by Mick Farren
Gibson was also up off the floor. He looked out of the window. He didn't have a clue where he was except the vaguest idea that they were somewhere in back of the Jersey City waterfront. They were passing factories and warehouses and two-story houses punctuated here and there by the lights of a liquor store, corner grocery, or fast-food joint. After almost twenty minutes of zigzagging through this kind of terrain, Casillas decided that it might be safe to make for the Lincoln Tunnel and back to New York. In just five blocks, he was proved wrong. Once again it was as though whoever was in control of the black Jeep Cherokee could read their minds. They made a turn and there it was, coming straight at them, the wrong way down a one-way street.
Amadeus yelled a warning. "Motherfucker's going to ram us!"
Amadeus's feet tap-danced, heel and toe, across the brake, clutch, and gas pedals as he spun the steering wheel. The moonshiner's turnaround. Gibson had heard of it but never actually seen it done outside of a movie. He was thrown sideways as the car spun on its axis with a scream of tires and tortured suspension. The front wheels were up on the sidewalk. The Jeep swerved to intercept. For a stretched moment of confusion Amadeus fought with the wheel. A lamppost was coming up. Amadeus stomped down on the brakes. Casillas lost his hold and was thrown forward. He cracked his head on the partition separating the driver from the passengers.
As the Rolls lurched to a stop, Amadeus gestured urgently to Gibson. "Out of the car! Run! Save yourself!"
Gibson looked down at Casillas. He seemed to be out cold, maybe even dead. "What about him?"
"I'll take care of the old one. Go quickly. The armor on this thing is good but it won't stand up to a conceited close-range attack."
Joe Gibson didn't need a second urging. He hit the ground running. The Jeep had come to a stop maybe twenty to thirty yards up the street and was backing up, but he didn't pause to look. In the old days, he'd done a lot of running to and from cars. Back then, the threat had been from hysterical fans who had wanted to tear his clothes off for souvenirs. God knew what the shadowy denizens of the sinister Jeep wanted to do to him.
Gunfire echoed around the buildings behind him, but he didn't look back. He could all too easily imagine bullets tearing into his back. His overwhelming instinct was to dive for a doorway and huddle there, but common sense kept him pounding down the sidewalk. Police sirens wailed intermittently in the distance. For Christ's sake let them get here. He couldn't think of anything better right there and then than being arrested. By the end of three blocks, he was winded. His lungs were laboring and his legs were threatening to cave on him. Too much booze and too many cigarettes-dear God, he was out of condition. There was no sound of footsteps behind him and so far he hadn't been shot, but after another block he couldn't force himself to go any farther. He stopped for a moment and leaned on a fire hydrant, gasping for breath. For the first time, he looked back and immediately wished that he hadn't. The Jeep had reversed up alongside the Rolls, blocking it from moving. Worse than that, though, two men were loping down the street on silent running shoes, obviously coming for him. He took one look and started off again. They had to be from the Jeep. Sweatsuits and porkpie hats, black wraparound sunglasses at night. Both were carrying weapons-which looked uncomfortably like machine pistols- at high port. Over and above the hardware, there was something else that kept Gibson running down that back street in Jersey City. The two figures bore a terrible resemblance to the tontons that he'd seen cruising the street that time in Port-au-Prince. They'd also had a thing about Jeep Cherokees. Just the sight of one of them, with crash bars and black windows, was quite enough to strike mortal terror into the average Haitian, and it was doing much the same for Gibson right then. There was nothing he could think of that scared him more than the idea of falling into the hands of a couple of tonton macoute with a grudge. The very thought of them set his mind racing in nineteen different directions like a gang of roaches suddenly hit by the light. The things that these voodoo gestapo were rumored to do to their prisoners were the subject of fearful looks and glances over the shoulder. Between the electric shocks and the rubber hoses and the juju chants and zombie powder, they were supposed to not only be able to break man's mind and body, they also came for his soul. Gibson was so scared that it didn't even occur to him to wonder what the hell they might be doing running all over New York and New Jersey and, in particular, why they were coming after him.
He pushed himself off the hydrant and fled on down the street. It was quite enough that the world had stopped making sense with a viciousness that defied even his imagination. The blood was pounding in his head, and his heart threatened to burst. He chanced a glance behind. They were still coming. In fact, they'd gained on him. Not shooting, but just padding effortlessly, a Zulu lope, like hunters running down a wounded buck, seemingly content to let him run himself out. He came to the end of a block and quickly turned the corner. Lose them, he told himself, lose them. He knew in his heart that these guys would be hard to shake, but he had to tell himself something. His sanity was at stake. Why him? What had he done? The new street was nothing more than a black industrial wall thick with graffiti to the height that a kid with a spray can could reach. No yards or back alleys, no place to hide. The tontons came round the corner and that moment was close at hand. He searched the night for a bodega or a liquor store that was open. Maybe they wouldn't try anything if there were other people around. There was nothing-no kids hanging out, not even the red light of a Budwetser sign. Gibson could only see the red that was pulsing behind his own eyes. His legs could scarcely lift themselves. It was the point in the nightmare when you woke up, except this was no dream, Gibson knew that he was through; not even mortal fear and certainly not effort of will was going to stop him dropping in his tracks. He was about to faint.
And then the third car was on the scene. The white Cadillac Eldorado came out of the night like the Lone Ranger. As it swept toward him, Gibson dropped to his knees and then to all fours, completely exhausted. He was past caring what this new twist was going to mean, although his pursuers apparently didn't like the look of it. They halted and readied their weapons. The Cadillac slowed to a halt a matter of feet from where Gibson was on his hands and his knees, silhouetting him against the double headlights. He slowly raised his head and stared blindly into their glare. He could almost have sworn that he was being inspected. Nothing happened for a full five seconds. Then the car's doors flew open. Dark figures were moving with the speed and precision of highly trained professionals. What the fuck was this? Mossad? The SAS? He had no more assumptions. Anything could happen.
As Gibson's mind boggled his knees also buckled, and he fell over on his side in the road. It was only a burst of wild gunfire from one of the tontons that galvanized him back to life. He curled his body into a tight fetal ball and hugged his head with his arms. His eyes were tightly closed. When the firing suddenly stopped, he hesitatingly opened just one of them. The vision that presented itself had the crystal clarity that only comes when the mind is about to save itself by going into shock. A physically perfect young man was standing beside him. He was wearing neat, dark-blue coveralls with small gold sun symbols at the throat. Lank blond hair hung over a pale face, his knees were bent, and both arms were at full stretch, aiming a hand weapon that was like something out of Star Wars, a collection of parallel tubes mounted on an elaborate pistol grip and frame. One of the tontons loosed another burst of fire. Gibson curled tighter, but the young man took his time. When he did fire, there was a pair of twin white pulses of light at what was the weapon's approximation of a muzzle and the nearest tonton simply vanished. He was gone. No muss, no fuss, not even a puff of smoke or a beam-me-up-Scotty shimmer. Just gone. In the next second the other tonton disappeared in exactly the same way as more twin pulses came from the other side of the car.
The young man looked down at Gibson. He could have been a high-tech avenging angel or have come from a flying saucer.
"Streamheat. Just stay put."
"What?"
"We're the good guys, stay right where you are."
And then he was gone. The Cadillac was swerving around Gibson and speeding off down the street, presumably to help Amadeus. It was only at that point that Gibson realized that the Cadillac hadn't made a sound. He eased himself into a sitting position. Gibson could only suppose whoever else had been in the Jeep had gone the same way as their two brothers. Although what way that might have been was something that he didn't want to think about.
It was almost five minutes before they came back to see how he was. He was still sitting in the road. This time the Cadillac halted beside him and two young men in overalls stepped out.
"You'd better get in the car."
Gibson was through. He didn't care if he sat there until the end of time. "Fuck off."
The two perfect young men looked down at him. "You want to sit there all night?"
Gibson petulantly folded his arms. He was aware that he was making an asshole of himself in front of rescuers but he didn't care. "It's my goddamned inalienable right, if I want to. And what the fuck is streamheat anyway."
"Why don't you get in the car and stop causing grief?"
The young man's voice had the paper-thin patience that law-enforcement officers the world over use on the drunk and the difficult. Gibson had heard it plenty of times before, and he couldn't help going for that little extra mileage.
"I told you to fuck off. I'm not getting in any more strange cars."
"Please don't be difficult."
Gibson abruptly changed the subject. "What's happened to Casillas?"
"He's okay. Amadeus is taking care of him. It's taken a lot out of him. Contacting us nearly fried his brain."
Gibson scowled. "He's not the only one with a fried brain."
"So we see."
"Do you wonder at it?"
"Get in the car."
"I told you, fuck off."
Without a word, the two perfect young men reached down, gripped him under the armpits, and started to lift. Gibson had enough common sense left not to resist. He didn't want to go to wherever the tontons had gone. They lifted him with no apparent effort, and all he could do was to mollify the old rebel in him by shaking himself free of them when they had him on his feet.
"Okay, okay, I can walk."
He ducked in to the backseat of the Cadillac without any help. The interior had that brand-new leather, fresh-from-the-factory smell, which was a little strange since, as far as Gibson could see, it was an old Caddy, maybe 1964 or 1965. A woman was already sitting in there on the far side of the car, the exact female counterpart of the young men. She was wearing the same coveralls with the same gold sun insignia. In fact, the three of them were so alike that they could have been siblings.
She smiled coldly at Gibson as he sat down beside her. "You really shouldn't be difficult."
"I think I've earned the right."
The woman shrugged. At least he was in the car. The two men got into the front. As the car pulled away, Gibson looked round belligerently. "So who are you? What's all this stream-heat stuff?"
The woman was even better at professional patience than the men were. "We're agents of the Time Stream Directorate."
Gibson looked at her bleakly. "Silly me. I should have known."
"We're part of a multidimensional task force formed in response to the Necrom crisis. I'm Smith-" She indicated the man driving, "-he's Klein-" She pointed to the remaining young man in the front passenger seat, "-and he's French."
Gibson nodded. "Smith, Klein, and French. Am I to understand that you are another three of the Nine?"
Smith laughed. "Us? Hell, no. We're just a set of out-of-town triggers."
"And which town are you out of?"
"You wouldn't know it."
"Try me. I'm widely traveled."
"We're not from this dimension."
Gibson sighed. "Something else I should have known?"
Smith regarded him as though he was a particularly tiresome, low-grade moron. "It's hard to grasp at first."
Gibson allowed himself a long time to digest this. Damn straight it was hard to grasp. He could feel himself slipping again. The interior of the Cadillac had provided a brief illusion of normality. He'd been in a lot of Cadillacs in his time. Now even that was melting away. Once again his cake was in the rain.
"So where are you taking me? To Ganymede? Alpha Cen-tauri?"
The woman may have had more patience but it was quickly ebbing. "You're going to a secure loft in SoHo. You wouldn't like Ganymede."
"And what happens to me when I get there?"
"That will be up to Casillas and his associates. We were only called in as backup."
"Suppose I don't want to go? Suppose I want to go back to my own home and forget all about this lunacy?"
Smith shook her head. "You wouldn't want to do that."
Gibson's eyes narrowed. "Why? Because you'll make me vanish with one of those weird fucking weapons of yours?"
Smith shook her head. "You wouldn't vanish, you'd just fry."
"What are those things anyway?"
Smith touched the weapon at her hip. "The DL20? If I explained, you wouldn't understand."
"Why don't you try me? There seems to be a real shortage of straight answers around here."
French turned in his seat. "Maybe that's the result of a real shortage of straight questions."
The chill silence that followed this shutout was only broken when Gibson finally pulled out his battered pack of cigarettes. "Is anyone going to object if I smoke?"
Smith shook her head. "We don't get cancer."
"Well, good for you." Gibson stuck a Camel Light in his mouth and lit it.
"Maybe you could tell me one thing. If us humans are so dumb and weak and cancer-prone and all-around inferior, how come you superior beings bother?"
French's lip curled. "Just following orders." Gibson noticed that his hands were shaking. He was in delayed shock. A certain detached part of him wondered how he was managing to adapt so fast to this multidimensional craziness. The weird part was that he wasn't only accepting all that was being thrown at him, but that he was now thinking very clearly. He was even becoming suspicious, and that had to be a good sign.
Gibson eyes swiveled sideways. "Or maybe you aren't really bothering with us. Maybe we're just the inconvenient natives on a prime piece of strategic real estate. Is that it?"
All three streamheat looked sharply at him. Even Klein took his eyes off the road. Gibson seemed to have struck a nerve. He knew it was going to take a lot for him to trust these individuals, even though they had rescued him from the tonton macoute. They were just too slick and certain. He loathed people who came on superior, even if they were. He wondered if Chilean peasants looked at the local CIA man in the same way. Smith seemed to sense the way his thoughts were riding and climbed down a couple of notches.
"Listen, Gibson, we know the last few hours must seem like a fever dream to you, but try and go with the program. We've got orders to look after you and that's exactly what we're going to do, whether you cooperate or not. If you have any questions about us, please ask them and I'll do my best to answer in terms that you can understand."
Her tone was still condescending, but at least she seemed to be trying for minimal common ground. The shreds of Gibson's rationality advised him to go along.
"Why me?"
"Why you, what?"
"Why is it me being rescued? Why is it me being chased by tontons in the first place?"
Smith's face blanked over. "I don't have any information about that. We just had orders to come and get you. You, Casillas, and the chauffeur. Maybe they'll tell you more when you get to SoHo."
"I thought you were going to answer rny questions?"
"I can't tell you what I don't know."
"So what do you know?"
"Try me."
Gibson took a long drag on his cigarette. "What happened to those guys back there? People don't vanish like
that. It's against the laws of physics."
French's expression was pure John Wayne. Gibson almost expected the man to call him pilgrim. "We brought our own laws with us."
Smith shot French a hard warning look and then attempted to answer Gibson's question. "In simple terms, our weapons returned them instantly to their dimensions of origin. "
Gibson slowly rubbed his jaw.
"Are you telling me they were also from another dimension?"
"That's correct."
"Suppose they'd really been human?"
"We're all human, more or less."
"But suppose they'd been from this dimension."
"Like I said before, they would have fried. When the weapon's used on an individual who's in his or her dimension of origin, there's nowhere for the energy to vent to. A circle burn starts in the molecular structure. Fizzipp. High-speed sizzle."
Gibson was a little sickened by the idea. He eyed the weapon on Smith's hip.
"Nothing left?"
French laughed nastily.
"Maybe a grease spot."
Gibson was still having trouble with it all. The more he learned the greater the confusion. One thing he knew for sure, though- he really didn't like the streamheat.
"I don't get it. Why the hell should a bunch of cats from another dimension want to disguise themselves as a Haitian death squad?"
"Habit. And maybe because they enjoy it. Haiti has been a major entry portal to this dimension for more than a century."
"The voodoo lets them through?"
"Among other things."
Gibson sagged in the seat. "This is getting out of hand."
Klein spoke for the first time. "Makes your head spin at first, doesn't it?"
Gibson nodded. "You can say that again." He thought fora moment. "Let me get this straight. These guys slip through and your job is to zap them back again?"
"That's putting it a little crudely."
"But those weapons do zap them back?"
Smith nodded. "Right back to their own dimension."