnoticeably over the harness-holster.
Nick shimmied across the garage, waving his rag, and abased himself in front of the pink Cadillac like a Voodoo Bro before Lord Shango or Damballah. The man was into cars like some men were into women or whisky.
"Cad-dee-laaaac, yo!" Nick breathed reverentially, touching the unscarred bodywork of the classic automobile. " Va-va-voooom!"
"Yeah, it'll va-va-voom all right. Check the engine and the oil, though. Can't be too careful about maintenance with a baby like this."
Nick caressed the gleaming hood as if it were his baby daughter, and sprung the concealed catch, exposing the G-Mek engine in its cradle. There was enough power in its gleaming cylinders to lift a Vixen jet fighter off the runway. The mechanic sighed, lasciviously, and reached into the car's workings to tighten a few nuts.
The Op had bought the automobile originally on September the 3rd, 1956, as a gift for Mama Gladys, who didn't drive. It had mainly been in storage in Nick's garage for thirty years, used only when Elvis was on furlough from the army. Ten years ago, Nick had persuaded him to have it completely refitted. An Op needed a flashy car, Nick told him. The Cadillac was fully convertible now, with swampskimmer attachments. If Nick could have found a place to put wings on the thing, it would fly like a bird.
"The lase mounting is a degree off, Nick."
The mechanic looked shocked. "Oh, Elvis, I'm sorry."
"It's not your fault. Just fix it."
"I do it free. I miss it last time."
"You work, you get paid, Nick. You know how I feel about that."
Nick looked sheepish, and shrugged. Elvis could trust him to do a perfect job with the Cadillac. Sometimes, the Op thought Nick loved the car more than his own family.
It was certainly a prime piece of American workmanship. Not a scrap of Japtech in there, from the IFF transmitter to the chaingun. The trunk was spacious enough to accommodate a felon in relative comfort. Fassett had complained, of course, but he had been lucky. If Elvis had left him around Yazoo City, the Krewe would have nailed him to a tree and stripped off his skin.
He'd just dropped his prisoner off at the Federal holding penitentiary on the outskirts of town, and promised to download the documentation into the FBI's files tomorrow. From the car, he had made a few calls to personal friends in the bureau. He thought he could guarantee that Fassett would serve some hard time in a reeducation centre.
That was another shred of scum out of circulation. Elvis felt good about that.
Leaving Nick to work on the car, the Op rode the elevator up to his apartment on the 15th floor. It was small, but served him well on the rare occasions when he was in town. Most of the time, on the road, he lived out of the Cadillac. It had been made in an era which prized size as well as style; you could probably settle down and raise a family in the car. Not that he had ever been in a position to find out. There hadn't been much time in his life for putting down roots.
He entered his code in the building's security system, and the automatic gates let him in. There was a uniformed guard—some ageing kid called Springsteen who was always hanging around, asking him questions about being an Op—but he was just for show. The machines ran the building.
Springsteen was busy just now, so Elvis was able to walk past him with just a hello. He was too tired for talk. He'd been driving hard, working off the adrenalin that had built up before the firefight. The swampy roads weren't busy, and he had had a clear route, passing only a few corp convoys and a solo cyker or two. Fassett had stopped banging after an hour, and it had been a quiet trip. Pushing 130 most of the way, he had made it from Yazoo to Memphis in just under two hours, crossing the state line at dawn. Of course, it had taken the rest of the day to deal with the Safe Route through the NoGo and to detour by the Federal Prisoner Depository.
Now, he just wanted to get some sleep. Tomorrow, he'd do his document work and sew up that bastard Fassett with the courts. He'd want to do a careful job. The CAF had pricey shysters backing them up. Then, he'd check his answering service and see if any more commissions were in the offing.
His funds were low, he knew. He ought to take a high-paying bodyguard or courier gig if he was going to finance another few Yazoo City actions. The trouble was that the people who most needed the help were the ones least able to afford it. And once you got a rep for being a Samaritan Op, you were overloaded with deserving and undeserving cases. It was a tough century, and someone had to look after his neighbours.
He had been born dirt-poor in a house that was just a few tarred boards the right side of a shack. His Pa had had so little in the way of education that he had misspelled his surviving son's middle name on his birth certificate. Elvis Aron. It was supposed to be Elvis Aaron. Often, he'd thought of getting it changed by deed poll, but that would mean admitting old Vernon had made a mistake. He wouldn't insult his Pa's memory that way.
He opened the door of his apartment, and stepped into the tiny hall. The first thing he saw was the only picture he had from the wild years before the army, a small framed photograph of him on stage, swivelling his hips, trying to keep hold of a guitar and a microphone at the same time. Behind him, you could see Bill Black twanging his bass. That had been when he and Bill and Scotty Moore were the Blue Moon Boys, doing the Louisiana Hayride show. Before it all got crazy, and the Original Colonel stepped in, and the music went weird…
Some said that Elvis Presley had gone to the Devil. Now, the Op wasn't so sure they hadn't been right.
The Op shucked his jacket, and carefully hung it up. He pulled off his shoulder holster, which was weighed down with three guns—a Colt Police Python for the left armpit, a G-Mek Finishing Touch automatic for the right, and a one-shot derringer for the small of the back—and hung that on the stand.
His frozen nineteen-year-old self yelled silently at him. What had the song been? "That's All Right (Mama)," his first recording at Sun? "Good Rockin' Tonight"? "Mystery Train"? "I'm Left, You're Right, She's Gone"? The kid had the music in him, for sure, stronger than anything else. That felt remote, but he could dimly remember the urges that seemed to come directly from his gut as soon as puberty hit him. He chased girls like all the others, that was certain. But there was something else, another need, another drive. Some Preachers had called him an instrument of the Devil.
He broke away from the picture, and went into his studio. Slipping off his shoes, he sank onto his couch and, too tired to sleep, just stared…
The music had seemed to come out of him like blood spurting from a knifewound. It had been joyous, but there'd been pain too. He was full of the music like some of the backwoods preachers were full of the Word of the Lord, and he had to let it loose. Even when he sang gospel, people said the Devil was in his voice, in the movements of his hips.
The Devil's Music, they had called it. It had been called that forever. Any music that got inside people and stirred them up was in Satan's Top Forty. Elvis remembered the stories about Paganini having sold his soul for the music, and the things they still whispered about poor, lost, stabbed-through-the-heart-at-28 Robert Johnson.
And if the Devil didn't want his soul for himself, he sent Colonel Thomas Parker to claim it for Hell's side.
The Original Colonel.
Elvis loosened his shirt, and stabbed a button on the couch arm. The air conditioning kicked in, and he felt cool air on his chest.
He remembered the Colonel. And the Colonel's strange, money-doling shadow, Mr Seth.
Seth had been with the Colonel from the carnival days, always sponsoring the promoter, nurturing him for some unknown life's work. An old-time barker, on the payroll as one of the Colonel's many nebulous advisors, had told him a story about Parker's early days in showbusiness, about a band called Bob Willis and the Texas Playboys and about Colonel Parker's Dancing Chickens. Seth had told the Colonel that a country music show he was arranging would qualify as an agricultural event and thus not be liable for tax just so long as he had an animal act on the bill. What Parker did was put a hotplate in the bottom of a cage and cover it with straw. When it was plugged in and heated up, the band would play "Turkey in the Straw" and the curtain would go up on a couple of chickens high-stepping to the music, their pain-squawks covered by the fast fiddling. When the chickens gave out, the Colonel would Southern-fry the fowl and serve them to hungry customers during the intermissions. One of the scary things about the Colonel was that he liked to hear that story told, and never could understand why it made people look at him in a different way. As far as he was concerned, the whole point was that he had put one over on the revenue men.
Once he signed up with the Colonel in 1956, Elvis Presley had become just another Dancing Chicken, and the music thing had gone crazy.
Outside it was getting dark. Elvis turned the lights up, and stretched out on the couch, letting all the old pains fade away.
He had been yanked from Sun Records, where Sam Phillips—who said that a white man with a black sound would be worth a million dollars—had developed his style, and switched to RCA Victor, where he got his first taste of the corps. The hits came thick and fast— "Heartbreak Hotel," "Blue Suede Shoes," "Hound Dog," "Don't Be Cruel," "All Shook Up"—and he'd been walked through some movies. Love Me Tender, swivelling his hips as a cowhand just after the Civil War, Jailhouse Rock, Loving You, King Creole. They hadn't been so bad, but then came his draft notice, and, away from the Colonel, he had time to do some thinking.
In the army, the music had receded. It seemed a lot less important somehow than learning to drive a tank. That had been just like driving the pick-up truck he had been working before the music hit big. Elvis had always loved to be behind the wheel of a powerful machine. That was one thing that never changed. At first, the army had been a circus, being shifted from unit to unit, his whereabouts guarded more jealously from the fans and the press man a secret weapon. Once billed as "the Nation's Only Atomic Powered Singer," he had found his military niche trucking nuclear weapons around testing sites in the desert. It made sense; the expected news clamp-down on the atomic tests also covered up his presence, and at last he was just another dogface GI, angling for some NCO insignia. People stopped asking him to sing in the barracks, and, surrounded for the first time by guys his own age rather than the Colonel's wrinkled carny cronies, he had started questioning the way his career was being handled.
Back then, everybody in his life wanted him to be something: Sam Phillips wanted him to be a white negro; Vernon and Gladys wanted him to be a movie star as big as The King, Clark Gable; Colonel Parker wanted him to be a younger Dean Martin who shat gold; the fans wanted him to take every girl in America between the ages of fourteen and nineteen into his bed; the TV censors wanted him to stop shaking his hips while he played and sang; Jerry Lee Lewis wanted him to die tragically and make way for a new King of Rock 'n' Roll; the Hollywood moguls wanted him to be the new James Dean, the new Marlon Brando, the new Cary Grant; Billy Graham and Jimmy Swaggart wanted him to stop, period, even if he swore only to sing Gospel, claiming the Sin wasn't so much in the words as it was in the music; and Mr Seth…well, Mr Seth wanted something he wasn't talking about…maybe, Mr Seth wanted his soul. Only the army seemed to be interested in him being just plain Elvis A. Presley, US 53310761.
He had all his records, boxed up and locked away, but he almost never got them out. He didn't even have a system that could play the 78s. Nobody else remembered any more, so why should he? If you turned on the rock stations, all you got was Petya Tcherkassoff, Vania Vanianova and all the other Soves who had copy-catted his style. America had lost rock 'n' roll sometime in the '60s floundering under the weight of British heartache drivel, and the Russians had bulled in with the beetroot beat. Good luck to them.
He had got out of the army in 1960, having risen to buck sergeant, and the Colonel had a whole life waiting for him. Hollywood movies, a TV show with Frank Sinatra, a stack of songs. And a new contract which gave Elvis nearly half of what he earned. It was time for the chicken to dance again. He had seen what was coming. An endless procession of fluffily idiotic scripts, no-balls songs, willing women in bikinis, a mansion which was less of a home than the old Presley shack. And throughout it all there was Colonel Parker, raking in the money, forcing him to bow his head, tying him up with contracts that would outlive him. Mr Seth wasn't around much any more, but his grinning skull photograph remained with all the others in Parker's office. The Colonel turned his family against him, bought off Mama and Papa with the comforts they had never had, and paid friends to spy on the valuable bird. The hot plate was heated up regularly, and the Dancing Chicken screamed unheard pain while the audiences called out for more.
He turned on the teevee, without watching or listening, flicking the channels at random.
The crisis had been in October, 1960. Everybody remembered where they were when they heard the news about JFK. Elvis had been in the back seat of his mama's pink Cadillac with a prom queen. When the news came on the radio, interrupting Connie Francis' "Among My Souvenirs," the girl, her hair set solid in a Jackie Kennedy bouffant, broke down and cried. Then, the whole country seemed to be falling apart along with the Kennedy marriage. Elvis remembered that awful, public struggle as more traumatic than any of his own heartbreaks. After all, when Jackie found her husband, the Democratic presidential candidate, in bed with that Hollywood blonde, the world had been shaken. Suddenly, no-hoper Richard Nixon, who had looked like Boris Karloff next to Kennedy's Errol Flynn on the televised debates, was in the White House, and things were different .
On the pornochannel, a hairy-legged satyr was extensively coupling with a green-gilled underwater nymphet. The pounding close-ups reminded Elvis of a documentary about open-heart surgery, and he skipped channels.
Rock 'n' roll was out of favour in 1960, anyway. There were insurrections against it, against the Devil's music. There was mass burnings of records in major cities, and stem parents forced their teenagers to renounce the Devil's music. Buddy, Eddie, Ritchie and Gene were dead in cars or planes and then, in January 1961, the Reverend Jimmy Swaggart led a march against Madison Square Gardens in New York, where Alan Freed, Mr Rock 'n' Roll, was welcoming in a rockin' New Year with nineteen acts and twenty-five thousand fans. Elvis shuddered to think that he had nearly topped that bill; only the Colonel's ridiculous demands had kept him out of the bloodbath. The National Guard had had to be called in to quell what everybody called the Rock 'n' Roll Riots. They had raged for three days, and President-Elect Nixon branded the Devil's music as a greater threat to the moral fibre of the nation than communism, organized crime and poverty rolled together. When the riots were over, Freed, Chuck Berry, Harvey Fuqua, Jackie Wilson, Little Richard and three thousand others were dead, and Jerry Lee Lewis, Swaggart's cousin, was crippled for life. Elvis imagined Lewis sitting angrily on his piano stool, dead from the neck down, straining to move his hands, bashing his forehead against the keys.
To the Colonel, the wave of anti-rock 'n' roll feeling that swept across the country just meant more tuxedo tunes, bubblegum movies, and Las Vegas lounges. He said that Elvis Presley could outlive rock 'n' roll and that "nobody likes that nigra yelling no how." He could have been right. Suddenly, the Billboard charts were full of Pat Boone singing milk-and-water gospel, nice white girls singing nice white songs about nice white dresses, and crappy English Invasion mush from Ken Dodd, Mrs Mills, Matt Monro and Valerie Singleton. Some senate sub-committee set up a ratings board for all music recordings, handing down rulings like a national school principal about what was and was not permissible. The record companies all caved in and drew up their own code, enforcing a strict ban on electric guitars and saxophones that would only be overturned in the early '70s by David Cassidy, decreeing that all live performers should stand up straight like schoolchildren giving a recital. Frankie Avalon, Fabian Forte and Bobby Zimmermann scraped through; Sheb Wooley, the Platters and Tuesday Weld didn't. There was a sudden dash for the milquetoast mainstream, and performers who couldn't adapt to the new style were out of the business.
He had a meeting with the Colonel, and Mr Seth, back from overseas, turned up with a new contract the size of a telephone book. For hours, they explained it to him. There were TV specials, a film in Hawaii, the rights to cover "Tears for Souvenirs" and all Dodd's vomit-making hits, an income for life. And in the background, while the Colonel was talking at him and Mr Seth was just sitting there behind his dark glasses, Elvis could swear that he heard Robert Johnson singing about the hellhound on his trail, about meeting the Devil at the crossroads, about taking the Greyhound Bus to Hell. That had been his crossroads, and he had walked away from it without dipping the pen into a vein and signing his name. He had been set to star in G.I. Blues for Paramount in the spring, but it had been put off for over a year while the Colonel tried to put one over on Hollywood. After the rock 'n' roll riots, studio hatchet men had been through the script with a scalpel, taking out anything that might possibly be construed as rock 'n' roll-esque, substituting pure pap. Two days before he was due to report to the Paramount lot, where he was supposed to sing cute songs to puppets, babies and Juliet Prowse, he had hitch-hiked from Hollywood to Los Angeles and found a recruiting office where he could sign up again. He was immediately switched to OTC and started going for his captain's bars.
On the teevee, the world was going to Hell faster than Johnson's Greyhound Bus. That foxy Lola Stechkin was standing beside more smoking ruins, trying to look sympathetic but gorgeous as she interviewed the survivors of another catastrophe. It was space aliens in flying saucers, a survivor was claiming.
The Colonel had sued him for everything he had, of course. And had got most of it. It was a miracle that he couldn't attach any of his earnings as a soldier. Elvis set up trusts to take care of Vernon and Gladys, and disappeared into the army for twenty-five years.
The last he had heard, the Colonel was trying to do something with his chicken recipes. Mr Seth had just faded back into the night. Elvis dreamed about him sometimes. He had never figured the financier out. The Colonel just wanted enough thousand-dollar bills to fill the Grand Canyon. Mr Seth had something else in mind, some deeper, darker purpose. He couldn't listen to Johnson singing about Blues That Walked Like a Man without thinking of Mr Seth.
Lola and an expert were talking about sunspots. Next up was going to be an interview with a hunter who was claiming to have captured Bigfoot. But first, the station was going over to RalPPH, to see how the Blotto Lotto was going. Elvis zapped the channels and found an old movie. Rebel Without a Cause, one of his favourites. He watched the film for a few moments, then realized that all the young, confused actors—James Dean, Natalie Wood, Sal Mineo, Nick Adams, Dennis Hopper—were dead. Through freak accidents, violence or suicide. Adams had been a friend for a while, until Elvis found out he was snitching for the Colonel. He found a cartoon show about a Spanish-accented burro with bio-implants fighting crime, and let it run. Pepe the Robomule kept saying "hee-haw," and declaring himself "a stobborn crusader for josteece."
The army had been easier than rock 'n' roll. He had seen action in Grenada, Nicaragua and Israel, and become a Colonel himself. He would have stayed with the service all his life, but in the late '70s he noticed that he was increasingly being asked to fight on the wrong side. Not just the losing side, as a rebel from way back he was used to that, but the wrong side. And he wondered whether his orders were coming from the President of the United States or some Japcorp boardroom. He still thought Nixon had been a hell of a good president—they had met when he received his Congressional Medal of Honour after the taking of Havana—but everyone since had been in the pocket of the corps. The army paid for his Zarathustra treatments, kept him in shape, kept him out of the craziness. But it couldn't be a shelter forever.
In 1987, coming out of the service, exchanging his uniform for civilian leathers, he had felt like Rip Van Winkle. So much had passed him by while he fought for his country.
America was a different place. Great stretches of it were desert, and there were predators out there. The corps were running the show, buying justice for themselves. And the gangcults—homicidal hoodlums—were quarrelling for whatever territory the corps were willing to deed to them. The people came last in the queue for everything.
Just about the only thing he could honourably do was become a Sanctioned Op. He knew he couldn't make much of a difference, but he wouldn't have been half the man his Pa had raised him to be if he didn't try. And so here he was, the sole owner and sole employee of the Hound Dog Agency, operating out of Memphis, Tennessee. His skills had found a use at last.
His phone rang. Too tired to stretch a hand out, he let the answerphone cut in.
After the message, a clear female voice sounded out.
"Colonel Presley, I know you're there. My name is Krokodil. Would you kindly pick up the phone and take this call. It is worth one million dollars."
The ceiling fan revolved lazily, not doing much good. Roger Duroc lay naked on the bed, looking at the hotel room through mosquito netting. The insects were hell in the city, swarming all over the place. No matter how many screens you put up, you couldn't keep them out. The Ancien Grenouille Hotel had balconies with elaborate ironwork railings, but it would be asking for thep death of a thousand bites to step out in one during the daytime.
According to a documentary he had seen on the teevee in some other anonymous hotel room, the world's insect population was exploding. Man might find things heavy-going, what with all the toxic wastes and poison leaks, but the hardy bugs were thriving. New species were being discovered every day. Out in the Great Central Desert, there were apparently foot-long ants, barely able to haul their exoskeletons along, and a plague of locusts was chewing up everything in its path somewhere down in Nicaragua. Daniel Ortega was accusing President North of bioengineering the strain as a weapon of war, and the US Government was issuing strenuously unconvincing denials. This was the age of bugwar. Even the gangcults had bioweapons in some cities: the Virus Vigilantes of Detroit had wiped out the Black Dragon Tong with a breed of killer-skeeters that did nothing but lay poison eggs in people wearing Black Dragon colours.
Beyond New Orleans, in the swamps, there was apparently a resurgence in the living fossil population. The trilobites were growing to the size of dinner-plates and nipping unwary waders, passing on nasty diseases. Duroc couldn't be sure, but he thought it all had to do with Nguyen Seth and the Dark Ones. Anything that could produce the Jibbenainosay would find a mere race of prehistoric lice easy to pull out of the black top hat. Despite his supposed position in a Christian Church, he hadn't cracked open a Bible since his spell in the seminary. But he knew that plagues of insects were one of the seals of the Apocalypse.
Across the room, her dark body indistinct in the gloom, the girl was fussing with the contents of the hospitality fridge.
He had brought Simone from her apartment. She passed the time, and was in no hurry to leave him alone. He discovered that she had been a high school student out in one of the Delta communities until the indenture men came by with papers and forced the town to hand over a goodly portion of its youngsters in lieu of taxes. Most of the girls had wound up in a vehicle components factory in Natchez, run by a GenTech boardroom. He still thought Nixon had been a hell of a good president—they had met when he received his Congressional Medal of Honour after the taking of Havana—but everyone since had been in the pocket of the corps. The army paid for his Zarathustra treatments, kept him in shape, kept him out of the craziness. But it couldn't be a shelter forever.
In 1987, coming out of the service, exchanging his uniform for civilian leathers, he had felt like Rip Van Winkle. So much had passed him by while he fought for his country.
America was a different place. Great stretches of it were desert, and there were predators out there. The corps were running the show, buying justice for themselves. And the gangcults—homicidal hoodlums—were quarrelling for whatever territory the corps were willing to deed to them. The people came last in the queue for everything.
Just about the only thing he could honourably do was become a Sanctioned Op. He knew he couldn't make much of a difference, but he wouldn't have been half the man his Pa had raised him to be if he didn't try. And so here he was, the sole owner and sole employee of the Hound Dog Agency, operating out of Memphis, Tennessee. His skills had found a use at last.
His phone rang. Too tired to stretch a hand out, he let the answerphone cut in.
After the message, a clear female voice sounded out.
"Colonel Presley, I know you're there. My name is Krokodil. Would you kindly pick up the phone and take this call. It is worth one million dollars."
The ceiling fan revolved lazily, not doing much good. Roger Duroc lay naked on the bed, looking at the hotel room through mosquito netting. The insects were hell in the city, swarming all over the place. No matter how many screens you put up, you couldn't keep them out. The Ancien Grenouille Hotel had balconies with elaborate ironwork railings, but it would be asking for the death of a thousand bites to step out on one during the daytime.
According to a documentary he had seen on the teevec in some other anonymous hotel room, the world's insect population was exploding. Man might find things heavy-going, what with all the toxic wastes and poison leaks, but the hardy bugs were thriving. New species were being discovered every day. Out in the Great Central Desert, there were apparently foot-long ants, barely able to haul their exoskeletons along, and a plague of locusts was chewing up everything in its path somewhere down in Nicaragua. Daniel Ortega was accusing President North of bioengineering the strain as a weapon of war, and the US Government was issuing strenuously unconvincing denials. This was the age of bugwar. Even the gangcults had bioweapons in some cities: the Virus Vigilantes of Detroit had wiped out the Black Dragon Tong with a breed of killer-skeeters that did nothing but lay poison eggs in people wearing Black Dragon colours.
Beyond New Orleans, in the swamps, there was apparently a resurgence in the living fossil population. The trilobites were growing to the size of dinner-plates and nipping unwary waders, passing on nasty diseases. Duroc couldn't be sure, but he thought it all had to do with Nguyen Seth and the Dark Ones. Anything that could produce the Jibbenainosay would find a there race of prehistoric lice easy to pull out of the black top hat. Despite his supposed position in a Christian Church, he hadn't cracked open a Bible since his spell in the seminary. But he knew that plagues of insects were one of the seals of the Apocalypse.
Across the room, her dark body indistinct in the gloom, the girl was fussing with the contents of the hospitality fridge.
He had brought Simone from her apartment. She passed the time, and was in no hurry to leave him alone. He discovered that she had been a high school student out in one of the Delta communities until the indenture men came by with papers and forced the town to hand over a goodly portion of its youngsters in lieu of taxes. Most of the girls had wound up in a vehicle components factory in Natchez, run by a GenTech subsidiary, but the overseer of the program had found her appealing and cut her out of the herd for his own. She had resisted him the first time, but once the bruises healed she found it easier to go along with the man.
She was a typical Delta breed—a little black, a little Cajun, a little Choctaw—but the overseer classed her as negro, and the indenture program was heavily biased against blacks. As Duroc understood it, the indenture laws had been pushed through the Mississippi, Tennessee and Florida legislatures by affiliates of the Ku Klux Klan. Washington wasn't happy, but didn't want to push the issue in case.the Southern States tried to secede again from the Union. This time, they might get away with it. Ollie North was not Abraham Lincoln.
It all seemed paltry to Duroc. If these people knew what was really going down in the world, all the hot air would be over with and they would have to do something. Perhaps that was why so many people refused to believe what was happening all around them. After all, if you tried to deal with the fact that the fundamental laws of physics were being repealed en masse, your head started to hurt and you needed a brewski, a burger and a snort to make the pain go away.
Simone brought him a tall green drink with lots of ice and fake fruit in it. She still had the traces of stripemarks on her back. He sipped his cocktail, and ran his fingers over her scars.
The overseer had passed her on to the GenTech East CEO at the plant. A traditionalist to the core, the Japanese executive went in for tea ceremonies, long baths and the pleasures of the whip. Then, a few private pornovideos later, she had been sublet to Mink Hat, the young man she had been with at Fat Pierre's. She believed he was still turning over a percentage to the corp. Duroc wondered how those earnings showed up on the company books. "Exploitation of Assets"? "Leasing of Lubrication Equipment"?
In Salt Lake, he had been given sundry goods to buy his way where money was no good. He had opened his magic suitcase and offered her a selection of drugs, but she politely declined. She drank only mineral water from the well-stocked fridge. She didn't even want to eat anything, although Duroc guessed she was on the point of starvation.
All she really wanted was to stay.
Duroc didn't care either way. Simone Scarlet was as good an accessory for his disguise as any. She expected so little, asked so little. He felt under no pressure from her. It was almost as if she were a blank onto which he could project whatever he wanted from a woman. Last year, there had been Sister Harrison in Salt Lake, but she had been caught in adultery with another man and publicly stoned. She was in a coma. Since then, Duroc had only known a succession of interchangeable bodies, interchangeable smiles, interchangeable cheerleader strips. Kandi, Randi, Mandi, Sandy, Cyndi, Mindi, Nikki, Vikki, Rikki, Buffy, Muffie. Simone Scarlet was perhaps the first American girl he'd had sex with whose first name didn't end with an "i" sound.
He wriggled into his black silk robe, and got out of the bed. Captain Machsler would be here soon. They had talked over the phone earlier, and arranged a time for the meeting.
He considered the sombre black Josephite outfit hanging in the closet, but opted for a lightweight tropical number.
Simone lay on her back under the nets, stretching out like a long, thin cat. She had been an honour student. Math, Chem and Geology. She had had a place waiting for her at Tallahatchie Tech when the indenture men came for her.
Duroc saw a cockroach, easily seven inches long, scuttling out from under the double bed. He bent over swiftly, and pinched the insect between thumb and forefinger. Simone ughed in revulsion and he held it up, its six legs wriggling in the air, mandibles working. The creature was fascinating, monstrous. It twisted round, trying to clamp some flesh in its mildy-venomed jaws. Duroc held it carefully, and smiled.
"Ladybug, ladybug," he cooed, "fly away home…"
He dropped it into his barely sipped drink, and prodded it down past the icecubes and the fruit chunks with the plastic stirrer. Then, he clamped a coaster over the top of the glass, and watched the insect drown. It took a long time. The new breed of cockroaches were hard to kill.
"Your house is on fire, your children are gone…"
Finally, the thing stopped kicking and floated dead in the drink.
Simone was watching him with a horrid fascination.
"Why do you do that?"
Duroc took off the coaster, and gulped down a swallow of bug-flavoured cocktail.
"Whenever you kill something, it makes you more alive."
The girl didn't question his answer.
There was a knock at the door. Simone made a pull for the quilt, drawing it up over her nakedness. Duroc signed to her to lie there still, and opened the door.
Machsler was out of uniform, but was unmistakably a soldier even in jeans and T-shirt. The shirt bore a familiar survivalist logo. "Kill 'Em All—Let God Sort 'Em Out." The officer held a battered briefcase, and wore a cowboy-style sidearm slung in a leather holster on his hip.
"Mr Duroc?"
"Elder Duroc."
Machsler shook his hand, and sidled into the room, looking over his shoulder. Duroc gently closed the door.
The soldier looked around, as if expecting a gang of Maniax to be lurking in the closet. He stared at Simone.
"Don't mind Mademoiselle Scarlet," Duroc said. "She's an old friend."
Machsler obviously wasn't sure about that, but decided he could live with it. He hadn't met the same person twice since Seth got him on the hook, so he must be used to nervous situations.
"Can I get you a drink? Some iced tea? Co-Cola?"
The soldier shook his head, and paced the room like a caged tiger. Duroc noticed he kept his hands above his waist. That way he would have a chance to get one up in front of his adam's apple if someone looped a cheesecutter over his head. The Special Forces trained its people thoroughly.
"You have the money?"
Duroc patted his top pocket.
"Good."
"You have the merchandise?"
Machsler held up the briefcase. It had a fancy lock attached to the old leather.
"Then we can do business?"
The soldier sat down, case in his lap. He was sweating, and scratching at the bites on his forearms. He was tattooed with the symbol and number of his unit, and his blood group and medical details.
"Are you from New Orleans?" he asked.
Duroc shrugged. "My accent, you mean? No. I am from Paris, France. But that was a long time ago. I am a citizen of Deseret, now."
Machsler was satisfied. The officer was the captain of the high school football team, ten or fifteen years on, fighting to keep his ball-player's body despite too many gassy beers, greasy chilli dogs and butt-flattening hours at a desk. All those "i" sound girls had been over him like a cheap suit when he was a kid, but those days were past. Maybe he had an expensive wife, who insisted on being called by her full "a" sound name. Not Cyndi but Cynthia, not Mindy but Miranda. Probably, he wanted to send his kids to a pricey PZ school with well-dressed killers as security guards, not to some public hellhole where the blackboard monitors forced fourteen-year-olds to turn tricks in the lunch hours, the canteen had a semi-official smacksynth dealer and the school clinic knew more about abortions than grazed knees. America still had dreams, but these days the pricetag was high. Too high for honest public servants.
"Look, it's not my business," began Machsler, "but what do you want with this stuff? It's fifteen-twenty years out of date. Very low priority."
"You are right. It is none of your business."
"Okay, okay." The soldier was regretting his involvement in this transaction. Duroc could see that it was problematic for the man.
Nguyen Seth had been cultivating Captain Ronald Machsler for three years now, pulling him towards the Faustian bargain all men must make. At first, it had been the usual army surplus scam. The Elder's agents had approached the Captain and offered him a good price for ammunition, slightly behind-the-state-of-the-art weaponry and bulk supplies of medicinal drugs. The Church of Joseph had its own supplies of those commodities, of course, but Captain Machsler had to get used to dealing with the Devil, had to get in deep enough not to kick when the. real bite came. They had tested him by asking for confidential documents. Troop dispositions along the Rio Grande.Wall, the codenames and cover identities of some military intelligence personnel in Managua, the routes of some nuclear waste convoys. It was stuff Seth had no interest in, but Duroc had cast an interested eye over the material, and disseminated it on the underground nets. A minor gangcult took out one of the convoys and, for thirty-eight hours, were in possession of enough weapons-grade plutonium to win them a seat at the United Nations. Turner-Harvest-Ramirez put them out of business, but the raid served to convince Captain Machsler that he was deep into Seth's pocket. Since then, they had been blinding him with silly requests, for almost random information. Having been forced to dredge up a lot of barely-classified documents about long-abandoned plans for military intervention in Central America and rejected designs for long-range missile transportation, Machsler was thoroughly confused. He must be putting his current commission down to the same quixotic interest in military ephemera, which was just what Seth wanted. There would be a few more blind requests over the next year, just to keep the soldier in the dark, but this was the important leak. Duroc was taking personal receipt of this briefcase.
He slipped the cashcard out of his pocket, and laid it on the coffee table. The hologram shimmered in the light. It was real gold. Machsler whistled unconsciously.
"A pay rise?"
"You do good work, Ronald. Elder Seth thinks you deserve it."
Machsler reached, and then froze. He put his hand back on the briefcase. He flushed. Underneath his bee-fuzz crewcut, his scalp glowed red.
Duroc raised his drink in a toast. The soldier goggled at the bug slowly revolving in the glass.
Machsler got up, and put the briefcase down by Duroc's chair. Then he took the cashplastic, slipped it into his back pocket and sat down.
Duroc tapped the access code into the lock, and opened the case. The file was brittle cardboard, full of yellowing papers. He cast an eye over the top few sheets. There were some wiring diagrams and, essentially, a page of deep-buried codewords.
"Are you sure you won't have that drink?"
"Positive."
There was an embarrassed moment. Obviously, Machsler wanted to leave, to get as far away from the hotel as possible, but felt he had to stay for form's sake.
Simone got out of bed and walked across the room to the fridge. Machsler's eyes followed her, but Duroc could not tell whether he was fixing on her body in general or the marks on her back in particular.
"You play rough, eh?" he said, with a weak smile.
Duroc was offended by the soldier's presumption. He sipped his drink. "Sometimes."
Machsler got up, and edged towards the door. "1 have a gondola waiting," he said. "I have to be back in base by nineteen hundred hours."
"Goodbye, Ronald."
"Goodbye, Elder. It's a pleasure doing business with you."
"Likewise."
Machsler closed the door behind him, and Simone poured herself another tumbler of mineral water. Her body was finely sheened with perspiration. She was displaying herself to him, as she had been taught. She was a good little indenture girl.
Duroc was more interested in the papers Machsler had brought him. He would have to supervise the reconnection. Fonvielle was too far gone to be much help in that department The Church had its experts on call, but Duroc would have to oversee the project.
"What are you reading?"
Simone was standing with her hip cocked, weight on one leg, a red-nailed hand idly scratching her flat lower belly. She was obviously posing, a private pornosnap for the customers.
"These are the instructions for a machine we've just bought. They tell me how to light the blue touch paper and retire…"
That was over the girl's head.
He had an idea. "Simone," he said, "have you ever been to Florida?"
"Izumi took me to Daytona Beach for a convention once. We stayed in the hotel most of the time. There was a kumite contest, one of those to-the-death pyramid games. Gen Tech were sponsoring a fighter they'd tricked out with bio-bits. The fighter won, but was too damaged to appear in the teevee ads. Izumi was furious."
She ran her finger along her thigh, outlining a barely visible scar.
"When Izumi was furious, he was a beast."
Regular as a digital watch, it started to rain outside. New Orleans was a monsoon zone. It was something to do with the Winter Corporation's chemical synthetics plant, Duroc had heard. From three till five every afternoon, thick sheets of scalding, corrosive rain fell on the city. Everyone had worked the indoor siesta into their lives. Duroc wondered if Machsler's gondolier was caught in the downpour.
"How much would it cost to buy your indenture contract from Mink Hat?"
Simone looked frightened. "I don't think he wants to sell. I'm new in the stable, and I bring in…"
Duroc finished his drink, stranding the dead cockroach in the melting icecubes. "He'll sell. The Church is persuasive, and rich."
"Do you want to…" she couldn't get the word out…"to buy me, m'sieu?"
Duroc nodded. "I'm moving to Florida for the next few months. I would be honoured if you would come with me?"
"Are we going to Daytona? Miami?"
"No. We're going to a little place you may not have heard of. It was quite famous once, before you were born. It's a little place called…"
"…Cape Canaveral?"
"It's in Northern Florida," said the smart, sharp-suited young woman.
"I know where it is," snapped the Op. "I just haven't heard the name for a long time. That's the place where the moon rockets used to take off, right?"
"Yes."
Elvis looked at Krokodil, and found her as inexpressive as a statue. She was young, pretty and dressed in a conservative skirt and jacket, dark grey with a fine pinstripe. Immaculately made-up, her only really distinctive feature was the eyepatch half-concealed by a wing of raven-black hair. She was attractive, but there was something hard, almost scary, about her. Elvis had known cyborgs in the services, and there was something of the biomechanical about Krokodil. Her handshake had been a bone-crusher, he wondered how much of her was real, how much from the lab? She spoke perfect English, like an amnesiac who has had to relearn everything as an adult, but there was an occasional NoGo twist to her vocabulary. Krokodil hadn't been born to the style she was sporting.
The man was easier to take. Dressed in dusty denims, with a weathered face and a black pigtail, he was a Navaho. He had introduced himself as Hawk-That-Settles. Elvis had had a Cherokee great-great-great grandmother. Morning Dove White. As a teenager, watching Western movies from a pickup in the Tupelo Drive-In, he had been torn between his loyalties to the cowboy heroes all the fellows tried to imitate in speech and manner and his yearning for the Indian's life. One of his few regrets about quitting the movies is that he never did get to play the half-Kiowa hero of Flaming Star, the only decent script that got past the Colonel to him. John Saxon had been okay in the picture, but Elvis knew he would have been better.
Hawk was the talker, but Krokodil put over the punchlines.
They were meeting in a diner in Whitehaven, a Southern suburb of Memphis. Elvis knew the place well, and often used it as an office for the Hound Dog Agency. Gracelands, the mansion he had owned in the music days, was five blocks down, owned by a CAF auxiliary, the Church of Jesus Christ, Caucasian.
Cape Canaveral?
"Isn't that under water?"
Hawk smiled. "Yep, but only a foot or so. They threw up them walls along the Indian River Coast when the Cape was still NASA's head office. They leak a little bit, but you can walk around with your head out of the water."
"What about the diseases? And the skeeters?"
"Not much we can do about them, is there?"
"Fair enough."
Cissy, the waitress, came by and refilled Elvis' and Hawk's recaff cups. Krokodil still hadn't touched hers. The Op wondered if she needed to take nourishment at all, or whether a few hours jacked into the mains would juice her up.
"You ready to order?" Cissy asked, simpering a little. Elvis reckoned she was a little sweet on him.
Elvis went for the jambalaya, Krokodil had the crawfish pie and Hawk picked the fillet gumbo. If you're in the South, you eat Southern.
When Cissy had wiggled her plump ass back to the kitchen, Elvis got back down to business.
"I'm still not quite straight on this, ma'am? What is this job? Courier, bodyguard, shotgun?"
Krokodil explained patiently. "The job is whatever the job is. Colonel Presley. I have to make a trip to the Cape, and we would like you to come along to deal with any hazardous eventualities that might arise."
"We're way out of our territory, Colonel," said Hawk. "I'm from Arizona, and Jessamyn…Krokodil, I mean…is from Denver, originally. We're more used to sand than swamp. You must be familiar with the terrain, and with its dangers?"
Elvis knew what Hawk meant. "Uh-huh. Hazardous eventualities is what we have a bellyfull of. The further you get into the swamps, the harder it is, mister. You know about the skeeters and the speedboat gangcults, I guess. But there are other things out there. Lice the size of dogs…"
"You mean the trilobites?"
"Yeah, living fossils. Nasty li'l things. They take a chew on your arm and you're out of the game for a few months. And who knows what other things are coming back to the bayous? It's a regular primordial ooze out there. GenTech and the other corps have been dumping their toxic goop into the swamps for years, and weird things have been breeding. The way I hear it, the big lice ain't the only living fossils you've got to worry about."
"We are familiar with the weird," said Krokodil in a way that struck the Op as being seriously chilly.
"Then you've got your hostile natives. Them Cajuns are strange. One quarter French, one quarter Injun—no offence, man—one quarter skunk and one quarter 'gator. Sometimes, they like you, and kill you straight off. Other times, you're not so lucky and they invite all their cousins over for a party. I've got a few friends. I do favours whenever I can. But friendships don't stretch very far away from the PZs. There are lots of paranoid little communities on islands. People have been trying to clear them out and make them change their ways ever since the pirate days when Andy Jackson tried to make 'em all dance 'possum up a gumtree' on the end of a rope. They don't like strangers. You and me, we're strangers."
Krokodil didn't seem impressed. Elvis felt he owed them the full scare story before he took the commission.
"So, if you're really going to make this trip, then you'd better have a damn good reason for it."
"I have a good reason," Krokodil said, offering no more.
"And I need to know what it is."
There was a pause.
"That's a problem," said the Indian.
"It's easily solved. I've got two ears, and I've heard a lot of unbelievable stories in my time."
Krokodil brushed her hair away from her eyepatch. "I'm trying to salvage some equipment left behind when the space program closed down."
"Valuable equipment," underlined Hawk.
"It would have to be. If my cut is a million dollars, then you must stand to clear…what…ten? Twenty? More?"
"I will not profit personally."
"Lady, that I don't believe."
"You can believe it or not, but it's the truth."
Looking into her clear, green eye, Elvis was sure that it was. Not the whole truth, but a goodly chunk of it.
"This sounds straightforward, then. Dangerous, but straightforward. You must have a few details you want to tell me. The gig has to have some complications. At least a million bucks' worth, if I'm any judge."
The food arrived. Hawk hungrily spooned his into his mouth. Krokodil left hers alone.
"The Cape is owned by the Josephite Church. They bought it from the government last year."
Elvis looked at the Indian. "The Salt Lake City crowd? What do they want with a stretch of real estate under a foot of stagnant water?"
Hawk shrugged. "Who knows? The Josephites are crazies."
The Indian had spoken just a hair too quickly, had been just a mite too dismissive.
"They seem to be doing all right by their Deseret. though. I hear that they've been raising crops where everybody says that can't be done."
"I do not underestimate the Josephites," said Krokodil. "They are dangerous. They are hostile to me."
"Great. If we get through the mutant 'gators, the voodoo butchers and the swamp-skimming psychos, the Black Hats will preach us to death, eh?"
"The Church of Joseph is not what it seems."
"There's a lot of that about."
Did he catch just the barest flicker of an incipient smile twitching at the corners of her mouth? Probably not.
"So, we'll have to go into the swamps loaded for bear?"
Krokodil nodded.
"My advice would be to go in loaded for King Kong and Godzilla," said Hawk. "But what would I know? I'm a Navaho. We haven't won a war since the US Cavalry shoved us on the reservation."
"I'm from the South, mister. We know all about losing wars to the Yankees."
The Indian smiled easily.
Krokodil said, "I'll leave the armaments up to you. You know the country, you get to pick the tools."
"I wouldn't have it any other way. Who recommended me to you?"
The Indian answered. "You have a reputation for public-spiritedness."
"So?"
"We guessed that if you spent most of your time robbing the rich to feed the poor, then you could probably do with the mil…"
Elvis laughed. "That's right, Mama, that surely, purely is right."
The Op signalled to Cissy for more recaff. It wasn't like coffee, but it was hot and wet.
"Look, I don't know how this proposition will go down with you guys, but wouldn't it be easier if you just told me what you want from the Cape and sent me in to get it? I'm not a professional snatchman, but it sounds to me like I'd have an easier time of it alone than with you along, ma'am."
Krokodil wasn't offended, but she was insistent. "1 can take care of myself, Colonel. I will come with you."
"Okay. It was just a suggestion."
Hawk was smiling. "Krokodil will surprise you. Colonel. She came through Santa de Nogueira without a scratch…"
"The monastery that got flattened by the hurricanes and God-alone-knows what else last year?"
"That's right."
Elvis took a swallow of the gritty brown drink. "What did happen there?"
Hawk's face froze slightly, and even Krokodil registered something. The pair had nasty memories.
"Colonel," said Krokodil, "believe me, you don't want to know about Santa de Nogueira."
Elvis believed her.
"Well?"
Elvis looked at the Indian, and at the dark woman.
"One million?"
"You can have cash in any gold standard currency, or GenTech corp scrip, or even negotiable gems."
"Good old US dollars is fine by me."
Cissy brought the check, which Hawk paid with a cashsliver. The waitress gave her smile to the Indian, and Elvis felt a flare of jealousy. He might have to watch his womenfolk with this young buck around.
"We will pay you in advance. Should you not survive the mission, then I'll turn the money over to any heirs you designate."
"I have no family," he said, feeling a little tug of hurt. Some things, you have to give up. On the road, with the music, in the army and as an Op, he'd had no chances…
"Then I suggest you think of a charity. Not that we expect to lose you. Colonel. It's just a formality."
"Yeah, I know. I've been through it before. Hell, bribe a politician to repeal the indenture acts. That's charity enough for me."
"Will do."
"Hawk, Ma'am, you have yourself an Op."
He stuck out his hand. The Indian shook it, but Krokodil sat still, betraying no emotion.
He got the impression this girl would be difficult to get to know.
This is ZeeBeeCee, the Station That's Got It All, bringing you What You Want twenty-four hours a day, sponsored by GenTech BioDiv, the caring cybersurgeons with the delicate touch. Next, for all you celibates out there, it's Jack Off With Jake, in which our firm-fingered resident expert guides you to health, happiness and a disease-free sexual release. Send in now for our FREE seventy-six page booklet, and make a down-payment on any of these gorgeous, practical and thoroughly safety-approved home-aids. But first, tune into reality with luscious Lola Stechkin, bringing you The Post-Siesta Bulletin from the comfort of her Japanese garden…
"Hi, America. It's May 8th, 1999, and this is Lola, inviting you onto the open-air waterbed. Here it is, folks, all the news you can handle…
"The big news today is that we have a name! The ZeeBeeCee Blotto Lotto, the one hundred million dollar giveaway that everybody has been talking about for six weeks is finally over, and a winner has been selected by RaLPPH, the Random Lotto Person-Picking Helper. The lucky, lucky winner, who will receive one hundred million dollars in a big suitcase, plus a lifetime of free medical health care from GenTech BioDiv, has been named by Blotto the Clown as…Gavin Mantle, a kitchen appliance salesman from Springfield PeeZee, Massachusetts. Gavin, who has a lovely wife named Clodagh and two adorable children, Tish and Reggie, told our Blotto Lotto giveaway crew that his sudden wealth wouldn't change him at all. Gavin Mantle, you are America, and we here at ZeeBeeCee love you for it. Happy spending!
"It's official! Sanctioned Ops can damage your health, and the health of the society you live in! The Senior Senator from California, Robert Redford, best known for his tireless relief work in the aftermath of last year's disastrous tidal wave, was today appointed as the head of the long-promised commission of inquiry into the workings of the Enderby Amendment. Passed on June 23rd, 1985, after an extensive campaign masterminded by then-Senator Terence J. Enderby, the law, under which private firms and individuals can register as law enforcement operatives, has been in operation for nearly fifteen years. Senator Enderby resigned his seat in 1994 when it was alleged by investigative television reporter Ed Murphy that he had sponsored the citizenship of a series of Filippino houseboys whose blood types matched his own, with the intention of using the children as a source of replacement organs. Although the establishment of the Redford Commission has been violently opposed by a number of influential political figures, including the formidably pro-Enderby Governor Jerry Musgrave of Colorado, it has finally been granted the seal of presidential approval by President North, who today was quoted as justifying the decision with 'well, there's no harm in taking a long, hard look at our public institutions. It's that kind of rigour that has made our country great.' Mitchell Beazley, head of the anti-Enderby pressure group stOP, delivered a brief statement to the media, commending Senator Redford for his impartiality and claiming 'the so-called Sanctioned Ops have had it their own way for too long. They're supposed to protect decent citizens from the gangcults, but in practical terms it seems to be hard to distinguish the one from the other.'
"In addition to its concern with the frequent instances of extreme violence employed by Ops in their daily missions, the Commission will probe the alleged tie-ups between the larger Op Agencies and the multinats. Public concern has been raised by incidents like the complete destruction in 1997 of the township of Dead Rat, Arizona, by freelance Ops in the pay of the Holderness-Manolo Agency of Los Angeles. Redd Harvest, of the Turner-Harvest-Ramirez Agency, told our midwest bureau, 'I'd like to see Pretty Boy Bobby try to take my person-to-person missile tube away from me.' Governor Musgrave delivered a fifty-eight minute speech in Boulder, referring to Sanctioned Ops as 'America's best and brightest, the true heirs of the Minutemen—you know, those guys who helped kick the Mexicans out of the Alamo—and our last hope for the survival of our way of life in these blighted days.' Privately, Musgrave is alleged to have referred to Redford as 'that lousy commie skag' and to have calculated the Senator's life expectancy if the Amendment is repealed as 'eight to ten minutes.' We'll bring you more on this story as it breaks…
"Dr Ottokar Proctor, alias the Tasmanian Devil, the award-winning economist and serial killer, was today returned to maximum security confinement in the Sunnydales asylum facility. It will be remembered that the former presidential advisor was found guilty on numerous counts of homicide several years ago, and also accused of deliberately making misleading and dangerous suggestions to the North administration in an attempt to ruin the economy of the United States. Although he resumed his murder spree shortly after his escape from Sunnydales over a year ago, little has been heard from him in recent months. He was found wandering vacantly in the desert a few miles away from the site of the still-unexplained meteorological anomaly at the monastery of Santa de Nogueira in Arizona, and has been unable or unwilling to talk about his activities since his last recorded murder, that of Sheriff Marcus Gronquist of Dos Cabezas, shortly after his escape. Dr Thomas Caligari, the newly-appointed director of Sunnydales, insists that the security arrangements at the facility have been considerably tightened up since Dr Proctor's escape, and since the riots late last year which took the lives of famous mass murderers Rex Tendenter, Hector Childress and Reynard Pershing Fraylman and several guards.
"The resurgence of the Maniax gangcult, who had been believed to be out of business after the United States Cavalry/Turner-Harvest-Ramirez Joint Action before the new year, continues. Their latest atrocity was the take-over of Welcome Springs, New Hampshire, a peaceful community which has been left in ruins. The Maniax apparently selected the township because it was the home of the Dexter Blumguard Crusade for Christian Capitalism, the successful fund-raising fundamentalist televangelist station. Dirk Mazzini and Blade Barrie, Maniak War Chieftains wanted on counts of multiple murder, evidently inspired by the successful terrorist humiliation of Reverend Bob and Dolly Jackson by still-unidentified pranksters, walked into the Dexter Blumguard show and asked the program's estimated three million viewers to phone in pledges, and suggestions about the ways in which the Reverend Blumguard and his special guest-stars—Sister Ermintrude the Juggling Nun, the Cartwright Family Singers, Holy Roily and His Heaven-Bound Hang-Gliders—should be murdered. The Maniax are believed to have raised thirty-eight million dollars during the massacre, which lasted two and a half days and ended only when a concerned parent in Jerusalem's Lot, Maine, found her teenage son pledging his allowance for six months on the condition that Mazzini make Uncle Buck Cartwright eat his own banjolele, and alerted the authorities. The Grand Exalted Bullmoose, the shadowy head of the gangcult, issued a press statement announcing all-out war on the non-affiliated citizens of the United States.
"In Paris, fighting has broken out again on the Left Bank, as a bewildering array of insurrectionist splinter groups took on the UEC forces of European President LePen. General Bruno Rottweiler, well-known as the Butcher of Deauville, has been placed in charge of the troops and declared a condition of martial law. Sady Charbonneau, the CanalEpico television personality, has put in a bid of nine million European Currency Units with Rottweiler and the leaders of the various rebel factions for the exclusive television rights to dramatizations of the riots. Rottweiler is believed to be holding out for script approval, while Biron le Rouge, this week's spokesman for the Violent Tendency, has asked for his fee to be paid in ScumStopper ammunition and high explosive. Those Montmartre madames, hoteliers and cafe-owners able to remain open during the hostilities report a 58% upswing in trade, partially due to the presence of highly-paid UEC troops, but also thanks to the yearly influx of Japanese tourists.
"Having wrought a veritable miracle with the reclamation of Salt Lake City from the desert sands, Elder Nguyen Seth of the Church of Joseph has announced that there will be a South-East Coast sister community on the site of the former rocketry base, Cape Canaveral. Work has been started on draining the area dry and reestablishing the tidal walls. Currently, the site, which was purchased last year from the United States for a nominal fee, is being used as a training camp for Josephite missionaries. Mark Mannix, our Florida correspondent, was sent to give us an on-the-spot report from the Cape, but appears to have been eaten by alligators. As soon as we find a replacement, we'll bring you the full story on the latest miracle. Asked what they intended to do with any leftover space technology that might be lying around the Cape since the US space program transferred its site of operations to Edwards Air Force Base, Seth replied 'let it rust. We have no need of rocketships and space shuttles to get us to Heaven.' Incidentally, President North will have to find a new Ambassador to the Josephite state of Deseret. Admiral Harriman Bosley, the current holder of the post, has just announced his conversion to the Josephite faith and renounced his worldly position to become Brother Bosley, a tenor in the world-famous Josephite Tabernacle Choir.
"As if to underline Senator Redford's concern over the unruliness of Sanctioned Operatives, fighting broke out today along the Kansas-Missouri border between agents in the employ of the little-known Logan's Runners of Kansas City and the Good Ole Boys, the powerful South-Western Area Agency. Judgement Q. Harbottle of the GOB alleges that Logan's Runners have been involved in the operation of the so-cailed 'underground railroad' which has been assisting runaway indentees across the state line into Kansas, where the indenture system is not on the statutes. Max Logan, senior partner in the Runners, countercharges that Harbottle is 'nothing but a slave-whopping cotton-picking chickenplucker.' Indenture remains a controversial issue. Those corps who take advantage of indentured labour maintain that the system is not a form of slavery, but 68% of you, according to a recent national poll, don't believe them. We at GenTech would like to stress that those indentees employed in our Tennessee and Mississippi plants have offered their labour entirely voluntarily and have a standard of living far higher than the average for their socio-economic group.
"Talks again broke down between representatives of Russian Premier Boris Yeltsin and Japanese Prime Minister Noburo Sidehara yesterday, with Sidehara refusing to withdraw support from GenTech East's program of undersea mining in the Sea of Okhotsk. During routine naval manoeuvers last week, the Russian navy depth-charged the GenTech submersible rig Toshiro Mifune, and accusations have been flying all over the Far East. Yeltsin refuses to discipline Admiral Yevgeny Tchernobog for his actions, claiming that the Toshiro Mifune was well off its charted course and could easily be mistaken for a seabed rock formation, and is also ignoring the requests of GenTech East CEO Kobayashi that the Soviet Union pay reparations to the corp for the loss of expensive equipment and personnel during the incident. Three members of the Blood Banner Society, the Japanese ultra-nationalist group, took over the Russian Tea Rooms in Osaka, a popular Sovrock nightspot, and held over forty Petya Tcherkassoff fans hostage for five hours. The desperate siege ended only when the Blood Banner group finished their anti-Russian speeches and committed ritual suicide.
"On a lighter note, Dino the Skateboarding Duck was back on the streets again today after his annual medical check-up and road test. The children's favourite will be competing again in the Indianapolis 500 motor race. "And now, back to the studio…"
"How the hell did you get into the building?" Elvis asked the small man with the big hat in his hand.
Robert E. Lee Chamberlain, Memphis Office Chief of the Good Ole Boys Agency, took a drag on his foot-long cigar.
"Just who d'you think your block committee buys their security from, Presley? The Hound Dog Agency?"
Chamberlain laughed, and coughed smoke into the air. He was leaning against Elvis' Cadillac, trying to look cool despite the sweat running into his white sideburns. Chamberlain was a desk Op if ever there was; all his battles were fought to thfc death in offices, with paperclips and computer terminals.
"That's Colonel Presley to you, Chamberlain. And get your dirty boot offa my clean car."
"Okay, okay. No need for us Southern boys to bite each other's heads clean off, is there?"
Chamberlain stepped away from the Cadillac and held up his hands in mock surrender.
"You should watch where you step, Chamberlain. You never know when a man has bought himself a pair of new shoes he don't want messed up. Like these. They're blue suede, you know."
Chamberlain bit off the wet end of his cigar and spat it out on the floor. Elvis had never liked the man. He had been the Enderby Registration officer for Tennessee before he transferred to the GOB, and had given Elvis a hard time granting the Hound Dog Agency its license. He'd always been in the pocket of Harbottle's Boys, and now it was official.
"We're from different Souths, Chamberlain."
"How do you mean?"
"Yours is all settin' on porches sippin' mint juleps and stringing up the coloured folks with ropes of magnolia blossom, and mine is all starvin' to death in sharecropper shacks goin' blind from bad moonshine and workin' eighteen hours a day just to stay even."
Chamberlain expressed disgust.
Elvis looked around for Nick. He wanted to make sure the car was in peak condition. He and Krokodil planned on hitting the trail tomorrow, and he didn't want to be stranded in the swamp with a burst tyre or a jammed minicannon.
Chamberlain grinned nervously. He was oily enough to get ahead in politics, but Harbottle and the Good Ole Boys could pour more dollars into his numbered bank accounts than the government.
"What the hell do you want anyway. Chamberlain?"
Chamberlain blew more smoke, and scattered ash on the tarmac. "Just a friendly li'l call, Colonel."
"You ain't no friend of mine."
"Aw, c'mon. Colonel. You know, what with this big ol' brouhaha up there in Washington D.C., all us Ops gotta stick together. We got us a whole set of interests to look after. Mutual interests, y'understand. There are damnyank politicians who just plain don't like law and order, y'know."
Elvis spat. "Yeah…well, the way some Agencies do business, I reckon I can understand how they feel."
Chamberlain stabbed the air with his cigar. Its tip glowed.
"You small-time guys really unsettle mah stomach, y'know? We got us a nice thing going here, and you just breeze in and dicker around with the situation like it don't matter whether you're eatin' 'taters or grits."
Elvis began to see what this was about. "Would you mind excusing me. Chamberlain? I've got some arrest documentation to file. I brought in a real scumjumper yesterday. Burtram Fassett. You ever hear of him?"
A deep red flush started at the GOB man's neck and filtered up over his face.
"You needn't bother doing the bytework, Colonel. Fassett hanged himself in jail last night.'"
"Ain't that a shame…"
"Yeah, you're the one to blame…"
"My tears will fall like rain."
The red reached Chamberlain's hairline, and crept into the roots of his dyed white locks.
"Burtram Fassett was a patriot of the New South, and you had no business turning him over to the damnyanks. No business at all."
Elvis was getting riled himself.
"Burtram Fassett was a psychopath, a dirtbag filth-hog, a disgrace to his state and should have been clapped in the pokey a long time ago."
Chamberlain snorted smoke.
"I wouldn't be right in guessing that there was maybe some little link-up between the Confederate Air Force and the Good Ole Boys, would I?"
Chamberlain didn't answer.
"Some of the hoodheads I tangled with out in the Delta were mighty well tooled-up for a bunch of fanatics. They had the kind of hardware only the Agencies are supposed to have access to."
"Presley…"
"Colonel Presley."
"Colonel, Field Marshal, Whatever-You-Like, you have to get with the big picture some time…"
"Are you gonna offer me a job with the GOB again?"
"The offer is always there. You're too smart to stay independent all your life, Colonel. Within the organization, there are plenty of slots for a smart cog like you. And soon, the New South will have a lot of use for gun-guys like you and me. Utah has gone secesh, and that sets a precedent. It's the War of Southron Independence all over again, y'know. Them fellers up there in Washington want to mess with our way of life."
Nick's assistant Gandy was working on a Studebaker across the workshop. He kept shooting Chamberlain dark looks. Elvis wondered if the mechanic had any kinfolk out in the boondocks who'd fallen prey to one of the CAF's indenture sweeps. He knew the black man was a worshipper at the hounfort down on Highway 51, and that the voodoo church had been turned over by hoodheads a couple of times. Gandy was hefting a heavy wrench, and looking at Chamberlain's long white hair, wondering about the eggshell skull under it.
"Maybe your way of life ain't so good, Chamberlain."
The GOB Op was really steaming now. His neck was bulging, straining his collar button and bootlace tie.
"Freak you. Colonel. Get with the programme, or get out of the business."
"If your programme means whipping and flogging and all that Southern-fried horsecrap, then you can take it all and shove it…"
"Why, you redneck white trash peckerwood. You're just a nigra wrapped up in a white skin."
"I've heard that said before."
The GOB had been getting fat off indenture for a few years, first hauling in the indentees, and then picking up fees from the corps for bringing back any absconding happy workers. None of the national Agencies—Turner-Harvest-Ramirez, Hammond Maninski, and the others—would touch the indenture system with a ten-foot electric cattle prod, and so the Good Ole Boys had a monopoly on slave-taking. Unofficially, GenTech had a fifty dollar bounty on the head of any able-bodied indentee brought back in a condition to work. And sometimes they weren't too scrupulous about examining the bytework, so, if the indentee you were after got clean over the state line or wound up crippled or dead, you could just pick someone with similar skin-colouring and slap the tagmarker on them. By the time anyone noticed the missing person, he'd have his own indentee status stuck on him and the New South had itself another gaily singing darkie in the sweatshops.
"Listen, guitar man. You've been scratching up some mighty important folks. This may just have been the last nice li'l talk you get. Mr Judgement Q. Harbottle himself asked me to be real persuasive. Y'know, him and Burtram Fassett went back a long way…"
"Yeah, I heard they were real close in kindergarten, loved dressing up for Hallowe'en in them white sheets and lynching all the other kids' kittens and puppy dogs while they burned those cute little wooden crosses on the porch…"
A couple of Gandy's buddies from the hounfort had shown up. There was often a knot of them hanging around Nick's workshop, doing odd jobs, swapping boasts about broads and cars, listening to Sovrock on the FM, shooting craps. Gandy was pointing at Chamberlain, and making ugly faces as he filled them in on the little man in the white linen suit. The Good Ole Boy hadn't noticed them yet.
"Go right on ahead and laugh. Colonel Presley, laugh all you like, and curl that thick nigra lip o' yours until it just plain sticks to your nose, why don't you. The South is changin', and you'd better change with it, or maybe you're like to find yourself out in some cotton field somewhere with all your nigra buddies singin' them ol' worksongs you used to wiggle your butt to…"
Gandy's half-brother Big Bill was walking over. Big Bill was not a small guy. Elvis had seen him single-handedly win a tug o'war with five members of the Union Avenue Bloods gangcult, and one of his party tricks when he had a few brews in him was to bite bullets in half with his eyeteeth.
"…or maybe you won't be in them cotton fields, guitar man, maybe you'll wind up under 'em. You think about that for a while, hey? And furthermore, I just reckon I might take it into my mind to drop in on that diner you're always hangin' around and give that fat old hash-slinger Cissy Smedley some o' that deep-dish lovin' she ain't been gettin' from you, you dried-up ol'…"
"Is this dude bothering you, Colonel?" Big Bill asked, his flipper-sized hand landing hard on Chamberlain's shoulder.
Elvis shrugged.
The Good Ole Boy looked up at Big Bill, and cowered. Big Bill smiled, showing off eighty-eight ivories. A diamond sparkled in one of his front teeth. Gandy and the boys had wandered over.
"Yo, Elvis," said the mechanic, stretching out his hand. The Op slapped it down, and raised his own palm to be punched.
"Yo, Gandy."
"How's ever' li'l thang?"
"Mighty fine."
Chamberlain was trembling now, and the angry flush was bleaching into a chickenbelly white.
Dollman Cleele, part-time priest of Santeria, pulled out a lump of hard wax, and started whittling away at it with a tiny switchblade. Big Bill angled Chamberlain's head from side to side so the Dollman could get a good likeness.
"Heard you saw some action down in the Delta a few days back," said Gandy.
"Some."
"My man, Elvis. Word is you done pretty good for the bros in the wetside."
Big Bill stuck his long tongue in Chamberlain's ear, and whispered something that turned the Good Ole Boy a yellowish shade of grey. Here was an Op who could get a whole rainbow on his face. The Dollman's fingers moved fast, and flakes of wax fell to the floor like dandruff.
"I tried to do my best, Gandy. I was paid. It's my job."
"You tellin' me you couldn't bring down ten-twenty times the kish workin' for the Man here than you can helpin' out the pore folks?"
The Dollman held up the tiny white head, and his friends admired it. He pulled a headless wooden human figure, its joints loose, out of his pocket, and stuck the head onto the spike sticking up from its neck. He showed the doll to Chamberlain.
"I just go my own way," Elvis said. "I don't like people owning any part of me."
Gandy produced a switchknife, and pressed a pearl stud. A six-inch blade, razor-edged, sprang out.
"I get the 'pression the Man here don't reckon much to the bros?"
Gandy touched the tip of Chamberlain's nose with his knifepoint
"You could say that."
"Hey, massah," Gandy said in a high-pitched voice, "kin Ah pluck yo cotton?"
Chamberlain's chin was shaking. His cigar slipped out of his mouth.
"I always wondered," began Big Bill, "why does a honky need two ears?"
The bros looked at each other, shrugging and saying, "Swiped if I know." Gandy nicked the lobe of Chamberlain's left ear.
"Hey, massah, yo bleedin'. Yo' bleedin' 'zactly the same colour as us tan-tinted types. Ain't that an amazin' fact. Under that lilywhite skin, you just a mess of red blood and brown shit and all them other colours."
Gandy's knife leaped forwards, and Chamberlain flinched, green slime leaking from his nose as he blubbered. Gandy's hand moved fast, and his knife was back in his overall pocket. Chamberlain wasn't hurt. He opened his eyes, and looked around.
Gandy held up a tuft of white hair, which he passed over to the Dollman. Elvis had seen this done before. The Dollman took the hairs and fixed them to the wax head, warming up the surface with a thumb-rub to make the material soft, and then pressing the hair in.
"Finished," he said.
Big Bill let Chamberlain go. The Good Ole Boy was sagging.
The Dollman gave Elvis the stick-figure. "Here's a present, Elvis."
"Thank you."
"The spirits be with you, my son."
The Dollman was twenty-three, and he called everyone "my son," even his grandfather. Elvis had heard he was the best conjure man in the city.
Elvis looked at the little Chamberlain, and at the original model.
The Good Ole Boy was straightening his tie and wiping his face off. Some of the starch was coming back.
"I hope you don't think all that hoodoo mumbo-jumbo scares me none?"
Elvis tossed the doll from hand to hand, almost letting it fall. Chamberlain cringed every time it flew into the air. Everybody had heard the story about the Japcorp exec who gave Dollman's sister Daisy Cleele a squeeze too many down at the cockfights and took mysteriously sick, all his facial features (and other features too) dropping off with a rot that none of the smart boys in the BioDiv had been able to diagnose. And there were people who suggested that Homely Harvey, Dollman's best friend, was only married to a fox like Bonnie the Boom-Boom because of a charm posset the conjure man had put together. Homely Harvey suffered from curvature of the spine, while Bonnie, a dancer at the Hi-Hat Club, benefited from curvature of everything else.
"That's a mighty pretty toy, Elvis," said Gandy. "What are you going to do with it?"
"I reckon I might hang it up in my car where I can see it when I'm driving."
Gandy smiled. "Hang it up?"
"Yeah. I can make a little noose of string, give the little feller a necktie. Then, it'll hang neat as you please, right?"
"It surely will."
"Bye, Elvis."
"Bye,bros."
Gandy and his gang drifted away, back to the Studebaker. Chamberlain looked dangerously at Elvis.
"It won't go easy with you, Presley. It ain't just me you've got to worry about. Harbottle isn't as understanding as me. And he's connected so high you'd need an oxygen mask to get into the office. You understand?"
Elvis nodded, and gave the wax head in his hand a squeeze.
Sweat stood out on Chamberlain's forehead.
"You look peaked, Robert E. Lee. Have you got a migraine coming on?"
Chamberlain rubbed his temples. Elvis didn't know if the voodoo was working, but something was certainly getting to the Good Ole Boy.
"Can I get you an aspirin?"
Chamberlain clamped his hat on his head and stumped out of the garage, leaving nine inches of cigar behind him.
Elvis stamped on it, grinding the tobacco tube into the asphalt.
"Old man, can you hear me?"
“…”
"Old Man?"
"Yes?"
"It's me.Krokodil."
"I know."
"Of course. I'll kill you, you know?"
"All must die."
"But you haven't. Not so far."
"No."
"How long has it been?"
"I know not."
"Hundreds of years? Thousands?"
"Longer."
"I feel very close to you, old man."
"You are part of me, just as I am part of you."
"Was it the shades?"
“…”
"Well?"
"Yes. It was the spectacles."
"I saw things through them. Things that weren't there."
"The lesser entities. Yes."
"Lesser than what?"
“…”
"You might as well tell me. I won't go away. Lesser than what?"
"The Dark Ones."
"Like the creature at Santa de Nogueira?"
"The Jibbenainosay. Yes, like that. There are many more like the Jibbenainosay."
"Where do they come from?"
"The Outer Darkness."
"That tells me a lot."
"You would not understand."
"Try me. We have all night to talk.."
"The Outer Darkness lies beyond the lip of the universe."
"Old man?"
"Yes?"
"The thing inside me, is it a Dark One?"
"No."
"Then what is it. What makes Jessamyn into Krokodil?"
"You are host to the Ancient Adversary, the Pawn of the Nullifiers."
"Why are you telling me all this? You know I'll kill you."
"It does me no harm. You cannot understand. It would take centuries to make you understand. Even the creature inside you cannot make you understand."
"Centuries? You've had centuries, haven't you? Do I have centuries? Will I live forever with this Ancient Thing in me?"
"You could, but you won't."
"Why not?"
"There are no more centuries, Krokodil. Not after this one. There are none left. The Dark Ones will descend. It will all come to an end."
"You're looking forward to that?"
“…”
"Well?"
"Yes…I look forward to the Nothing."
"I'll see what I can do for you."
"Believe me, Krokodil, I would thank you for it. But there are things that must be done, and I am here to do them. I am the Summoner."
"You're to blow the last trump? You don't seem like Gabriel to me."
"That is just a story, little girl. One of many. All the stories distort the truth, but contain a little of it."
"Why me?"
"It was just an accident. You took the spectacles. You became a channel to the Outer Darkness."
"Like you?"
"Yes, like me."
"And this thing, the Ancient Adversary, came into me because of that? Just because I took your shades?"
"Yes. That is so."
"But that's insane. I was just a panzergirl. A kid, for freak's sake. How could I know?"
"How could I know? I should have killed you in Spanish Fork."
"Why didn't you?"
“…”
"Well?"
"You knew, didn't you? When you left me alive with the seeds of this thing in my brain. You knew what I would turn into."
“…”
"Am I just another part of the story? Do I have a role to play in your big game?"
“…”
"I won't, you know. I won't be the thing you want me to be. I'll stop you."
"You will try."
"I will win. I'm not alone."
"Neither am I."
"I can scream inside your head forever, Nguyen Seth. I can shriek and shriek until you go mad."
"I am already mad by most standards."
"Big of you to admit it."
"You will never live to know what it is like, to carry the burden of memory as I do. I remember a hundred years ago as if it were the last minute. A thousand, two thousand, ten thousand years ago. I have it all with me. Forever."
"Is that why you want to end it all, then?"
"I do not want to Summon the Dark Ones. I must. I have no choice in the matter."
"I don't believe you."
"Do you not? You are here inside me—why do you not look around? You might learn something."
"I don't like the sound of that. I could end up wandering forever in this dark inside your skull, couldn't I? Would you like that?"
“…”
"I think you would. You're full of tricks."
"The singer will not help you."
"Singer? What singer?"
"Presley."
"The Op? He's not a singer."
"As you will have it."
"You can pick bits and pieces from my mind too, can't you? As I can with yours. You're remembering something from long ago. A boy singing, with a guitar. A contract. Was that Colonel Presley?"
“…”
"I wouldn't have thought it. He was no Petya Tcherkassoff, that's for sure. So you know the Op from a while back, eh? That's good. He should know something about what we'll be up against."
"It does not have to be like this, Jessamyn. I can get rid of the Krokodil-thing inside you. It's quite a simple matter, actually."
"If that big jellyfish of yours couldn't do it, I doubt if you'd get very far."
"You fought the Jibbenainosay. If you were to submit to a small ritual, you could be free. You could be Jessamyn Bonney again."
"You're offering me a deal?"
"A bargain."
"I don't like the sound of that. There are stories about people who make bargains with people like you."
"Just stories. Colonel Presley could have made a bargain with me. I have always taken an interest in music. His life would have been different."
"Better?"
"Different."
"I don't mink I really want to go back to being what I was. I'd have been dead in a few years more with the Psychopomps. I was just wasting my life."
"You don't have to be what you were. You can be what you would have been. You have many qualities. You could join me."
"And look forward to the Big Nothing? That doesn't sound like much of a prospect"
"For some, there will be an afterward. For a select few. You could be one of them."
"That still sounds creepy to me, Seth."
"Well, decide…"
"No."
"As you will."
"That's it? No more persuasion?"
"No. You have decided. I can tell. It is to be regretted, but I can do nothing."
"Yeah, sure. It's to the death, then?"
"If you will have it that way."
"Fine. I'll live with it."
"We shall meet in Deseret, Krokodil. On the last day of the world, we shall meet again."
"Goodnight, old man…"
"…Krokodil, good night."
Hiroshi Shiba, Assistant Director of the GenTech Florida compound, wrapped up his daily report to Dr Zarathustra, knowing that the high-flying medico would do no more than glance over the whole sheaf when he was next in Narcoossee for one of his quickie inspections. The "events" blank was easy to fill: the "A," "B" and "C" teams were fulfilling their experimental commitments as scheduled, and there had been no unexpected occurrences. The "comments" box was more difficult. Shiba chewed his lightpencil and tapped the screen, trailing ungrammatical bloops across the report form. There was nothing exactly he could put into official words, but duty tugged at him. He should say something about the strange atmosphere he had perceived recently. He had mentioned the oddly oppressive feelings he had been having to Visser, but the security man had just laughed, scratching his scrotum through his well-filled chinos, and said that summers in the swamp were always like this. That had sounded reasonable, but it still did not explain away all of Shiba's contradictory feelings about the progress the compound was making. It was as if an invisble miasma hung over the whole place like marsh gas, slowing people down, making them irritable, bubbling inside their brainpans.
Shiba was as bound to GenTech as the compound indentees who made the recaff, cleaned the test-tubes and donated their blood. Recruited at the age of eleven, after a four-hour examination assessed by the central computer, he had been taken from his family home in Akashi to the corp's college in Kyoto. The assessment programme had marked him down as an administrator of the future because of the way he had slotted together a selection of irregular shapes on his screen. He had further demonstrated an aptitude for biochemistry by designing some simple gene-splices in order to create a strain of water snail that breathed only half as much as its parent generation. The first night in the Kyoto dormitory, he had wet the bed, and Inoshira Kube, the thirteen-year-old trainee captain, had recommended him for electro-corrective treatment. By the time of his eighteenth birthday he had fully qualified to fill the slot GenTech East had prepared for him, and been initiated into the Blood Banner Society. The corp encouraged him to take an interest in Japan's traditions, and in the political expression of them. He had also been the beneficiary of seven years of intensive and expensive training, which put him in the corp's debt. He was legally bound to work for them at least until his fiftieth year. After that, he would be entided to seek employment elsewhere if he could find any organizations looking for a fifty-year-old junior trainee with his specialized skills. He fully expected to stay with GenTech until his retirement. He had advanced within the Blood Banner society, along with many of his generation of executives, and had received a substantial yen bonus the day after his satrap arranged for the incendiary-bombing of a Kyoto record store specializing in decadent Sovrock and worthless British pop music.
Shiba downloaded his report into the computer's memory. A print-out would be prepared for Zarathustra, but a copy would be logged at the GenTech US computer banks in Maryland, and eventually logged along with an entire world's worth of data by the mastemet in Seoul. Sometimes, the masternet would cross-reference trivial details filed by GenTech managers as far apart as Antarctica and the Isle of Skye, and come up with a conclusion that could mean billions of yen in profits. He slotted his lightpen back into its hole, and straightened his desk. A neat executive was an efficient executive, and an efficient executive advances steadily. He crossed his sparsely-furnished office and checked his snail tank. The overwhelming majority of his specimens hadn't breathed in over a month, and yet they were still active. Eventually, he would turn over his findings to the masternet and—who knows?—maybe a profitable application would be found. At eleven-o-eight, he left his office, and began his rounds, leaving the admin tower and crossing the compound to check on all three research blocks. His shirt was drenched through by the time he got to "A" block, and he had been badly bitten again by mosquitoes. He was artificially immune to any diseases they might be carrying, but the bites still irritated him like the acne he had left behind with adolescence.
He had been selected for an overseas post by a programme instituted by CEO Kobayashi himself, and had been given a complete gene-level overhaul at the company's expense before being sent to Florida. There had been a moving ceremony at the Kyoto office as he was sent on his way, his belongings in the presentation set of whalehide luggage handed ritually over to him by Inoshira Kube, now advanced to Kyoto bureau chief. At least a third of the smart-suited men and women at the tea ceremony had worn the discreet red ribbons in their lapels that marked them as fellow members of the Blood Banner Society. The Florida appointment was obviously intended to signal to everyone that Shiba was a rising star within the corp. The titular director of the project was Dr Zarathustra, but he was everywhere and nowhere, pursuing his own researches, almost never on site. In the Narcoossee Compound, Hiroshi Shiba was the top dog.
But he felt strangely isolated, almost as he had done those first few weeks away from Akashi. Despite his success with snails, a field he had pursued, he was essentially an organizer, and that set him aside from all three of the distinct groups he had noticed in Narcoossee. The highest and mightiest were the scientists, who felt themselves beloved of director Zarathustra, and made a game out of thwarting Shiba in every minor detail. They were the ones who never kept a correct log of their computer time, and who wasted the satellite link window exchanging chess moves and incomprehensible mathematical in-jokes with their counterparts in Japan, Korea and Europe. Then there were the security people, the Good Ole Boys. They came from one of the Op Agencies, thanks to a secret treaty of alliance made by the corp with someone with the improbable name of Judgement Q. Harbottle. In Japan, Shiba had imagined all American Sanctioned Ops were like Johnny Salvo, the cartoon hero who was always zooming down the roadways of the West taking on the toughest gangcults.
Captain Spermwhale Visser, the GOB Op in charge of security, was about as far from whip-thin, square-jawed Johnny Salvo as Ken Dodd was from Mozart. The third group were the most difficult for Shiba. The scientists were sneaky, the Good Ole Boys were surly, but the indentees were shuffling, smiling and servile. Whenever he saw an indentee sweeping up the corridor, swabbing a slide in the lab or restringing the etemally-ragged compound fence, Shiba had the feeling that the man or woman was planning to assassinate him as soon as his back was turned. God knows what was in the daily drug cocktail they all had to down—something to keep them going throughout an eighteen-hour shift, something to keep them placid, something of Dr Blaikley's just to see what it would do. Nobody could predict what a diet like that could do. Yes, the Good Ole Boys might have the guns, but the indentees were the ones to be worried about. And yet, these slaves-in-all-but-name were the group Shiba felt himself closest to.
Outside "A" Block, Reuben, the rough-skinned indentee whose job it was to keep the test subjects fed, smiled at Shiba and said "Howdy, Mr Assistant Director."
"Good morning, Reuben," Shiba said. His English vocabulary and syntax were perfect, but he had trouble with the consonants. Sometimes Visser or one of the scientists, usually Mary Louise Blaikley, would pretend not to understand him, but he knew they were simply being obstreperous. Reuben, like all the indentees, knew better than to try such monkey tricks.
"Hot enough fer you?"
Shiba had heard that question before. He could not understand it.
"Quite the opposite, Reuben. It is too hot for me. This atmosphere is not congenial to human comfort."
Reuben chuckled. "Ain't that the truth, doc?"
"I am not a doctor."
"Sorry. So many docs around a man gets confused."
"That is understandable."
A flight of birds flew low above the compound, squawking wildly. Shiba did not like such birds. They were inelegant and unclean.
"Somethin's sure spooked 'em. The Suitcase People are on the prowl again. We lost chickens from the pens last night."
Shiba was shocked. "What? Why was I not informed?"
"Captain Visser took a look at the damage, suh. It weren't my place to come to you."
Reuben scraped the back of his hand across his forehead. He sounded like two pieces of sandpaper being chafed together. He must have an allergic reaction to the environment. Shiba would order Blaikley to take a look at him. After all, what was the point of having an immunologist in the compound if she didn't take all the opportunities available to further her knowledge.
Visser appeared, with a couple of his gun- and prod-toting Good Olc Boys trotting behind him. His uniform shirt was missing two lower buttons, and a fold of hairy belly poked out above his belt. He hadn't shaved this morning, and Shiba judged that the dark patches under his arms were almost pure alcohol.
He jogged over, gut wobbling obscenely, and cuffed Reuben about the head.
"Don't you be botherin' the Assistant Director, boy," he snapped at the man, who was a good fifteen years older than him.
"These nigras," he said, "they ain't like you and me, Mr Shiba. They ain't like white folks."
Shiba was impatient. "Reuben informs me there was an incident last night. Why wasn't I told?"
Visser wasn't ashamed of his failure. "Nothing to tell. A couple of birds got themselves scragged is all. A 'gator will chew through the wire if its gets hungry enough. Or maybe a couple of our Cajun neighbours got a hankering for somethin' to put in their gumbo."
"I want a full report."
Visser tried to smile his way out of it with an "aw, c'mon, you don't want me to waste my downtime tapping keys when I could be doing some real good, like flushing out that still we all know the 'denties got out there in the wetside. You know what the corp brass are like. If we log it, it'll get inflated by everyone who scans the report and by the time it gets to head office it'll sound like the Beast from 20,000 Fathoms smashed the compound into the mud."
Shiba wasn't impressed. "Just get me a report, Captain Visser. I will deal with head office."
Visser spat a substantial glob of mucus at the ground, and shrugged. He turned away and left, his Good Ole Boys with him. The security staff wore light brown suits, Sterling shades and stetsons, and carried Colt pistols they privately referred to as "coonstoppers" in addition to electroprod truncheons with slick black leather handles. The scientists called them "goons," and the indentees called them "sir" to their faces. The Good Ole Boys called the indentees "nigras" and worse, and called the scientists "eggheads." The indentees tried to keep away from the scientists as much as possible. Everybody, Shiba was sure, called him "that Jap squirt." He missed the community atmosphere of the Kyoto Complex, where there were 20,000 GenTech executives living in their own self-contained community. He told himself that this posting was necessary to his advancement, but also to his spiritual growth. He had originally joined the Blood Banner Society because he had heard it would serve him well in his career, but now he was beginning to understand Lodge Master Kube's speeches about the dangers of succumbing to decadent, non-Japanese influences. From its television programmes, America seemed such a glamorous, exciting, seductive nation. Shiba needed these years in the swamp to reveal the deep corruption that lay beneath the sparkly surface.
The main gates opened, and Dr Blaikley walked in at the head of a crew of indentees. They had poles slung between them, and drugged alligators were hanging in nets from the poles, their pop-eyes glazed over, surplus teeth poking out from their snouts. Blaikley wore a safari hat, thigh-high wading boots and a multi-pouched waistcoat over a green lurex skinsuit. She saluted Shiba with a trace of mockery.
"We'll get that jolly bridge up ouever the Kwai in neau taime at h'all, commandant," she said with an exaggerated British accent.
"More test subjects?"
"We need 'em if we're to stay on schedule, Hiroshi. We're losing 'em faster than we can bag 'em."
Shiba was exasperated. "You know about last night's incident?"
"What, did I wake you up? I'm a screamer, you know, and that GOB Martens has a truncheon on him like a German sausage. He's a regular Rod Rambone. I was strapping him on all night. You know how it gets, I'm still raw and itchy."
In some obscure way, Shiba mought she was needling him. She was promiscuous, he knew, but Martens was barely intelligent enough to scrape through even the GOB's feeble IQ requirement. Dr Blaikley would never consider bedding him. She thought she could shock the Japanese by acting like a vulgar harlot. She didn't understand. She was not slim like Imiko, his GenTech-appointed geisha. She did not conduct herself in a seemly manner. And yet…
"No, I mean…"
"The break-in? Sure. Reuben told me."'
The indentees stood stock still, their burdens grumbling in their sleep.
"Why did you not bring the information to me? You know I make my report at eleven sharp. I was not able to include a record of the incident. It is a breach of good business practice. Even if we only lost chickens, we should be scrupulous in noting it down. As a scientist, you should know that."
Dr Blaikley took off her hat, and shook out her golden hair.
"Hold on there, Hiroshi. Don't jump on my bones for this. Visser's the security honcho. Break-ins and -outs are his bailiwick, not mine. Besides, you've got all your facts in a twist…"
Shiba tried hard not to stamp his feet. "Please explain."
Dr Blaikley turned to the indentees, and addressed them in the patois they had developed since their transportation to this area. Blaikley was the only non-indentee to have mastered this evolving language. They scuttled off to the animal pens.
"Well?"
"Hiroshi, please stop yanking my nipples, will you? I've been bitten badly enough. We didn't just lose chickens."
She slipped a hand into her waistcoat and, with deliberate provocation, massaged her breast. Her eyes went to the disappearing indentees and their reptiles. "Did those babies look like Foghorn Leghorn?"
"Alligators?"
"Yeah, 'gators. Luggage lizards. We needed two, so I went out and got 'em." She wet her glossed lips and pouted. "Just call me Trader Horny."
"Something broke in and freed the alligators?"
"No, not freed the beasts. Ate 'em."
Even in the swamp heat, Shiba felt a sudden chill.
Nick rolled up the streetshutter, and the big pink Cadillac eased out onto the road, its engine purring like a big, happy cat. Behind the wheel, which was padded with pink real-leather to match the seat covers, Elvis felt the thrill in his bones. Only three things gave him this sensation; starting up his car, slipping into a willing lover, or, long ago, hitting that first note as his vocal cut in over the guitar. It was a feeling he needed to convince himself he was still alive. Thanks to the incredible suspension, the automobile seemed to float like a hovercraft down the bumpy ramp and onto the hardtop. It was a bright, early summer day. Elvis turned on the air conditioning. It was not uncomfortable inside the car now, but it would be in an hour or two if he didn't take precautions.
He keyed off the engine and slipped out of the Cadillac. It sat at the kerb gracefully, longer than a powerboat, attracting wolf whistles from passing motorists. It was as beautiful now as it had ever been. Elvis wished his Mama could have got more pleasure out of the perfect machine. Nick emerged blinking into the light, and sighed as he ran his eyes over the car's perfect lines. Gandy stood next to him, a shoulder for the mechanic to cry on when he lamented his unrequited love for the Cadillac. Some cars are curved, like a beautiful ass, and make a man want to seduce them. Elvis could understand that, but didn't want to drive around in a Playboy centrefold. The Cadillac was long and gleaming and clean, but its beauty was manly, like a Greek discus thrower or a gloss-coated stallion. Under the hood, this automobile was packing a pair of testicles the size of basketballs, and he wanted passersby to hear them clacking as he ate up the highway. Have you heard the news, the machine shouted silently, there's good rockin' tonight.
The Cadillac was gassed up good for a thousand miles, and all the weapons systems were primed. The motto of Elvis' old army unit was "Hell on Wheels." He wasn't one of those car queers who gave their machines fancy names—anything that was called Lightning Streak, Road Warrior or Tiger Tornado usually wound up crumpled in a ditch while the anonymous, functional machines were still roaring along the tarmac—but if he had been, "Hell on Wheels" is what he would have chosen. This machine was like the man inside it: you didn't cross it if you wanted to stay healthy, and if it was on your side you didn't have to worry about covering your back.
"Where's yo lady, Elvis?" asked Gandy.
"The ma'am said she'd be 'long round about noontime."
Elvis wasn't sure how much he was looking forward to a few days in the seat next to Krokodil. She looked like an angel, sure, but…Well, Krokodil didn't sound like the sort of handle a nice girl would pick. And there were those panzergirl words that kept cropping up in her otherwise impeccable speech. He had run a check on her, but found nothing under the "Krokodil" alias. The Indian had called her something else—Jessamyn—and that beat some distant drums. There was something about the way Krokodil carried herself that reminded him of Redd, and Elvis had seen Ms Harvest take down five or more Maniax in a solo engagement. Still, for this trip, he'd rather have a combat cutie with him than a Sunday school teacher.
Gandy had one of those GenTech miniradios clipped to his sunglasses, and Elvis could hear the tinny sounds of Petya Tcherkassoff singing "A Cry for Help." The vocal tricks were his, straight off the "Blue Moon of Kentucky" he had done at Sun for Sam Phillips in 1954. "Fine, man!" Sam had shouted, loud enough to get on the master tape, "that's different. That's a pop song now, nearabouts."
"Shut that Sove crap off, Gandy," he snapped. He immediately regretted it. He didn't usually let the stuff get to him.
"Sure, Elvis," Gandy said. "Sorry, man. I wasn't thinking."
Gandy was a late '70s baby. His parents might have remembered who the old Op he hung out with had been, and he had never concealed the fact that he had been a musician before he went in the army. But Gandy's parents were long-term smacksynth mainliners the kid didn't like to be around, and he imagined that Elvis had been in some high school band like the Memphis Cossacks, the imitation Sove group Gandy and Big Bill had messed around with for a while. It was known that he wasn't enthusiastic about Russian musickies, but no one pressed him on it. Once, he had recommended that the kid track down some Carl Perkins if he wanted to listen to real music, but Gandy had never taken him up on it Gandy was more interested in securing a bootleg musichip of Tasha's "Concert for Uzbekhistan."
He found himself humming "Blue Moon of Kentucky" under his breath. Recently, the old songs had been coming back to him. Something would remind him of a line of lyric, or a piece of music would contain a string of similar notes, and he'd find himself half-way through "Heartbreak Hotel," "Jailhouse Rock" or "Blue Moon." He was getting old, he guessed.
An armourcab drew up across the street, and Krokodil got out, with Hawk-That-Settles in tow. She had forsaken her pinstripes for a loose white outfit a little like Elvis' karate robe. She was carrying a hip-holstered magnum, and a heavy shoulderbag. Her hair was tightly drawn back in a ponytail. Her eyepatch made her look like a zen pirate. Hawk smiled and waved, but Krokodil just carefully crossed the road. Gandy whistled as if a '55 Chevrolet with sharkfins and a chrome jukebox radiator had just cruised by.
"That is some woman," said Nick.
Elvis didn't say anything in reply, but shouted "Good morning ma'am" across the road.
"Hi, Colonel," said the Indian.
"Can I put this in the back?" Krokodil asked.
"I can open up the trunk. There's no one in it."
Krokodil explained. "We may need these things quickly. The back seat will do."
"You're the boss."
Gandy stepped forward, and opened the door for her, grinning. She slipped her bag, which was weighty, onto the seat. Elvis heard metal objects shifting inside the holdall. Krokodil came along with her own tools.
Krokodil left Gandy standing holding the door and walked over to Elvis.
"You're ready?"
"Sure. Do you want a recaff or anything before we set off?"
"No."
There was a pause.
"Fine by me. We might as well go, then…"
Krokodil opened the front passenger door and got in, fastening the seatbelt over her chest. She looked straight ahead, and waited. She didn't have anything to say to Hawk.
Elvis looked around, shook hands with Hawk and Nick and gave Gandy a high five.
He got into the car, and left them standing outside his apartment building. Nick waved a rag.
It was a long, straight highway for a while. In the rearview, Elvis saw Hawk get back into the armourcab. He wondered what the Indian would be doing while his…his what?…employer? mistress? owner? best friend?…while Krokodil was off to Cape Canaveral.
They came to the PZ wall, and the Memphis cops processed them through. They knew Elvis and his business, and didn't give him too much hassle. The cops in this town were okay. It was the Good Ole Boys you had to watch out for.
The Memphis NoGo wasn't too heavy. It was mainly just run-down. People came out of their shacks to watch the cars pass by, but they didn't often set traps or toss petrol bombs. Last year, Elvis had put together a watertight kickback and corruption case against Burke Crowther, a city councilman—a Good Ole Boys client, naturally—who had been trying to get a ruling through at state level declaring any unemployed NoGo dweller as fair game for the indenture gangs. Councilman Crowther had been removed from office, and since then Elvis could park his pink Cadillac unlocked outside the NoGo clubhouse of the Mighty Mean Mothergrabbas gangcult for a week and come back to find it unscavved, unscratched and fresh-polished.
Elvis waved to Mama Maybelline, Den Mother of the MMM chapter, as the Cadillac cruised past her open-air exercise class. Then, they were away from the city and out in the soggy scrublands that would eventually turn into fullblown swamp.
Krokodil sat like a dressmaker's dummy, not speaking. Elvis asked her if she wanted him to play some music on the system. He had some good stuff on pirate CDs. Howlin' Wolf. Johnny Bumette. Hank Williams. Gene Autry. Bobbie Gentry. She wasn't interested. Elvis was beginning to get the impression he was sitting next to a human-shaped refrigerator.
Then, she reacted as if she smelled something. Cyborgs were like that. They had esper senses you couldn't figure out.
She opened one of the dash compartments, and pulled out Dollman Cleele's likeness of Robert E. Lee Chamberlain.
"What's this?" she asked, her tone telling him that she knew all about Santeria.
"A present."
"Who is it?"
"Not a nice man."
"I can tell."
"One of Gandy's friends made the thing. A houngan. Do you believe in all that hoodoo?"
Krokodil was quiet for a moment, looking at the doll's face.
"Do you?" she asked.
Elvis felt an icy tingle. He had a feeling this salvage gig was going to be a lot less simple than it sounded.
"I don't know. I was born in the backwoods. I've spent time in the Caribbean, in Latin America. And I've been in and out of the swamps for ten years or more. I don't know if there's a Jesus H. Christ like my Mama said, or if there's a Damballah, a Baron Samedi, a 'gator that walks on two legs or a Sanity Clause. But I do know there are unnatural things in this world."
"You're right there."
The way she said it, flat and inexpressive, give him a frisson. Elvis was grateful that they were heading South-East, away from the Delta, away from Robert Johnson's crossroads. But the Blues That Walks Like a Man wasn't just a Mississippi myth, and the Devil was waiting at more than one crossroads.
Krokodil carefully put the doll back into the compartment, and shut it up. She put her hands in her lap and seemed to go to sleep with her eye open, like a machine with the power switched off.
Elvis took the main interstate to Grand June, just dipped into Mississippi to go South of the expanse of still deep water that had been Lake Florence and which filled the Tennessee River Valley. There were church steeples and shaky upper-storeys standing out of the Lake at Tuscumbia and Decatur, where whole towns had been abandoned to the rising water level. They took the high ground around Guntersville and cut South through Alabama, striking towards Birmingham and Montgomery. They made good time. After about three hundred miles of engine purr and air conditioner hum, Elvis cracked and reached into the music rack.
He jammed in a CD at random, and wished he hadn't.
The clear, young voice, given its twang by a curled lip and a flared nostril, filled the car. Krokodil turned to look at him, her neck working like the swivel arm of a security camera.
"Is that…?"
The song was "I Don't Care if the Sun Don't Shine." He had cut it in 1954. The session percussionist, Cunningham, had used an empty record box instead of a drum. Marion Keisker, Sam Phillips' secretary, had written an extra verse in the studio to fill out the song. All these things were creeping back to his mind now.
Krokodil's eye narrowed. Her question hung in the air.
"Yes ma'am," Elvis sighed. "That is."