The Monastery of Santa de Nogueira had been imported stone by stone from Portugal to the Gila Desert, Arizona, in 1819, and abandoned after the Mexican-American War. Parts of it were eight hundred years old, the basements were half-filled with fine sand and whatever lived there, lived alone. When the heart of America dried up and blew away, things didn't change much in the Gila Desert. But the sand was thinning: the bones of dead monks were drifting to the surface of the pit that had once been a graveyard, while the headstones sank slowly towards the bedrock.
This was the Holy-Place-From-Over-the-Great-Water. It was exactly as it had been drawn in the family for generations. Hawk-That-Settles knew it at once. He was struck by the way that the buffalo hide pictures from the last century, drawn by his great-great grandfathers, showed the monastery as it was now, in 1997. This was not only the place, this was the Time.
He had walked the length of the state, his waterskin slung over his shoulder, keeping away from the roads and the gangcults. The Navaho had long since learned that the best way to live was to stick to the land no white man would want to take from him. Taking his direction from the moon and the stars, he had kept on course. By day, under his sunshade, he had Dreamwalked ahead, learning where the sandrat nests were, divining which waterholes were safe.
Once, he had sensed a presence following him on the trail. A man on a horse. Perhaps a ghost, perhaps not. For two full days. Hawk and the horseman travelled the same course, just out of each other's sight, but then, one evening, the presence was gone. Hawk almost missed the stranger. They had been a match, an Indian and a cowboy. There had been no Darkness in the stranger, and Hawk recalled that one of the spirit warriors who would stand with the One-Eyed White Girl in the last battle was called the Man Who Rides Alone.
Otherwise, it was an uneventful trek. Hawk slept with his guards up, and was not much bothered by spirits. Of course, there was great agitation in the spirit world as the Last Days drew nearer. He half-expected to be set upon by demons—the God of the Razor, Tartu or Misquamacus—but his part in the developing story was ignored. Once, a wendigo, straying far from its Northern haunts, brushed by riding a freak wind, but it took no interest in the lone Indian.
Everywhere he went, he felt traces of the One-Eyed White Girl. She was fighting her battles elsewhere, hauling herself out of the rut of common humanity to the point when she would be ready to accept the training the medicine man of the line of Armijah was destined to give her.
He arrived at Santa de Nogueira three days before the spirit warrior. He passed the time Dreamwalking. He travelled, sensing the works of the Dark Ones everywhere. Wars raged, famines spread, diseases ran unchecked. Death enveloped the world, seeping from boardrooms to battlefields. Those who could commit suicide, directly or indirectly, were doing so; in this War, suicide was the only way to resist the call-up. Everyone alive was being influenced, Hawk knew. Everyone would have to take sides. He was very much afraid that the side he had chosen would be outnumbered forty to one by the minions of Darkness.
Then, at nightfall, she came out of the desert in a sleek automobile with bloody upholstery. He saw her dust devil from a long way away, and knew that she had been led here by her own dreams, by the pull of the moon. Her picture was titled the Moon and the Crocodile. She would be confused, but he would have to deal with that.
The machine slid to a halt inside the courtyard, and Hawk stepped out of the shadows. The car's door raised, and the One-Eyed White Girl emerged. Her hair was long and black as a raven's feather, untied so one wing partially covered her patch-covered missing eye. She wore loose black pyjamas, moccasins and a black brassiere. She wasn't tall, she wasn't obviously muscled, and she was young, a girl not a woman.
She didn't look like a great warrior, but Hawk sensed her strength immediately. He knew some of her past, and he would learn more. Her eyepatch apart, she bore no obvious scars, but she had fought many battles, vanquished many foes. He opened his mouth, and sang the song of the One-Eyed White Girl, the song his father had taught him.
Her hand went to the holstered gun slung on her thigh. She had polished black fingernails, a single touch of ornamentation.
He spread his empty hands to show her he meant no harm. His song continued, echoing through the monastery as once the chanting of the monks must have done. The devout were long gone, but the Sacred Purpose remained.
The girl's hand relaxed, and fell away from her weapon. The moon rose, and her pale face glowed.
This is ZeeBeeCee, The Station That's Got It All, bringing you What You Want twenty-four hours a day, sponsored by GenTech, the bioproducts division that really cares…
And now, as part of our public service program, we hand you over live to Lynne Cramer and Brunt Hardacre in our Beverly Hills Studios…
"Hello, America. It's June 16th, 1997, and it's Lynne again, welcoming you to SnitchWatch USA, the program in which you, the viewer at home, can help fight crime for cash money and prizes by interfacing with our datanet on your home peecee. Remember, GenTech is offering goods or the credit up to the value of ten million dollars for any and all information leading to the arrest of ever-so-desperate felons. Now, over to our Op from the Top, Brunt Hardacre…"
"Thank you, Lynne. Last week, you'll remember, we put a bounty out on the head of that scuzzbo, Jimmie Joe Jackson, South-Western Sector Venerated Warthog of the Maniax. Well, we've sorted through the heads that were sent in to the studio, and we're real pleased to report that Jackson's was indeed among them. He's positively been identified by EX. Wicking of the T-H-R agency and by Colonel Younger of the United States Cavalry, and those bio-implanted replacement lungs are winging their way to a viewer in Phoenix who has asked us, for reasons we fully understand, not to reveal his name. Thank you, public-spirited do-gooder, whoever you are, and good luck with your tar-free windsacks…"
"Say, Brunt, what do you think? Would someone with terminal cancer have a better life expectancy than someone who was publicly known to have ratted on the Maniax?"
"That's a good question, Lynne. Of course, we'll never know the answer because ZeeBeeCee absolutely guarantees the confidentiality of all our informants. Not one has ever fallen victim to a gangland-style hit after coming forward with solid information. Some other stations don't have such good security, you know, and their crime-fighting shows rack up pretty heavy casualties. But with ZeeBeeCee, you can snitch in safety…"
"Phew! Say, I sure feel safer now that Jimmie Joe Jackson is out of business, Brunt."
"There are a lot of people who feel like that, Lynne."
"I'm sure there are. Tell me, who's the scumbag for today?"
"Well Lynne, today we're giving equal time to the ladies and throwing the spotlight on one of America's Most Wanted Femme Criminals, Ms Jessamyn Amanda Bonney, sometimes known under the aliases of Jazzbeaux or Minnie Molotov. Guns and Killing magazine currently rate her as the sixth most dangerous solo outlaw in the Americas, and she is the highest-ranked woman on the list, coming in at thirty-seven places above the Antarctic esperado Ice Kold Katie. Formerly affiliated to the Psychopomps gangcult, her chapter was broken up in 1995 during a pitched battle with the Road Cavalry in Spanish Fork, Deseret. Jessamyn is now believed to be working alone."
"What kind of a girl gets to the Most Wanted list, Brunt?"
"Jessamyn was born in 1978 in the Denver NoGo, Lynne. She got off to a bad start on the streets as the child of Bruno Bonney, convicted pimp, pusher, armed robber and bilko artist. ZeeBeeCee has gained a court order allowing access to Jessamyn Bonney's juvenile records, stored in the central infonet of the Bruyce-Hoare Agency, and we can exclusively reveal for the first time on national television that evidence which has come to light since her 1992 parricide hearing has suggested that she was indeed guilty of the murder of her father, a crime for which she was acquitted in court on the testimony of one Andrew Jean, since deceased, a gangcult associate and known perjurer."
"Well, that's just a thrilling revelation. Brunt."
"You said it, kiddo. After knocking off her old man, Jessamyn rose through the ranks in the Psychopomps, and racked up quite a score. Then, after Spanish Fork, our information gets a bit shaky. We have uncovered evidence that suggests she was working in league with famed mass murderer Herman Katz in the Spanish Fork area…"
"That's the guy who stuffed his mother?"
"You got it, Lynne. Now, sources close to the receivers of the H-M Agency of Los Angeles suggest that it has been conclusively proved that she was involved in the massacre at Dead Rat, Arizona, last year, during which a peaceful force of process-servers were murdered by members of the Maniax gangcult, who then razed the community to the ground. It will be remembered that popular Los Angelino Op Bronson Manolo lost his life in that engagement."
"I remember it well. Bronson Manolo was a personal friend of mine. We were co-worshippers at the Surfside Pyramid."
"Tough break, Lynne. It is believed that Jessamyn underwent extensive bio-engineering under the scalpel of Dr Simon Threadneedle, the disgraced GenTech surgeon who was also among the dead in the Dead Rat Incident. Details are not yet available, but it is possible that Dr Threadneedle turned her into some sort of cyborg death machine."
"That's not good news for law-abiding citizens, is it?"
"Certainly not, Lynne."
"So, is Jessamyn Bonney in fact the Most Dangerous Woman in the World?"
"Well, we asked that question to Redd Harvest of the T-H-R agency as the Op was on her way to face a cadre of the Trap Door Spiders."
"And what did Ms Harvest say?"
"I can give you the exact quote. Her reply was 'not while I'm alive, she isn't.'"
"So, what's Jessamyn up to these days?"
"Little has been heard of her since Dead Rat, but she is believed to be in the South-Western United States. Her known associates are all deceased, although a sighting which has not been discounted would put her in the company earlier this year of Hawk-That-Settles, a Navaho, medicine man and dealer in controlled substances. Hawk-That-Settles left the Navaho Reservation last year and is classed by the US Cavalry as a 'renegade,' having been associated in the '80s with the militant Native American terrorist organization, The Sons of Geronimo."
"Scary people. Brunt. What does Jessamyn look like? Is she pretty?"
"You don't have anything to worry about, sweetheart."
"Flatterer."
"Well, Jessamyn's appearance has changed over the years, from her first arrests as a pre-teenager to this last photograph—please excuse the quality, it's a blow-up from a spysat picture taken from an orbital pass over Arizona last December—which shows her as we must assume she is now. She is identifiable by her missing left eye, and her green right eye. Her hair has usually been black, and worn long. She is, of course, dangerous, and should not be approached."
"And what's the damage, Brunt?"
"Rewards on her total over one million dollars, for offences that range from felony bank robbery to first degree murder. Bounties on her head have been filed by the United States Government, the Holderness-Manolo Agency, Turner-Harvest-Ramirez, GenTech, G-Mek, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Hammond Maninski, the Winter Corporation, Westinghouse, Co-Cola, the Tabernacle of Joseph, the National Enquirer, Interpol, the Government of the Republic of Mexico, Walt Disney Enterprises, the Denver Civic Improvements Committee, the Colorado Diocese of the Roman Catholic Church, and this station, ZeeBeeCee."
"And in addition to those rewards, Brunt, we know that anyone coming forward with information leading to the apprehension or termination of Jessamyn Bonney will be entitled to one hundred thousand dollars' worth of bio-improvements supervised by Dr Zarathustra himself, a duplex apartment in the PZ of your choice, a fully-guaranteed and pirate-protected Caribbean cruise, this complete household computer hook-up and two thousand hours net-time on the interface of your choice, one of our new range of Venus-Adonis model companions, and a further one hundred thousand dollars in the currency or negotiable bond of your choice. So, viewers at home, do not hesitate, if you have even the slightest piece of useful data, hook up that modem and call, in complete confidence, our unmonitored SnitchLine on the number that is flashing at the bottom of your screen…
"The lines will remain open for three days, until the next edition of SnitchWatch USA. Until we next meet over the airwaves, this has been Lynne Cramer…"
"…and Brunt Hardacre…"
"…saying Keep America Safe for Americans, and have a snazz day…"
This was where the moon had brought her. The moon, and Hawk-That-Settles. He had explained it to her, explained that there were great forces in the universe and that she was destined to serve them. She didn't yet know how she felt about that. Serving great forces was not what she had signed up for this trip, but somehow it felt right. The gang-girl she had been seemed as remote from her as the child she had been before that. Doc Threadneedle had warned her that the alterations he had made would affect her mind, so she could be confused without realizing it. But actually, she felt her thinking was clearer now. She had been at her worst between Spanish Fork and Dead Rat, when Elder Seth and the voices of the dead were arguing inside her head. Now, she had that under control. The monastery of. Santa de Nogueira was a peaceful place, and she was working through her life, straightening out the kinks in her psyche. Hawk did not look like a soce worker or a shrink, but he was getting to her in a way the juvie officials never used to.
They sat at the great wooden table, drinking a little water out of earthenware bowls, chewing cactus. She had given up meat. The taste was too strong, and brought the memories of martyred animals into her mind. She could live on water, and a little cactusflesh. She felt all the better for it. Doc Threadneedle had turned her into a human perpetual motion machine, like one of those dipping birds her father had bought her as a child. If she kept her beak wet, she could go on forever.
There were seven levels of spirituality, Hawk had told her, and she must ascend through them all before she was readied for her appointed task.
It was all new to her, but the Indian seemed to know what he was talking about, and so she had gone along with him.
The Navaho knew what the moon wanted of her. On their first night in the monastery, with a silver crescent faint in the sky, Hawk gave her a gnarled root, and told her to smear a little of the juice of it onto her tongue before sleep.
Frankenstein's Daughter though she was, she still dreamed. That night, she dreamed of the Great Crocodile in the Moon. Then, she dreamed she was the Great Crocodile in the Moon. Finally, she was herself and the crocodile at the same time. When she told Hawk of her dream, he told her she had reached the First Level.
She didn't feel any different.
By day, she exercised her body as Doc Threadneedle had advised. Hawk joined her, and, clad only in breechclouts, they ran through the sands, wrestled to a standstill—Hawk was wiry, but strong, and agile enough to compensate for her bio-improvements—and climbed the outer walls of Santa de Nogueira. She continued to surprise herself with the capabilities of her augmented flesh.
By night, they made love and shared their dreams. Doc Threadneedle had been right about the sex. At last, she realized what all the fuss was about. She could experience the pleasure of lovemaking with every nerve-ending in her body. Sometimes, she thought she disconcerted Hawk with her love, but he kept apace with her. She told him about the Elder, and of the eternity of memories he had poured unasked into her head. He taught her a position for sleeping that placed the forepart of her brain at the apex of a pyramid. Nguyen Seth's past faded, and became the memory of a memory. Without realizing it, she had reached the Second Level.
"Your body has advanced beyond the human, Jesse. Your spirit must catch up with it, or you will fail the moon."
Hawk was a Dreamwalker. That meant he could project his spirit as he slept, and wander the material world and even the spirit lands. She asked him to teach her the trick, but he said that she was not ready yet. She must keep spirit and flesh wedded. She was to be a Spirit Warrior. He showed her old pictures, drawn with pigments on hide, and she recognized scenes from her life. There she was, being battered into the roadway by Nguyen Seth, struggling with the reanimated corpse of Herman Katz's mother, wandering the desert on all fours, tossing Holm Rodriguez's severed hand into Manolo's DeLorean. All these had been drawn before she was born, and yet they were exact prophecies. The pictures of her life yet to come were as vivid, and yet she could see no meaning in them. The background of one was recognizably Santa de Nogueira, and she was locked in struggle with an ordinary-looking man about whom a dark cloud was gathering. Others were disturbingly abstract, and Hawk could give her no clue as to their exact meaning.
There were other Spirit Warriors, she was told. Even now, they were following their own destinies, being drawn towards some Last Battle in which they would stand against things Hawk called the Dark Spirits, whose front man on Earth she recognized as Elder Seth. If she survived, he said, she would eventually meet the others, but there were many possible destinies. Several of the pictures were ominously ambiguous. Jesse found it hard not to see in them versions of her death. In one, a woman with red hair and red hands—another Spirit Warrior, Hawk said—was throttling her, face turned into a mask of hate. In another, she was a small speck overwhelmed by a vast and writhing darkness that reminded her of nothing so much as pictures she had seen on the cover of Tcherkassoff's album Black Holes, and Other Singularities.
Sometimes, Hawk was like the masters she had seen in Chinese martial arts movies, talking in parables, and drawing out his pupil's skills through subterfuge. But, at other moments, he was as lost as she was, another slave to the whims of the moon. This frightened her. She needed no doubts. She learned about Hawk's life as he learned of hers, and they became close. She had never had time to think about love before, had thought that Bruno had burned that out of her. Now, she wasn't sure whether she truly loved the Navaho, or whether he simply happened to be the only human being she had contact with. Love used to be just something she heard about in sove songs or followed in picstrips. The songs came back to her now, and she thought of all the things she hadn't had: a junior prom, dates, valentines, flowers. All the things that Tuesday Weld and Debbie Reynolds had in the movies, she had missed. When Tuesday and Debbie were arguing with their Moms whether they should wear a strapless dress to the dance, she had been carving up gang-girls in warehouse arenas, then picking out some cock-for-the-night from the stud line. She was eighteen now, and it was too late to be a teenager.
She became pregnant, but lost the baby in the fourth month. At first, she hadn't wanted it, but the miscarriage devastated her. Somehow, she knew it had been her one chance to reproduce, and that it had passed. There were other things she had to do in her life, things forces beyond the reach of her mind deemed important. That night, for the first time, she cried uncontrollably. Her tears seeped through the cotton mattress of her cot and fell, onto the European stones. Hawk was gentle, and she sensed his feeling of loss was even greater than hers.
Red-eyed and hollow inside, she was appalled when he told her she had reached the Third Level. "You have found your heart, Jesse. You will bear no more children, but you can now travel into the spirit world in safety, anchored by your heart in the world of men. Now, you can be a Dreamwalker."
Her tears had been the pathway. The Doc had told her something of the sort as he died. But, once the flood was dried, she could cry no more.
A month passed. The moon swelled, filling out as her belly ceased to, and then dwindled again. She spent a lot of time thinking about her father. She was sure he had told her the story of the Moon and the Crocodile when she was a child, but she couldn't remember it. At the time, she had thought he had made it up himself. Now, she wondered whether the moon crept into his mind too, driving him to pick up his rod and mark her back. Those woundings had been steps on the path that brought her to Santa de Nogueira, she realized. Everything in her life—all the pain, blood and death—had been pushing her onwards and into the desert.
When the time came, Hawk mixed up the blood of her menses with peyote, plain brown sugar, mescal, ground-to-flour stonechips from the oldest walls of Santa de Nogueira, water, his own seed, whisky, buffalo grease and an ampoule of smacksynth. He told her to shut her eyes, and smeared the paste over her face, leaving breathing holes over her nostrils. It hardened to a mask, and she lay under it for three days, wandering inside her body. She appreciated Doc Threadneedle's handiwork, but also she learned to love what had been done for her before the biowizard came along. He had just provided some polish for a machine that was already a miracle of design.
When the mask came off, she knew she had reached the Fourth Level.
Hawk built a fire in the courtyard, and kept it burning for a week, producing dried wood from God knows where. Jesse sat and stared into the flames, seeing faces in the patterns.
There was Seth, and Doc Threadneedle, and Hawk-That-Settles and her father. There was Mrs Katz, impossibly animated, chopping at her mind. And others she didn't recognize: a young woman from over the sea, sometimes dressed in a nun's habit, sometimes holding a clear-handled gun; a foreign man, dark-complexioned and dangerous, his hands red with blood; a beautiful young-old man with generous lips, picking up a guitar and smiling; and a man in a tropical suit, with a deathshead skull behind his smile. But, most of all, there was the crocodile, full moons in its eyes…
The faces twisted, and scenes were played out. Some, she recognized: the NoGo walk-up she had shared with her Dad, Spanish Fork, the Katz Motel, Dead Rat. Others were obscure, yet-to-come images that meant nothing to her. A gathering darkness over a white plain. Graves opening to spew the dead. An ocean as smooth as glass closing over things vast, alive and hateful.
When the fires burned down, Jesse was afraid. She had reached the Fifth Level, and she could no longer go back. She could not turn from the destiny that had been alotted to her.
She looked and looked at the place where the fire had been, searching for the future, but could only see ashes.
To get him from his "confinement space" to the conference room involved leading him down Monsters' Row. This was where the United States of America put the Worst of the Worst. Hector Childress, the Albuquerque Chainsaw Killer, considered so dangerous that he was welded into his cell; Spike Mizzi, the New Hampshire Ghoul; Rex Tendenter, the smiling Bachelor Boy who had butchered and cannibalized around 50 middle-aged women, and still received three sacksful of fan mail every week; Nicky Staig, the author of the Cincinnati Flamethrower Holocaust; Michael Myers, the Haddonfield Horror; "Alligator" McClean, the Strangler of the Swamp; LeRoy Brosnan, the Sigma Chi Slumber Party Slasher; Jason Voorhees, the Camp Crystal Lake Cheerleader-Chopper; Colonel Reynard Pershing Fraylman, the Express executioner; "Jane Doe," the grandmotherly Columbus poisoner whose boarding house rated four stars in the Guide Michelin, despite the high turn-over of clients headed for the graveyard; Herman Katz, the Arizona schizoid who stuffed his mother and stabbed women who caught his eye; "Laughing Louis" Etchison, who carved bad jokes into the flesh of blue-eyed blondes.
And somewhere in the facility, thanks to the Donovan Treatment, scientists could poke at the disembodied brains of the Great Names of the Past: Gacy, Bundy, DaSalvo, Gein, Berkowitz, Sutcliffe, Starkweather, Scorpio, Krueger. This was where they kept Dillinger's dong, too.
If there were ever a Serial Killers' Hall of Fame, it would have to be in the Sunnydales Rest Home for the Incurably Antisocial. The monsters had a name for the Home, Uncle Charlie's Summer Camp. It was officially classifed as a private research institute, and Dr Proctor knew from his government contacts that the care and upkeep of the monsters did not come from the public purse but from a corporate subsidiary with interests in mental abnormalities. It sounded high-toned in the reports, with the odd announcement that there might be a cure for homicidal mania, but Sunnydales added up to a zoo-cum-freakshow for rich scientists.
Sergeant Gilhooly's bulls had held him against the wall with the threat of cattle-prods as Officers Kerr and Bean shackled his hands, feet, knees, elbows and neck. He had about 200 pounds of chain over his dress whites. He gave them no trouble. He didn't need to. He enjoyed this monthly ritual.
Sometimes, to amuse himself, Dr Proctor would break the chains. To look at him, people could never see the Devil inside. His strength was in his brain, he knew, but he had not neglected the cultivation of his body. He needed an instrument to carry through his schemes. As they clapped the manacles around his thick wrists, he remembered the sharp snaps of the spines he had broken. It was a good, clean method. In Tulsa, he had taken out the linebackers of the local pro ball team, one after another. All it took was a little dexterity, a little pressure, and a lot of muscle. He smiled at Gilhooly, imagining how little it would take to break him.
As he was led down Monsters' Row, the chanting began. It was McClean who began it.
"Otto-kar! Otto-kar!''
Then Staig, Brosnan and Mizzi joined in.
"Otto-kar! Otto-kar! Otto-kar!"
He smiled, and did his best to take a bow.
"Otto-kar! Otto-kar!"
They were all at it, Voorhees in his sub-mongoloid gargle, the silent Myers with a nod of his usually immobile head.
"Otto-kar! Otto-kar! Otto-kar! Otto-kar! Otto-kar! Otto-kar.'"
A man should be king of something, Dr Ottokar Proctor thought, even if it was only King of the Monsters.
Etchison rattled a plastic cup against the bars.
"Otto-kar! Otto-kar!"
The serial murderers punched the air. Kerr, the officer in charge of the block, snapped out an order. Guards hurried up and down the row, administering reprimands, waving cattle prods. That just encouraged them.
"Enjoying this, aren't you. Otto?" said Gilhooly. "Makes you feel like Colonel of the Nuts?"
"I don't like to be called Otto, Sergeant. My name is Ottokar."
"Otto-kar! Otto-kar! Otto-kar!"
"Shaddup, yah goddamn freakin' looneys," yelled Officer Kerr. "No privileges, no visits, no lawyers, no nothin'!"
In his cell, Herman Katz refrained from harming a fly.
He nodded to Dr Proctor as the nice man was led past. He didn't join in the chanting, but he approved.
"Otto-kar! Otto-kar! Otto-kar!"
Childress rumbled like a chainsaw as Dr Proctor was led past his cell. They didn't call them "confinement spaces" on Monsters' Row.
"If you ask me. Otto, this is where you ought to be, not in that luxury room out back. You should be with all the rest of the whackos."
"I told you, Sergeant. My name is not Otto."
"Otto-kar! Otto-kar! Otto-kar!"
Gilhooly muttered to himself, something about finding another route from Dr Proctor's quarters to the conference room.
Voorhees shook his bars, and the whole row vibrated. He strained against the hardcrete-rooted durium, and plaster fell from the ceiling. He had taken his machete to over a hundred teenagers before they caught him.
"Good morning, Jason," Dr Proctor said, "how's your sciatica?"
Voorhees roared, and Gilhooly flinched, his hand twitching towards his gun.
"I don't think shooting him would do any good, Sergeant. They tried that back in '82. They also tried drowning, stabbing, burning and electrocution. Nothing doing. It's a tribute to the endurance of the human spirit, don't you think?"
They were nearly at the end of the row.
"Miss Doe, how are you?" Dr Proctor was courteous to the poisoner.
"Very well thank you, Ottokar. When are you going to come over and try some of my home-baked apple pie? You're looking thin, you know. I'm sure you're not eating properly."
"Maybe next week, ma'am. I'm a little tied up at the moment." Apologetically, he lifted his manacled hands. "Thank you for the cinnamon cookies. They were delicious."
Incredulously, Gilhooly asked, "You ate them cookies? After what she did?"
"She's no threat to me. Sergeant."
The cell nearest the door was Tendenter's.
"Rex, good to see you…"
Tendenter flashed his million-dollar smile. "Hey, doctor, how are you doing?"
"Can't complain."
"I've nearly finished that book you lent me. I'd like to talk to you about the Greater Rhodesian economy sometime. I've had some thoughts about it I'd like to share with you."
"That's a fascinating field, Rex. I'd like very much to confer with you, but my President calls…"
"That's okay, doctor, I understand."
"Otto-kar! Otto-kar! Otto-kar! Otto-kar! Otto-kar!"
"That's it," screamed Officer Kerr. "Lockdown in the booby hatch! No exercise periods! No teevee! No porno!"
"Otto-kar! Otto-kar! Otto-kar! Otto-kar! Otto-kar!"
The door guard opened up, and Dr Proctor was bundled through. He tried to wave goodbye to his peers, but the chain between his knees and his wrists was too short.
The door slammed shut, and the soundproofing cut out the chants. The hospital corridor was almost unnaturally quiet after Monsters' Row.
"Ahh," said Dr Proctor, "my public."
"Come on, Otto," said Gilhooly, dragging him.
"I believe you are being deliberately obtuse. Sergeant."
Gilhooly didn't reply. Dr Proctor did his best to keep up with the sergeant, rattling his chains as he jogged down the corridor on his leash, like a good dog. Bean kept up the rear, riot gun cradled like a baby in his beefy arms.
Dr Ottokar Proctor liked dogs, cartoons, Italian opera, Carl Jung, French food, Disneyworld, The New York Times Review of Books, pre-Columbian art, good wine, walks in the park on Sundays, horse-racing, Percy Bysshe Shelley, the romantic novels of Margaret Thatcher, and killing people.
They were waiting for him in the conference room. F. X. Wicking of the T-H-R Agency, Julian Russell from the Treasury, and a dark-faced man he didn't recognize.
"Good morning, gentlemen," he said.
"Dr Proctor," said Russell, "can we get you anything?"
Dr Proctor chinked as he shrugged. "My freedom would be nice."
Wicking sighed and dropped his papers. This was going to be just like all the other meetings, he was thinking. He was wrong.
Dr Proctor sank into the specially-adapted, floor-rooted chair, and Bean padlocked his chains to the spine.
A secretary came in with coffee. She did her best not to look at Dr Proctor. He was reminded of the girl in the Coupe de Ville between Coronado Beach and Chula Vista three years ago. The one who had lasted for two nights and a day. She put cups in front of the delegates, and handed Gilhooly a child's dribble-proof plastic container. The sergeant propped it on Dr Proctor's shoulder-shackles, and angled the nipple so he could suck it, snarling as he did so.
"Thank you, sergeant." He took a mouthful. "Ahh, real coffee. Nicaraguan?"
Nobody answered. Russell spooned three loads of sugar into his cup.
"Watch your blood sugar levels, Julian," cautioned Dr Proctor. "You could be cruising into heart-attack country."
Wicking pulled out his filofax, and switched it on. It hummed as the miniscreen lit up. The Op would be in contact with his home base throughout this consultation.
"How is Ms Harvest?" Dr Proctor asked. "Well, I hope." Wicking snorted. "I do wish she wouldn't take so many unnecessary risks out in the field. I've been following her stats, Francis. The odds get shorter every time she takes a solo action. She should never have come for me alone, you know."
"She got you, didn't she?" Wicking wasn't giving anything away.
"Yes, of course, but she had an unfair advantage."
"And what's that, Ottokar?"
Dr Proctor smiled sweetly. "Let me put it this way, what's the difference between Redd Harvest and, say, Jessamyn Bonney?"
The dark man reacted to the dropped name, as Dr Proctor had known he would. "Bonney? The psycho-killer?" said Wicking. "I've no idea."
"A badge, Francis. A badge."
Wicking didn't laugh. Dr Proctor drank some more coffee. Russell snapped a digestive biscuit in half, and dipped it in his cup.
"I suppose a cookie is out of the question? Ah well, we live with disappointments."
Dr Proctor gave some thought to the dark man, and smiled. He realized that this was the meeting he had been waiting for ever since the trial.
"Tell me, how are they running at Santa Anita?"
Nobody knew.
"Well, we ought perhaps to get down to business then."
Russell brought out a sheaf of papers. The dark man sat calmly, examining Dr Proctor. He was taking the man's measure at the same time. This meeting would be between the two of them. Wicking and Russell were just stooges along for the ride.
"This is Roger Duroc, Ottokar," said Russell. "He's not with the government."
"How do you do, Mr Duroc." Dr Proctor knew the Frenchman by reputation. "Pardon me," he corrected himself, "Monsieur Duroc."
Duroc nodded. "Very well thank you, Dr Proctor."
"Good. And how are you going to get me out of this place?"
There was a pause…
Hawk-That-Settles had been waiting for the One-Eyed White Girl all his life. And here she was.
Looking across the abandoned chapel at Jesse, he wondered yet again. Was this really the one? She was jumping up her ladder two steps at a time, like a good little mystic, but there was still a core of confusion to her. This messiah was spending too much time in the desert. The years for wandering and contemplation were up, and it was time for the miracles.
Also, far from Two-Dogs-Dying, he had doubts about himself. Perhaps he was fated to be just another Whisky Navaho, and all this medicine was dangerous tampering with forces beyond him.
She sat quietly, her one eye closed. He knew she saw him through the machine behind her patch. Her supple body was shot through with machinery. He could feel the lumps under her skin and muscle as they made love, and had to remind himself these were not cancers or tumours but the benefits of the white man's science. She could sit for whole periods, days sometimes, not moving, not speaking. Part of that was the meditation necessary for her education. But part of it was something else, something that she called her Frankenstein's Daughter trances.
Sometimes, as she clung to him in the nights, he was reminded of the other white girls, the rich liberals who had come to the Reservations and dressed up like Pocahontas, who had been passed from buck to buck, who had been the stuff of jokes at the councils of the Sons of Geronimo. They were all looking for something from the red man, something Hawk knew he didn't have. There was a crocodile egg inside Jesse, growing as their dead baby had grown, but the shell was still just a white girl. A one-eyed white girl.
Of course, most white girls could not break a wrestler's back or crush stone to dust with their naked hands. But strength of the body was not enough for Jesse, she would need all the strength of her spirit if she were who she seemed to be.
She was getting stronger inside. Sometimes, Hawk was frightened by her strength. He knew something of her past, knew she had been swept away by a stream of blood. One night, without being asked, she had told him about her father, about what he had done to her, and about how he had died. Hawk had heard many bad stories, but this scared him as no other had done. It was not so much the horrors she recounted that got through to him as the manner of her telling, as if these things had happened to someone else, a character in a film or a teevee soap. She claimed to have no scars any more, but Hawk thought Jesse was all scar tissue.
When she slept, her thumb crept babylike to her mouth, and he thought he could see her as she might have been had she not been born in a bad place, at a bad time to a bad father. Just another white girl. No better and no worse than the rest.
He left her, and wandered through the sand-carpeted corridors of the monastery. He heard the echoes of the prayers of the long-dead monks. They had come here to convert his forefathers to their faith, but had perished. Their faith was still here, though. Their meditations had created a channel to the spirit world that was still open. They had come to teach the Indians a lesson his people had already known for a thousand years. But he could not hate the Jesuits. They brought Bibles and statues of the Blessed Virgin with them from the Old World, not Springfield rifles and smallpox.
He looked up at an eroded statue of Jesus on the cross, its face ground away like the figurehead of a ship that had been through too many typhoons. He bowed his head to the carpenter; a powerful manitou was to be revered, were he born in a tribal hogan or a Judean stable.
His child by Jesse would have been a son. He would have named it himself, in the old way, as he had been named, by taking the first thing the child looked upon. Here, that meant he could not have much of a name: Stone-Wall-Standing perhaps, or Sand-That-Stretches-to-the-Sky. Back on the Reservation, he had known Navaho children called Three-Cars-Bumper-to-Bumper, Broken-Telephone-Booth and Maniak-Corpse-Rotting. His father, Two-Dogs-Dying, had not been fortunate in his naming, and had determined his son should not suffer. Hawk's mother told him that Two-Dogs was the only one of the tribe who had seen the hawk for whom he was named, but that the others had gone along with him.
The pregnancy had been a part of Jesse's education that he had not understood until its messy, bloody conclusion. He resented the spirits who would give him a son and then take the child away before its birth, just to teach a one-eyed white girl a lesson. His father had never explained, had never understood, that Hawk's part in the story was merely as an attendant upon the creation of the crocodile girl. Her feelings mattered, his were as feathers in the wind. He might as well be a Wooden Indian standing outside a drugstore for all his feelings counted.
He believed that the spirits really didn't give a damn about any of them. They were just being made to jump through hoops as part of some vast pre-ordained pattern.
Walking across the courtyard. Hawk looked up at the sky. It was late afternoon, and the moon was already up. The moon was sacred for Jesse.
"Tell me what you want, moon spirit?"
The man in the moon grinned his lopsided, reptile-jawed grin down at him and did not answer.
"Sonofabitch," he spat.
Perhaps he should leave this place, leave Jesse to work out her own fate. He should look after his father. The old man drank too much, and was provocative of trouble. If he didn't kill himself soon, he would find someone else to do it for him. There wasn't much for him on the Reservation, but there was more there than sand and stone.
The one-eyed white girl could reach her Seventh Level on her own. She didn't really need him. She had many battles to fight, and he would only be in the way. He wondered if she was worried about him, if she ever even gave him any thought. Her face was in his mind constantly, the memory of her tugging at his heart like a fishhook. He was a Navaho brave, the last of the renegades, but Jesse made him weak.
He looked at the sand, and trembled. There were things out there in the world that would be coming here soon.
His battles were beginning.
"That issue is not under discussion," the T-H-R man said. "There can be no negotiations on the question of liberty."
"Aw shucks, Francis. Not even if I promise not to do it again?"
Dr Proctor's eyes twinkled. He was like a naughty little boy who knows he cannot be sent up to his room.
So this was the Tasmanian Devil. Wrapped up like Houdini before an escape, he didn't look like much more than a good-humoured man in early middle-age. How many had he killed? It didn't matter. He was unquestionably America's leading murderer. That was what made him of interest to Nguyen Seth, and, therefore, to Roger Duroc.
"You've never stopped doing it, Ottokar. We know that. We don't know how you've done it, but since you came to Sunnydales there have been a lot of deaths. Death by violence or accident or suicide among the inmates has risen by 28%, and among the guards…"
"89%. I read the sanitarium newspaper, you know."
"It may not be your hands, Ottokar. But it's your mind. We know that."
Dr Proctor laughed a little. "Prove it. Francis."
"We will."
"And then what are you going to do? Lock me up, and throw away the key? You already did that. There's not much you can punish me with, is there Francis?"
"We can unlock your cell, chain you up like you are now, and let some of your victims' relatives visit you with blowtorches…"
Dr Proctor didn't betray anything more than mild amusement. "And is that an official promise, Francis? Because if it is, then my lawyers will be most perturbed."
"Frank," cut in Russell. "Couldn't we bring this meeting to order. The President has authorized me to…"
"Ah yes, Oliver. How is Oliver, Julian?"
"He's well."
"And the kids? Recovered from the birthday party?"
Duroc knew that the President's children played pass-the-parcel with a severed arm at a White House social event just before Dr Proctor's arrest. It had been the Devil's idea of a joke.
"The nightmares are slowly going away."
"That's good news."
Dr Proctor signalled with his head for the sergeant to take his baby-cup away.
"I don't suppose anyone has a cigarette?"
Nobody did.
"So few people smoke any more. Dreadful habit, but it passes the time. I have a lot of time, you know."
"Ottokar," said Wicking. "We are sanctioned to offer you books, videotapes, magazines, and a limited, monitored access to telephonic and written communication with the world outside."
"I have those things."
"We can increase them, sweeten the deal…"
"You could," he allowed.
"The President is very concerned, Ottokar," said Russell. "He would like you to take a look at these trade figures…"
The Treasury man held out his papers, and spread them on the table in front of Dr Proctor. The chained man ignored them. He was enjoying this, Duroc knew.
At his trial, Dr Proctor had admitted that he had deliberately encouraged the North administration to follow near-suicidal economic policies in order to foster an increase of chaos in the world. When asked about his motivation, he had referred them to Jungian theory. "Our collective unconscious is becoming too ordered," he had claimed, "someone had to do something to bring back the element of surprise." Now, the government kept having to crawl to a convicted mass murderer to ask him to help them sort out the spaghetti tangle of figures he had left behind him.
Dr Proctor raised an eyebrow as he casually glanced at Russell's documents. "Tut tut tut. Those tax rebates aren't working out at all, are they? Silly me. I should have seen that loophole all the Japcorps are squirrelling through, shouldn't I? You know, national economies mean less than corporate systems these days. I might devote a monograph to the subject. Take the case of the growing conflict between GenTech East and the Soviet Union, for instance. Logically, their trade war could develop into a shooting match, and then where would we be? You should have the CIA keep a close watch on this Blood Banner Society. Nationalism and commerce make a nasty team."
"Ottokar, the President has personally asked me to convey to you his best wishes, and authorized me to offer to you any liberties up to but not including freedom from this institution if you'll only agree to work in an advisory capacity for a six-month period, just until the budget has passed."
"I'm truly sorry, Julian, but I'm not interested."
"We'll let you accept ZeeBeeCee's offer of another TV series. You can host the talk show."
"TV. It's just a toy. Close down all the television stations in the United States. Now, there's some sound economic advice for you. Cut out the admass, and decrease useless consumption. Cut out the lifebite, and throw people back on their own devices. Your friends in Deseret have the right idea, M. Duroc, bring back the pioneer spirit. When it was just a question of a man, a rifle and a horse against the savage Indians."
"This is getting us nowhere," said Wicking. "As usual. He's freaked the country, and now he's sitting back and surveying the mess."
"I really think we're close to a breakthrough," said Russell.
"You work out of New York, Francis. What's playing at the Met. Did you see Sir Oswald Osbourne in Pagliacci?"
Wicking threw up his hands, and slumped in his seat. His jacket opened, and Duroc saw he was carrying a discreet gun. Dr Proctor saw it, too.
Time passed, and everyone in the room looked at each other.
Finally, Dr Proctor broke the deadlock. "M. Duroc, talk to me. Tell me what you can offer. Tell me about Jessamyn Bonney and the Josephites."
Duroc was impressed. The man might be as crazy as a backstreet Bonaparte, but he was sharp, and he had sources of information nobody knew about. He hadn't tested ESP-positive in his medicals, but there were ways round the examination.
"Well?"
Duroc drew in a breath. "Dr Proctor, I do not represent the government. Unlike Mr Wicking and Mr Russell, I have no legal authority here. I am not even an American citizen. I am French by birth, but my current passport lists me as a resident of Deseret—you know what that means?"
"Oh yes, an interesting geopolitical experiment, Deseret. Oliver should never have gone along with it. A bad precedent. Within seven years, Missouri, Arkansas and Kentucky will petition for secession from the Union. And perhaps Tennessee. You heard it here first. It will come. Oliver should send reinforcements to Fort Sumter. I'm sorry. I digress. Academic footnotes, it's a bad habit."
"That's quite all right. The Church of Joseph would like to employ you as a consultant in the case of Jessamyn Bonney. You know her?"
"I know of her. We haven't moved in the same circles."
Duroc brought out his file. It had been amended a little since the death of Bronson Manolo.
"This is ridiculous," Dr Proctor said. "Please may I have a hand? The left will do."
Wicking chewed his lip, and signalled to the sergeant. Gilhooly drew his pistol, and held it to Dr Proctor's head while he fussed with his keyring. A manacle fell, and Dr Proctor waved his hand about to get rid of an ache.
"One move, Otto…" Gilhooly stood behind the man in the chair, his gun cocked and pointed at Dr Proctor's pineal gland. "I'd like it, you know."
Dr Proctor leafed through the Jessamyn Bonney data.
"Hmmn. Interesting girl. What's her score?"
"Nowhere near, Ottokar," said Wicking. "You don't have to worry about the record. Yet."
"Don't be vulgar, Francis. It's not a game, you know. It's not basketball."
"What is it then? All the killing?"
"It's an Art. It's the authentic American Folk Art."
The Tasmanian Devil looked up from the file. "Well, M. Duroc?"
Duroc put his hands on the table. "We would like Jessamyn Bonney dead."
"That shouldn't make you happy, but certainly won't make you lonely."
Russell said, "Roger, I don't see where this is leading us. Your people didn't say anything about…"
Duroc raised his hand. "Silence." Russell's jaw dropped. "Thank you. Dr Proctor, we are prepared to offer you more than the deal presented by the United States of America. You have been convicted by no court recognized in Deseret. You could be awarded citizenship."
Wicking was furious. "This is freakin' insane."
"Shush, Francis," said Dr Proctor. "I'm interested."
"You could be granted political asylum in Salt Lake City."
"I'd rather stay here. No, just kidding."
Gilhooly was confused. The sergeant's brain wasn't up to this. Good, that gave Duroc a better than 80% chance of success. The other officer, Bean, was picking his nose and scratching his belly.
"All you have to do is kill one girl. After so many, that shouldn't be difficult."
Wicking got up. "I'm ending this meeting now. I had no idea when the President's office authorized your presence that you would be taking such an extreme stance. Mr Duroc, I shall be reporting in full…"
Duroc pulled the ivory throwing star—invisible to the asylum's metal detector—and flicked it across the room.
Gilhooly's throat opened in a cloud of blood. Dr Proctor's hand was behind him in an instant, catching the falling pistol.
Wicking nearly got his gun out, but not quite.
The shot rang loudly in the room. Wicking took his chair with him as he tumbled backwards.
Duroc was on the other side of the room now, his hand over Bean's mouth, pinching the guard's nostrils. He struggled, and died.
"Don't worry, M. Duroc. Everything in this place is soundproofed. Too many screams in the night."
Russell was speechless, trembling. Duroc had scooped up Gilhooly's keys, and was methodically stripping Dr Proctor of his chains.
Gilhooly twitched on the floor, still bleeding. Dr Proctor was free now. He stretched his arms and stamped around. He passed the gun to Duroc, who turned it on Russell. The Treasury man put his hands up.
Dr Proctor knelt by the sergeant, and took hold of the throwing star lodged in his windpipe.
"I told you," he said, twisting, "not to call me Otto."
The star scraped bone. Gilhooly gurgled, and stopped kicking. Dr Proctor stood up, and smiled at the Treasury Man.
"Ottokar," said Russell, "we have a relationship…"
"That's right, Julian. A very close relationship. None closer."
The Tasmanian Devil looked around for something. He saw the coffee things, and picked a teaspoon out of the sugarbowl.
"How careless," he said. "It should have been plastic. I suppose aluminium is cheaper than any petroleum byproduct in these troubled times."
"Ottokar…"
Dr Proctor stood over Russell, the spoon in one hand, his other on the Treasury man's shoulder.
"Dr Proctor," said Duroc. "Hurry up. We have a very brief window of opportunity here."
"It's a moment's work, Monsieur."
Even Duroc didn't want to watch the Devil at work. By the time the screaming was over, he had Bean stripped of his uniform.
"Is this your size?" he said.
"A little generous over the belly, but we can tighten his belt."
Dr Proctor stripped out of his whites, and pulled the uniform on. They would have used Gilhooly's clothes, but there was a little blood on the collar.
"Ready?"
"Yes, Monsieur." Dr Proctor held up the teaspoon. It was red.
"What are we waiting for?"
"Cook's privilege," the Devil said, "I get to lick the spoon."
"Jesse, what's wrong?"
"I don't know. Hawk. It all seems so crazy, sometimes. The Dreams, the prophecies. I'm a girl from the Denver NoGo, not some picstrip superheroine."
"You've come a long way from the NoGo."
"Have I? Have I really?"
"You know the answer. What were you? A petty criminal, a sociopath. You've killed, you've robbed…"
"That was just a phase, you know. You grow out of it."
"The people you killed won't grow out of it."
"I've never killed anyone who wouldn't have killed me."
"That's not true."
"…you're right."
"How do you feel about that?"
"…I don't know. It doesn't seem like the same girl. With the gangcult, it was different. You just kept riding along with the pack, you did what was expected…"
"You were the leader of the pack."
"Yes, but that just meant the others expected more of me."
"Would you go back, if you could?"
"I'd bring back Andrew Jean and Cheeks and the others, yes."
"That's not what I asked. Would you ride with the gangcults again? Waiting for the Op or the Maniak who'd take you down?"
"No. I'm too old, anyway. But no."
"And what else have you got to do?"
"Save the world?"
"Don't make that sound so bad, Jesse."
"Isn't it? This world isn't all that worth saving, if you ask me."
"You can't spend your whole life killing your father."
"What's that got to do with it?"
"Your father brought you into this world, and your father was scum, therefore you reject the world."
"That sounds too easy to me. My father wasn't the only slimeball in the world. For a start, you should meet my mother, wherever she is. Rancid Robyn."
"But the world isn't all slime."
"Isn't it? Apart from you, everybody I know is dead. Or ought to be."
"We will do our parts, and things will be better."
"I've heard that all my life."
"This time, maybe…Things are different, aren't they?"
"Different? Yes. I've never been a monster before."
"You're not a monster. You're a Spirit Warrior."
"Jesse Frankenstein's-Daughter, the Spirit Warrior."
"You must take the feelings you have for yourself and channel them. You will need all your emotional capacities."
"It's starting soon?"
"It's starting now."
Dr Proctor slipped the chip into the auto's music system, and Fast-Forwarded to the "Nessun dorma!" As the Unknown Prince, Sir Oswald Osbourne, the greatest operatic voice of the '90s, poured it out. Osbourne apart, the Met's Turandot was rather minor, he supposed, but you could never tire of the "Nessun dorma!" The aria ended, and he skipped to the finale. "Cera negli occhi tuoi" and "Diecimila anni." Then, the applause.
The incar computers told him he was in Southern Arizona. He let the machines do all the driving. He had been through this area in '89, when he was just starting out on his Devil-work. He had liked it because it reminded him of the endless mesas and sandy canyons of the Road Runner cartoons, Zoom and Bored (1957), Wild About Hurry (1959), Fastest With the Mostest (1960), Tired and Feathered (1965).
There had been a gangcult then. The Backburners. They had flagged him down to kill him and rob him. He must have added fifteen or twenty to his score that night. He never kept count. That was for the pettifoggers, the lawyers and the journos.
There were seventeen books in print about him, not counting his autobiography, and he'd been in five movies. He preferred Steve Martin's performance in Tas, the Newman version, to any of the others. Michael Caine had been especially poor in A Devil With Women, and Dustin Hoffman out of his depth in Have Axe, Will Travel. Still, none of them were quite what he saw when he looked in the mirror.
Poor Oliver. He would never get out of the mess he'd been left in. And heads would roll at Sunnydales. More heads, he corrected himself.
Once he had discharged his debt of honour with Seth, he might take the Elder up on the offer of a home in Deseret.
But he might prefer to wander the byways of the United States, playing his tricks. He had about a hundred million dollars stashed in accounts, safe deposit boxes and secret caches throughout the country. His face could be changed.
And the Devil would dance again.
Duroc had been able to give him quite precise information regarding the whereabouts of Jessamyn Bonney. His sources must be superb. T-H-R had been after her for years, and according to them she had just dropped out of sight.
But Duroc's people must be practically inside her skull.
The Monastery of Santa de Nogueira. He had never heard of it, and it wasn't on most maps, but the Josephites had left directions in the car.
They had also left him with a stimulating array of toys, which he had put to good use already. He was pleased to discover there was a Mid-West Armaments firm called Acme Incorporated, and had tried out their electroknives on a hitch-hiker from Tucson. They were barely serviceable tools, but he kept them for the value of the name.
From a post office in Dos Cabezos, he sent a card to Rex Tendeter and the others on Monsters' Row. Tracing in the blood of the sheriff, he wrote "HAVING A LOVELY TIME, WISH YOU WERE HERE, LOVE OTTOKAR." He hoped the Sunnydales people would let the message get through. The monsters deserved a touch of hope. After all, if Dr Ottokar Proctor could get out, then so could they…
Since he reached the world, the media had been crazy. If he'd actually committed all the murders they were trying to pin on him, he ought to get a Nobel prize for inventing teleportation. They had him striking in New York and San Francisco within the same twenty minutes. He was as often reported and as seldom identified as Neil Gaiman. Perhaps, after he had carried out his current commission, he should go after the graphic novelist and collect the Pan-Islamic Congress' bounty on his head. No, that would demean his Art, importing a touch of too-crass commercialism to the hallowed process of murder.
He had given some thought to the problem of Jessamyn Bonney. He had listened through the Dead Rat tapes several times, and made notes on her capabilities and achievements. He had especially admired her methods in the cases of Susie Terhune and Bronson Manolo. Nothing showy, just a simple display of fatal force. She was no Artist, but she was certainly a competent enough craftswoman.
He read up on Dr Threadneedle, and looked at his autopsy reports. The conclusions were obvious. Jessamyn had something a little extra.
But he had killed people with bio-implants before. Plenty of them. He had sought out the strongest of the strong and left them howling, begging for merciful death.
Jessamyn would be no different.
There was only room for one God of Pain, and Dr Proctor was the ranking applicant for the position.
The moon rose over the desert.
He was alone in the courtyard. It was late. Jesse was sleeping. There was a wind coming across the sands, coming nearer. And in that wind. Hawk knew, was the Devil.
"What the hell…" he said.
Faintly, he heard a voice in the wind, singing…
…singing "Se quel guerrier to fossil…Celeste Aida," Dr Proctor drove across the sands. Santa de Nogueira was off the road, but the Josephites had given him an auto that converted into a sandcat.
The monastery stood up ahead, silhouetted against the night sky like an Arabian Nights palace. Aida was most apt.
If Duroc's information was correct, Jessamyn Bonney was in that ancient castle, a princess waiting for her dragon.
Dr Proctor's smile turned into a grin, and his eyebrows lowered. Those few witnesses left alive who had seen this expression come over his face had testified that he truly did resemble the cartoon character from whom he had taken his nom de homicide.
He chuckled in the back of his throat, his eyeteeth digging into his lips, and relaxed. He was the economist again, the calm pundit of the teevee shows and the press conferences, the smooth liar who had gently pushed the richest, most powerful nation in the world into a monetary cesspool from which it would take centuries to recover.
He looked at himself in the mirror, and twisted his mouth like Daffy Duck. "You know what," he said to himself, "you're dethpicable!"
He felt the killing excitement building in his water.
In the Salt Lake City tabernacle, Nguyen Seth picked up his spectacles, and slipped them on. The darkness cleared, and he peered into the pool of blood in the font.
The smoke cleared, and he saw the monastery. Duroc had chosen his catspaw well.
This was a fit night to raise the Devil.
Jesse shifted, disturbed. Faces were coming at her at great speed. The crocodile whispered in her ear, calling ladybug, ladybug. He urged her to fly away home…
…your house is on fire, your children are gone.
Her eye opened in the darkness, and she saw that Hawk-That-Settles had gone from their cell.
Moonlight was flooding in through the windowslit.
In the Outer Darkness, the Ancient Adversary strained towards the wormhole. It was time to be spat out into the physical universe, to join with its Vessel, then seek out its prey…
Dr Proctor turned off the sound system, and concentrated. He found the Devil inside himself, and summoned the creature up. His friends on Monsters' Row would be proud of him.
Hawk-That-Settles sang at the moon, a song his father had taught him. He called for the crocodile. He fancied that the yellow circle in the sky was distending, becoming an oval, disgorging a snout, sprouting a lashing tail. His song continued, and the spirits of his ancestors joined him.
Duroc awoke, and reached for the knife under his pillow. He had been dreaming of his uncle, of Dien Bien Phu, again. The woman beside him sat up, grumbling, and stroked his back.
"Roger, you're soaking."
His heart calmed. He put the blade back. "It is nothing, Sister Harrison," he said, "get back to sleep."
"You're feverish."
"No, it's just…a family matter."
In the Sea of Tranquillity, the dome of Camp Pournelle reflected the sun's rays, visible to the naked eye on earth as a twinkle in the face of the man in the moon.
Abandoned for ten years, since the discontinuance of the United States space program, the camp was home only to anonymous ranks of calculating machines.
A change in the temperature of the lunar subsoil triggered a mechanism, and a printer began to process a strip for the eyes of a staff long gone earthside for desk jobs.
Sensors swivelled. Events took place. They were noted down, filed away, and forgotten…
On the Reservation, Two-Dogs-Dying was racked with another coughing fit. He was four-fifths of the way through a pint of Old Thunderblast, an especially subtle vintage manufactured as a side-effect during the processing of cattle-feed and sold off for fifty cents a bottle to the less discerning citizens of the South-West.
Two-Dogs was lying on a garbage dump, surrounded by refuse for which even the scavenger dogs of the Navaho had no use. Next to his head was the screen of an obsolete personal computer, cracked diagonally.
In the glass, he saw the moon broken in half like a plate. It shifted, and he knew his vision was going again. He drained the bottle, and tossed it away. It broke. Soon, he would be vomiting. That was the way it always was these days. Drink, then puke. He had been badly named at birth, and now he was fulfilling his father's poor choice.
The moon twisted.
Suddenly, he was sober. He turned onto his back, and looked up at the grinning face in the sky.
He opened his mouth, and felt an explosion coming up from his stomach. He took a deep breath, and joined voice with his son, three hundred miles to the south, singing the song of the moon, the song of their family…
The moon crocodile grinned.
Nguyen Seth clung to the shaking font as the Tabernacle shook. It was a small earthquake. The blood splashed his face.
He remembered Bruno Bonney, saw him through his daughter's eyes as her nails went into his throat.
The Dark Ones swarmed in the beyond, great wings flapping, tentacles uncoiling…
Fort Apache, Lake Havasu. Trooper Stack realized Leona was awake. He rolled over to kiss her, and saw tears on her face.
"Nathan," she said, "it's over. Us, I mean."
Dr Proctor braked, and got out of the car. There was a voice in the night, howling. He opened the trunk, and distributed weapons about his person.
It wasn't Jessamyn screaming. It must be the Indian, Hawk-That-Settles. He had glanced over his stats, and discounted him. He was negligible.
He walked up the gentle incline towards the gate of Santa de Nogueira.
"Holiness, Holiness…"
On the other side of the world. Father Declan O'Shaughnessy approached Pope Georgi I in one of the inner chambers of the Vatican. The Holy Father was studying reports from Jesuit agents in Central America.
"What is it, Declan?"
"A disturbance. A big one. Our espers are speaking in tongues, and frothing at the mouth."
"Is it an attack?"
"Who can say?"
"Call the inner council. Is Chantal available?"
"I think not."
"A pity. Open a line to San Francisco. I would like to confer with Kazuko Hara."
"Immediately, Holiness."
As he left the Pope, O'Shaugnessy heard the Holy Father muttering to himself in Latin. Powerful prayers, he hoped.
"Houston, Houston, do you read?"
"Sure, Cloudbase. What's the buzz? You may be on Japan time up there, but it's four in the ayem Earthside you know."
"Weird shit coming down, Houston. All our instruments went crazy just now."
"Sounds like Japtech error to me. We have no anomalies."
"Have you looked at the moon recently?"
"Sure, it's just out the window, what do you mean?"
"Take a look."
"Freakin' hell."
"Yeah."
"Let's just class this as a monitor error, hey? Get some sleep, and it'll be better in the morning."
"We told you. That's all we had to do. It's up to you now. Good night, Houston."
"Good night, Digby."
The Ancient Adversary stretched out its invisible, insubstantial form and detached itself from the chunk of rock. It was just a satellite, after all, more important as the focus of men's dreams and beliefs than as a collection of geological data.
It brushed through Camp Pournelle, comforted by the tininess of its mechanisms, the limits of their measures.
Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock.
"Miss…is there something?"
It was like coming awake. She hadn't been in a fugue or anything, but she did seem to have wandered off on some impulse.
"Miss?"
"It's all right, thank you, comrade."
The zookeeper straightened his cap and walked away. Chantal Juillerat, S.J., leaned against the railings, and wondered what she was doing in the Moscow Zoo.
This wasn't a holiday. She was with Cardinal Brandreth's delegation. There was a demonic presence of some sort infesting the semi-secure database in the Roman Catholic church on Pushkin Prospekt. She was supposed to attend the preliminary exorcism, and give assistance.
She wasn't supposed to go to the zoo.
A party of chattering children pressed around her, faces to the railings, pointing.
The reptile opened its snout, and showed its teeth. The children backed away.
Chantal looked into the crocodile's mouth, and felt as if someone had walked over her grave.
She remembered a song from a film.
"Never Smile at a Crocodile."
The moon was round again. Hawk's song was nearly done. His part in the pattern was almost over.
In Memphis, Tennessee, an old Op was up late in his tiny apartment, listening to his old records, drinking too much.
From the CD, his own, younger voice breathed "Are You Lonesome Tonight?"
The thing is, he was…
Dr Proctor had expected a drawbridge, but there were just a pair of eaten-through wooden gates.
"Little pigs, little pigs," he said to himself, "let me come in."
In the Outer Darkness, the wisp that was the spirit projection of Nguyen Seth was blown this way and that by the angry breaths of the Dark Ones. The Ancient Adversary had escaped. The Great Work was in jeopardy. One among the titans came forward, and latched onto Seth, hooks sinking into the Summoner's soul.
This was the one they called the Jibbenainosay.
Seth was pulled back through the wormhole to the tabernacle, and found himself in his body again.
He took off his spectacles.
Just beyond the Gateway, the Jibbenainosay wailed. In more years than a man should remember, Nguyen Seth had encountered many things, but he had never truly known fear before.
Now, he had met the Jibbenainosay.
"Hey, Chop-Chop, look at the drunken old Indian!"
They were Maniax, bored and hung-over from smacksynth and white lightning. They'd stumbled out of the Happy Chief Diner, where they'd stoked up on burro burritos and chilli dogs. They'd heard the Navahos had good drugs, but they'd heard wrong.
"Don't he howl, though?"
"Ain't that a Mothers of Violence track?"
"Nahh, sounds Sove to me."
"D'j reckon he's a Red Indian?"
"Could be."
"Freakin' commie."
"Bet I kin plug his guts from here."
"Way off, Chop-Chop. Let me try."
"Hey, no fair. You gotta ScumStopper."
"You gots the tools, Chop-Chop, you use them."
The handgun spat flame and lead. The shot resounded through the valley, amplified in its echo as it bounced off the sugarloaf mountains.
"Freak, but that's a mess you've made."
"Hell, I bet we can still lift his scalp."
"Way to go."
Duroc lay naked on the stone floor, willing his every muscle to relax. It was a trick his uncle had taught him. Sometimes, it made the fear go away. Sometimes…
4:30 AM, Western Central Time. 95 m.p.h. 'Nola Gay nudged the first Fratmobile, almost gently, and the spikes went in low. Redd veered sharply to the left and the Delta Gamma Epsilon ve-hickle lifted up off the freeway. She used her lightweight Combat Lase surgically, slicing off one of the Fratmobile's wheels. The ve-hickle spun end over end, and fell by the wayside. 'Nola Gay was three hundred yards down the road by the time the gastank blew. There were three other Delta Gamma Epsilon ve-hickles in this race, and then it would be the end of them.
The crewcut gangcult of fresh-faced fascists in letter sweaters and football helmets had been staging too many "panty raids" on T-H-R clients' holdings between Pueblo and Trinidad. They hadn't got the message after the first few T-H-R team strikes, and now they were getting the top lady, Redd Harvest. She'd picked the assignment herself, cruising down from Denver to handle it personally.
'Nola Gay, her customized G-mek VI2, held the road like a clean dream. She took out the slowest of the remaining Fratmobiles with a popped package from her grenade launcher, and upped her speed. Often, she just raced the bandits until they cracked up, not even bothering with the roof-mounted chaingun or the 15mm autocannon.
One of the lettermen fouled up, bad. A tyre blew out at 120 m.p.h, and ragged tatters of metal and panzerboy were spread over a mile or so of the blacktop. One left.
There were explosions around her, but she swerved through them, sustaining only a little singed paintwork.
She held the wheel with her left hand, and tapped keys on the dashtop board with the fingers of her right. It was like a vidgame. Get the target centre, and then blast.
"Hey, carrot-top," a pleasant voice came over the intercom, "how's about we call this chicken run a tie and cruise over to a make-out motel for some party action. We've got brews, broads and bennies to spare."
Without thinking about it, she stabbed the chain gun control, and made a pass. The entire rear section of the Fratmobile came apart.
Redd passed the wreckage, knowing there would be no survivors, and kept on speeding. She fired off her remaining ammo into the desert dark.
The chase was over, and she was coming down from it. But for now, she kept her pedal to the floor, and sped into the dark.
Some night, there would be a brick wall across the road, and that would be an end of it.
Some night, but not tonight.
Hawk-That-Settles felt emptied of his song, as if he had poured his spirit out into the sand with the ancient words. The Devil was at the door, and he didn't have the strength to wake up Jesse.
The one-eyed white girl was on her own.
"Houston, if you think I'm going to let you wake up the President with some glitches from a base we should have decommissioned in the '80s, you have got another think coming. Send a fax in the morning."
"What's that I hear, little pigs? Not on the hair of your chinny-chin-chins? Well, I'll huff, and I'll puff, and I'll blow your house in…"
"This is Lola Stechkin, bringing you the Middle of the Night Bulletin, and informing you that absolutely nothing is happening around the world, thank God. Soon, it's back to the Late Nite Lingerie Lounge with Lynne Cramer, but first, here's a message from GenTech, the BioDiv that really cares…"
There was someone down in the courtyard. One of the men from her dreams. Jesse carefully pulled on her clothes. It would be dawn soon.
The moon was going down.
From the shadows, Hawk-That-Settles saw the Devil come into the courtyard of Santa de Nogueira. He looked like a man, but Hawk saw the spirit writhing inside him.
The Devil sauntered across the open space, apparently unconcerned.
This was Jesse's test. Hawk had no part in it. Although he knew that if she failed, the Devil would surely kill him too.
Again, he was an expendable innocent bystander for the one-eyed white girl's elevation to a higher plane of being. This little Indian was getting fed up with that.
"Tonto," said the Devil. "I see you."
Hawk came out of the shadows. "My name's not Tonto."
"No, of course not. You are Hawk-That-Settles, son of Two-Dogs-Dying, of the line of Armijah. You could be a Chief of the Navaho."
"But I'm not."
"No. You are not. You are just something in my way."
"And who are you?"
The Devil smiled. "Dr Ottokar Proctor, at your service."
"The killer?"
"The Artist."
They had been circling each other. The sky was getting light. The shadows were receding. Hawk could see the Devil's face more clearly now. It was quite a famous face, a television face, a newspaper face. Bland and unreadable, it concealed his horns, his forked tongue…
"Have you heard the one about Roy Rogers?"
"No." Hawk tried to remember the Song of his Dying, but it would not come to him. He could only sing it once, and he had to do it right.
"Well, Roy is coming home from Santa Fe on the stagecoach one night—he's been away on business—and he stops off in town before heading out to his ranch…"
The Devil stood in the open, hands visible, as relaxed as a professional golfer.
"'Mr Rogers, Mr Rogers,' says the town drunk, 'where are you going?'
"'Well, Gabby, I'm going out to my ranch…'”
Hawk heard Jesse coming from a long way away. She was making her way cautiously down to the courtyard.
"'But Mr Rogers, the Apaches rode through yesterday, and they burned your ranch down!'
"'In that case, I guess I'd better go look out for my wife…'
"'But Mr Rogers, when the Apaches were gone, the Wild Bunch rode through, and they whipped your wife to death."'
Hawk saw Jesse standing behind Dr Proctor.
"'In that case, I'll mosey out and see to my three children…'
"'But Mr Rogers, after the Wild Bunch were through, Mexican bandidos came up from below the border, and they took your three children and hanged them from the old oak tree…'"
Jesse was calm, ready for the move. Hawk knew that Dr Proctor knew she was behind him.
"'In that case, I'd better look after my cattle..'
"'Oh Mr Rogers, I hate to be the one to tell you this, but once the bandidos headed out of here, the rustlers came through and stampeded your herd the hell out of the valley…'"
It was the hour of the wolf, the quiet moment between nightset and sunrise. The desert was still.
"'In that case, I'll go give Trigger his oats…'
"'But Mr Rogers, when the rustlers were finished Black Bart turned up spoiling for a fight, and he shot Trigger right between the eyes, killed him deader than a skunk…'"
Jesse walked into the open. Dr Proctor nodded to her, but kept on with the story.
"And Roy looks at the ground and says 'well, I guess I'll go out to the ruins of my ranch, count my missing cattle, and then bury my wife, my horse and my kids.'"
Jesse wasn't armed, but that shouldn't mean anything. Hawk knew she was as deadly as Dr Proctor.
"So Gabby says, 'Roy, there's just one more thing…'"
In the killing game, Dr Proctor was the Artist, but Jesse was the Grand Master.
"'What is it, Gabby?'
Dr Proctor's eyes shone. Jesse's hands rested lightly on her hips. It was her fighting stance.
"'Roy, how about giving us a song?'"
Nobody laughed.
On the outside, Seth's man was a disappointment. He looked like a prosperous accountant. He had to be more than that, of course. The Elder had sent him to do a job that an entire Agency had failed to accomplish.
He turned to look at her. She looked from his ordinary face to Hawk-That-Settles. He was to stay out of it.
"Miss Bonney, how nice to meet you."
He extended his hand. She didn't take it.
"I'm Dr Proctor."
"Your name doesn't matter to me."
"You should know it before you die. I always let them know who I am."
She had a bad feeling about this one. She closed her right eye, and studied his heat pattern. He was literally cool, with none of the orange hotspots she would have expected from a man about to fight for his life.
"I've never heard of you."
That fazed him, offended him. He pursed his lips in a tiny moue. "A shame. It would mean much more."
The sun was rising over the walls. The monks should have been at their devotions hours earlier.
"I am going to give you a species of immortality, Miss Bonney. Who would remember Mary Kelly, Elizabeth Stride or Polly Nicholls had they not been blessed…"
"I don't know who those women are either."
"They were nothings, Miss Bonney. Drab tarts. But they were killed by Jack the Ripper."
"Him, I've heard of."
Dr Proctor pulled a knife out of his jacket, and threw it. She snatched it out of the air, and tossed it aside. He smiled.
"Just testing."
"You know I'm stronger than I look."
"I know a lot about you, Miss Bonney. I probably couldn't break your bones with a sledgehammer, and your flesh is reinforced with durium thread. And you have some other surprises implanted in your body. You're a proud cyborg. Your fathers made you well. Bruno Bonney made your mind, and Simon Threadneedle your body."
"I'm unbreakable, then?"
Dr Proctor cocked his head, as if considering.
"Probably. I'll concede that."
"And yet you've come here to break me?"
A sly grin appeared. "No, to kill you."
"You 're an honest man."
"That's the first time anyone's ever said that to me, but it's a perceptive comment. I am perhaps the only honest man. I do what I want, and I'm not ashamed of it. You were much the same, Jazzbeaux. I've read your records. But you've changed."
"You've said it." She clenched her fist in the air, feeling the metal through her palm.
"Not just like that. Inside," he tapped his head and heart. "You don't do what you want any more. You do what is wanted of you. That's why you have to die. If you'd been content to be just another high-speed sociopath, you might have lived to a ripe old age, but you had to get that old-time religion, you had to save the world…"
"I'm not interested in saving the world."
"That's what you say, Jessamyn, but your actions tell a different story."
"It's me or Seth. That's it."
Dr Proctor laughed. "You can't really be that naive. Universes are grinding together to point you two at each other. You have nothing more to say about it than the sea has about the tidal pull of the moon."
Jesse's head hurt. This was worse than she had expected.
"You know, I was expecting some super Op, Redd Harvest or Woody Rutledge. You're not like that. You're like the soce workers back in Denver. You just want to talk."
"Talk is important, Jesse."
She had an urge to tear his throat out, just as she had torn her father's windpipe away. She fought it. You don't reach the Fifth Spiritual Plane without getting some control.
"In another world, we could have worked together," Dr Proctor said. "I have the brains, and you have the body…" He made his first move. "…we could have slaughtered millions of the sheep."
She wouldn't break, but she could bend.
Dr Proctor got her in a sumo hold, hands clasped in the small of her back, and pushed forwards with his forehead. He didn't need to be especially strong to exert the maximum pressure this way. He felt her spinesheath shifting. It was a good product, a GenTech speciality, but it was just a jacket. There were bones inside, and a slender, vulnerable cord inside them. He found the pressure spots in her lower back, and jammed the heels of his hands into them.
An inch before his face, her teeth clenched. "Pain?" he whispered. "Remember it?" He had her arms straitjacketed to her sides. He lifted her feet off the floor. She was off-balanced. "See, no leverage. You can't kick me." She pulled her head back, and struck his forehead, twice. Blood ran into his eyebrows, but he wasn't hurt. "That won't get you anywhere."
He walked her around the courtyard in a parody dance. She was as light as any other girl. Threadneedle preferred minimum-weight technology.
She squirmed, and eased her knees up inside his bearhug, pushing them into his stomach. He felt the strain in his laced fingers, his elbows and his shoulders.
He knew she would break the hold, and decided to use it to inflict a little preliminary damage. He unlocked his fingers, made fists, and struck thumbs-first into the small of her back, then dropped her.
That should get her unaltered insides jarring, and put a bit of a crimp into her pelvic girdle.
She was up, keeping her hurt to herself, and lashing out. He backed away. For all her strength and devastating power, she wasn't an especially skilled martial artist. Streetfighting was about all she knew, with perhaps a touch of jeet kune do. Brawlers' business.
He stepped through her blows, and tapped her collarbones, hooking his forefingers into the nerve points.
Jesse yelped, and floundered. He gave her an elbow in the side of the head, and repeated the procedure three times within the space of a single breath.
"Tired? I can keep this up all day."
She still hadn't really touched him.
"You'll have had Threadneedle undermesh your stomach muscles, so we won't bother hitting you there," he said.
He saw his opportunity, and jabbed a knuckle-pointed punch at her solar plexus. It would be armoured, of course, but he didn't want to break it, just to send a shock through her whole skeleton.
"You see, all that metal inside you can rattle around. It can hurt you as badly as I can."
He pressed her ribs, his hands moving faster than perception.
"A few more of those, and all your boneshields will be loose. That'll be like having breadknives floating around the inside of your chest. You won't care for it. I can promise you that."
She stepped back, away from him. She had worked up a sweat. The sun was up there now. It looked like the thirty-nine thousand six hundred and fifteenth sunny day in a row in Arizona.
"Are you enjoying this little game of 'Sally Go Round the Roses'? I am."
"Freak you."
"Tut tut. Such language. You should gain a command of more elaborate invective."
She made a reach for his throat, which he dodged. Her fingers closed just under his jaw, nails scraping his adam's apple.
"Nice try. Your favourite move, isn't it? Your father's autopsy reports show an especially fine specimen of the throat-grab. And you did something similar to that Daughter of the American Revolution in Moroni."
He pulled out a derringer, and shot at her heart. Her jacket exploded, and he saw blackened flesh below.
"You might be wondering why I did that?"
She was snarling now, not looking like a girl at all.
"I knew it wouldn't kill you…"
She tightened her padded pyjamas, modestly shifting the hole from blueing ribs to smooth skin.
"…it didn't even hurt you, really. You've had your nerves deadened to reduce your pain perception…"
He threw the useless gun away.
"But it did some damage, Jesse. Believe me, inside, you're leaking a little. Nothing serious. It'll clear up on its own thanks to Dr Threadneedle's micro-organisms. But you'd be well advised not to exert yourself further."
He brushed her cheek with his toecap.
"Trust me, I'm a doctor."
His heel slammed into her jaw, knocking her head to one side.
"Of course, my PhD. is in economics, but I have an amateur's informed interest in bio-engineering."
She got a good hold on his ankle, but not good enough. He pulled free.
"Did that dislocate your thumbs? No, well I'm sure it hurt them a lot."
She tucked her thumbs inside her fists, and tried to land a couple of punches on him. If they had connected, they would have broken bones and punctured organs, but he was out of the way and had made sure there would be a stone pillar where her fists landed.
"Did you know that Dr Threadneedle's experimental subjects had a 76% mental breakdown rate when he was with GenTech? Still, I'm sure he made some startling advances before opening you up."
Jesse fell back, her knuckles bloodied, steel glinting in the ruined flesh. There were distinct imprints in the stone where she had punched.
"And that must have been very unpleasant. You know, this is an interesting approach. I'm not really killing you, I'm just seducing you into a slow, painful suicide…"
Dr Proctor knew that everyone else who had faced up to her had been too scared of her ferocity, of her bio-amendments. Too bad Threadneedle hadn't tried some of the new IQ-boost chromosomes on her greymass. If Jessamyn Bonney were intelligent, she could have been a real threat.
She went for one of his knees, and got lucky. No, he had to give her credit. She had seen an oppportunity, and taken it well.
Pain flared up, and he slowed momentarily. She got a kick into his side, and he had to dart back, out of range.
She wasn't really unintelligent, just uninformed. She hadn't even heard of him. Probably didn't follow the newsies, stuck out here in the sand. Like most of the sheep, she was going to die because she was ignorant, not because she was undeserving…
He'd been fought before. He didn't always favour helpless prey. He'd stalked and struggled with the best of them. Others had resisted more than this.
His side throbbed, and he realized she'd done better than he'd thought at first. With a cold anger, he stepped up to her, and used his elbows on her neck, face, shoulders and chest.
Again, he was out of her range before she really knew what he had done to her.
Her face was beginning to blacken.
"Some of those are ordinary bruises, but some of those are nice little pockets filling up with blood from the ruptured vessels."
She wiped her face off with the back of her hand.
"I can mash your face against your durium skull, Jesse. That's what I'm doing. Then I'll get to your greymass through your eyesockets."
She pulled her eyepatch off. He had wondered when she'd try that.
The red lens of the burner winked as it warmed up. He slipped his hand into his side-pocket and palmed the circular mirror.
The beam came, and he had his hand up to deflect it. The angle was off, so it didn't bounce back straight and burn the implant out, but it did pass through her hair, raising some smoke.
"Do you want to try that again? I thought not."
He made a fist, and crushed the mirror to shards, which he rubbed into her jaw.
"Let's get some air into the wounds, Jesse. You've a pretty face. I think we can make it interesting, give it some character, a few lines here, a few holes there…"
She tried for his throat again.
"Persistent little minx, eh? I was impressed with the Dead Rat roster, by the way. Especially Rodriguez. Fingers through the eyes. I always like that one myself. Of course, I don't have bolts in my knuckles to make it easy."
He bent under her fingerthrust.
"Takes the sport out of it, somehow."
A stone sang against the stones beside his head. He hadn't forgotten the Indian. He wasn't relevant to this situation, but he could be a minor danger.
"Why don't you just give up, Jesse? You can't live through this day. I'll tell you what, I'll make it painless. You can't say fairer than that."
She didn't answer him, just made a few passes in the air.
Dr Proctor felt stings on his face. And trickling blood.
"Neat. You got the glass out, and used it. You have resources."
It was time to finish it.
Hawk-That-Settles watched Jesse fight with Dr Proctor. His contribution had been meagre, and unappreciated by either of the participants.
Overhead, the sun had stopped moving. That was the signal. Now, it was his part in the ritual.
He drew a circle in the sand…
Dr Proctor got a hold on Jesse, forcing her down.
…he sang the song of the moon and the crocodile once more.
A cloud appeared in the sky, a black dot above the horizon, burping upwards.
Jesse's face was in the sand, which blew away from the flagstones beneath. She was coughing. Dr Proctor had one hand at the back of her neck, the other free. She was pinned beneath his body. He was scientifically killing her.
The cloud came through the sky like a bird of prey. It seemed to grow bigger as it got nearer. It didn't look like a cloud any more. It was a dart of ink shafting through a clear liquid, bubbling behind, pointed in front.
Hawk sang of the triumph of the crocodile.
Jesse's hands pushed at the sandy stones.
Dr Proctor exerted more pressure. He was only touching the nape of her neck, but blood was leaking from around her optic implant.
The cloud was overhead, blotting out the sun.
A shadow fell on Santa de Nogueira.
Jesse had sand up her nose. She didn't believe she had lost so easily. Dr Proctor was fast, and he knew things about pain she would never even begin to comprehend.
Her visions had been wrong. She would die today, and never know who the other faces were, the man with the guitar, the dark-faced foreigner and the nun with the clear-handled pistol. Perhaps they were just the figments of a dream.
Her brain was turning in on itself. Dr Proctor was using her body as an instrument, and playing upon it a concerto of agony. His fingers found nerves, and sent signals through them.
He was indeed getting past her bones, pushing tendrils of death into her brain.
She struggled, but he had her as surely as if she were in a strait-jacket. The weight of his body held her down.
As he killed her, he crooned in her ear. They were tunes she didn't recognize. Opera, she thought.
A blackness fell over her vision, and she assumed this was the moment of parting from her flesh…
"Qual terrible momento," Dr Proctor sang, "piu formar non so parole; densa nube di spavento per che copra i rai del sole! Come rosa inaridita ella sta tra morte e vita; chi per lei non e commosso ha di tigre in petto il cor!"
This terrible moment, he translated mentally, my words cannot describe; a dense cloud of terror seems to obscure the sun's rays…
There was a shadow.
…like a fading rose, she lies twixt life and death!
A cold dark fell upon him.
…he who does not pity her has a tiger's heart in his breast!
He pressed Jessamyn Bonney to the stones, squeezing her life out drop by drop.
When he was done, he would go to work on her, mutilating the corpse. The Indian would appreciate that. Of course, the Navaho spirit world would hardly welcome one who had, in life, replaced so much of her original body.
The shadow fell on his shoulders like a heavy weight, freezing him where it touched. He felt as if something were passing through him. The darkness sank through his body, leaving ice behind.
His grip on Jesse's neck relaxed.
The Ancient Adversary slipped through the meat-thing, and into the Vessel. Enfleshed, it was overwhelmed by the sensations of the world.
Hawk's song ended, and he stood, watching in awe as the transformation took place.
Jesse felt fire burst inside her heart, spreading through her body. The weight was gone from her back, and she could move again. She wiped the remaining glass out of her face. She felt her wounds closing over.
In her mind, she was a long-jawed reptile, fastening rows of teeth into a struggling hog, refusing to let him go.
Jessamyn Bonney faded to nothing inside her own brain, and the new tenant took over.
Lashing as if she had a tail, she turned over, and held fast to the hog.
Dr Proctor gulped as Jesse grabbed his throat. His aria was stopped. He saw something new in her eye as she stood up, taking him with her.
He struck her, but his well-aimed blows were feeble. She ignored whatever pain she felt.
She was changing.
For the first time, Dr Ottokar Proctor considered the possibility of his own death. It was not a pleasant thought.
What if the sheep lived on somehow? What if they were waiting for him on the other side? Once he was dead, what could they not do to him?
Jesse opened her mouth, and roared. Dr Proctor thought he saw endless rows of needle-sharp teeth.
The shadow was gone, and they were struggling in the sun.
Hawk-That-Settles crossed his legs, and watched the end. The sounds coming from Jesse's mouth were barely human. Dr Proctor was quiet now, nearly unconscious. It was a good day to end it.
The Ancient Adversary and the Vessel were inside one another like a snake swallowing its tail. Both changed as they flowed together. It adjusted fast to the comforts and discomforts of physical form. Her spirit swelled as the being from the Outer Darkness combined with every particle of her body.
Jazzbeaux, Bonney, Jessamyn, Jesse, Frankenstein's Daughter. She flipped through her names, her faces, her identities. They were all faint now, indistinct.
And yet the Ancient Adversary was fading too, diluted by the strength of the Vessel.
It had never been a crocodile. That came from somewhere else, giving it the rudiments of a form.
She had never really been any of the people others had thought her, never felt comfortable with her own picture of herself.
Now she was something harder, as sharp and bright as a diamond. Jessamyn Bonney was dead.
She was something else…
Dr Proctor gave up the struggle, and hung limp in her embrace. She had spared his spine, but snapped his mind.
Psychiatrists had debated his sanity at length. He had joined in their arguments as a way of amusing himself back in Sunnydales. He had had no opinion either way.
Now, he drooled a thin line of spittle. Inside his head, the last bars of Lucia di Lammermoor faded away. The iris closed over Porky Pig.
They would have no question to solve now. If he hadn't been mad when he left the asylum, he certainly would be if they took him back.
She dropped him, not even bothering to administer a killing blow. Whatever she had become, she couldn't be bothered with crushing insects under her feet.
In Salt Lake City, Elder Nguyen Seth screamed, as if icicles had been jabbed into his brain. Within him, talons curved, digging deeper into his heart. The Ancient Adversary was upon the Earth, and the Dark Ones were angry. He staggered from the font of blood, pain coursing through his entire body, and made his agonized way to the isolation chamber. The tank was always ready.
He felt the pull of the Outer Darkness, the call of his masters. Their wrath was terrible.
The tank opened, and Seth, his robes dropped to the floor, hauled himself in. The lid descended like the slab of a tomb, and the fluid seeped in, lapping around his tormented body. He fumbled with the life-support monitor electrodes, pinning them to his flesh with little fishhooks. The warm waters rose.
Seth sank into himself, and his pain was eased.
Hawk-That-Settles got up and walked over. He was not sure what Jesse was now, but she had defeated the Devil. She stood over him, bearing the fallen creature no malice.
For a moment, he thought her face green and long, with eyes on the sides and dripping teeth. Then she was herself again, bleeding a little, her one eye clear.
"Jesse…"
She turned to look at him. She didn't recognize him for a moment. Then, she smiled.
"No, you're…you're not Jesse."
She shrugged and turned away.
It was becoming clearer.
"What have you done to her?"
She turned. She spoke in her own voice. "Nothing, Hawk. I'm different, but I'm still me."
"And who's me?"
Dr Proctor rolled away, and lay face up, staring at the sun.
"Me? I'm your Jesse, Hawk."
"No, you have enacted the prophecy of the Moon and the Crocodile. You can be named Jesse no more."
"So, I'll take a new name, like one of those ghetto kids trying to be a Russian musickie."
Hawk was afraid of this new Jesse, but he fought his fear.
"I shall call myself…"
There was no cloud in the sky now.
"…Krokodil."