Gorgon Child

by Steven Barnes

  Miles peeled the foil away from his own bar and bit in. His knees weakened as his tastebuds melted into the luxuriance of survival chocolate, nuts, and dried fruit.

  A whiff of wind puffed down the tunnel toward them, preceding a dull echo that sounded like the howl of a dying cat. Warrick's gun barrel cocked a couple of inches.

  The Scavenger leader rose from his crouch and motioned with his head, and the two of them continued down the tunnel. Miles finished the candy bar, grateful for the flood of energy as his body scrambled to metabolize the precious nutrients.

  Warrick broke into a trot, and the two men ran side by side. Human and NewMan, together in the tunnels beneath Los Angeles, moving along the singing track toward a distant light.

  A woman came into Warrick's arms. She touched him lightly on the chest, then pressed herself against him and nuzzled his beard, her throaty laugh enjoying some shared secret. Miles was not attracted to women sexually, but he could admire a healthy body. This woman moved with the grace of a professional athlete. Her fine muscle tone and coordination were obvious. Her face was a graceful oval, features as fine as a chocolate cameo. There was Asian blood in her veins, and perhaps Polynesian as well.

  She opened her mouth to speak, then glanced surreptitiously at Miles. "Warrick," she said. "We haven't lost anyone. It's all right."

  "Good."

  "Only one ... the one with the bull horns." She whispered the next, but Miles still heard it. "We've seen him before. Remember the nightclub where you met my friend Cecil?"

  Warrick thought for a moment, then shook his head.

  Miles interrupted them. "Where are my people?"

  "This way."

  The tunnel suddenly opened into a maze of steel and gleaming tile. Smooth lovely arcs curving away sliced into a multilevel structure that opened like a gigantic hourglass.

  Suddenly Miles knew where he was. "The Los Angeles Mall."

  The woman grinned. For a moment Miles thought he saw a rainbow of color fluxing through her hair. Trick of the light. Hallucination. "It's all ours," she said happily.

  The Scavengers were awarded this territory in the emergency Reclamation Code of '25."

  "For rebuilding?"

  " 'For enriching the employment potentials of Los Angeles.' That's what the certificate reads. We'll have to sell it off, eventually, but two square blocks of downtown Los Angeles is nothing to sneeze at.''

  They moved around the edge of a seventh-story balcony, and past what must once have been mall shops. Former clothing stores, Exotic accessory shops, and sex toy and appliance stores rolled past. They had all been

  restructured for living spaces, teaching spaces, entertainment and meeting halls, food kitchens, and more.

  Inquisitive eyes peeked out at them. Young and old, man and woman. Wrinkled, damaged flesh and smooth, beautiful faces. Light and dark skin, bodies of every description. The Scavengers seemed to be caring for most of the unloved and abandoned human debris in the Maze.

  And animals. Cats and small mongrel dogs ran through the complex. They seemed to be communally owned, and would stop to receive a pat on the head here, or a scrap of food there. One small black and white mongrel terrier sniffed at Miles's hand, and he scritched it behind the head.

  The air was warm, and moist, and smelled distantly of cooking vegetables.

  Warrick walked among his people like a benevolent monarch. Here he stopped to listen to a problem, there to tousle a head. One young girl said, "Aubry—" The older man with her placed a finger to her lips and moved on.

  Warrick looked back and smiled. "This is it. You're Bloodeagle, aren't you?"

  "Yes. Miles Bloodeagle."

  "Your people can stay here for a day. Can't protect you any longer than that."

  "We have our own resources. You've done more than enough."

  As they turned the corner, Miles stopped in surprise. Images of a dozen holo stars stared back at him, dancing in air as they might have in Thousand Oaks or Westwood or any of the other more glamorous and celebrated sections of the city. There were scenes from the latest installment in the Leviathan fantasy series, with the space whale attacking yet another flying city. There was the scandalous screen expose of Guru Amadi Reeshananda, Profit Without Honor. The great man stood smiling beatifically, his beard and robe full and fluttering in a nonexistent breeze. His right hand stretched out to the patrons of the theater. His left rested affectionately on the head of the blond woman who knelt in front of him, her arms wrapped around his waist.

  Warrick grinned wickedly. "It's our hospital, but I like the holos."

  Warrick's companion pretended to grimace. "It appeals to his twisted sense of humor."

  Miles followed them into the clinic. The theater had been sectioned off into a maze of booths and smaller rooms. Medics already cared for several of his men. Some sagged dazedly on cots, eyes closed, leaning against the walls like the battle-fatigued soldiers they were.

  "What happens if Killinger follows?"

  "We can stall them while you get out. Twenty-four hours, Bloodeagle." Warrick's dark eyes glittered. "I've got obligations to these people."

  "Absolutely." He held out his hand. "One day, you will need a friend. Anywhere, anytime. I expect it."

  Warrick gripped the offered hand. Miles was astonished. Warrick was as strong as he. Miles was not the strongest Gorgon, but to meet an ordinary human being who had such power flowing in his veins was astonishing.

  "Miles ..."

  He knew that voice, heard the desperation in it. "Where . . . ?"

  Miles wound through a labyrinth of sectioning walls, Warrick following closely. Around a final corner, Miles finally found the Minotaur.

  Minotaur could barely breathe. Blood was crusted stickily around his left ear, and his eyes were unfocused. He held out his hand for Miles to clasp. "Not . . . afraid to die, Miles."

  Miles blinked hard, trying to clear his eyes. God, why?

  "I know you're not."

  Minotaur managed to turn his head. His eyes focused on Warrick. "I . . . know you."

  Warrick took Minotaur's other hand, squeezed it gently. "Maybe you do."

  "You ..." Minotaur sniffed die air. He pulled Warrick down closer to him. His heavy, bovine nose wrinkled as he sniffed. "You brother. I asked you once. You said no. But you are. You brother. Thank you." He gripped at

  Warrick with what had to be painful pressure, but the Scavenger leader didn't pull away.

  Minotaur closed his eyes, and his chest moved rhythmically.

  Silently Warrick's woman had moved up behind him, leaning her cheek against his shoulder. Silent, supportive. Again, her quiet strength impressed Miles. That, and the fluid economy of her movement. For a moment he envied Warrick for winning the love of such a marvelous creature.

  Warrick touched her arm softly. "Get some morphine here."

  "No," Miles said emphatically. "It is not our way. Let him have his pain."

  Warrick made a soft tch-ing sound. "If you're sure. If there's anything you need, you can find me. Remember. Just twenty-four hours. Not twenty-four and a half."

  "You've done more than enough. Remember, I owe you."

  "I remember. Now, get out of here before the violins start playing, will you?"

  Warrick and his woman left. Bloodeagle was alone with his people, with the wreckage of bodies and dreams. They did not move him—pain and death he had lived with for far too long. It was something new he felt, something faintly puzzling until he identified it.

  Hope.

  Chapter Three

  McMartin: In My Heart

  Tuesday, May 16

  The block was burning. Flames and dense, billowing clouds of smoke vomited into the night sky. The few fire trucks that belonged to or would intrude into the wretched ghetto called the Maze merely kept the blaze under control. All efforts concentrated on containment, preventing the spread to neighboring blocks. The building at the corner of Broadway and Twentieth, old even at the turn of the century, was dea
d now. Broken glass covered the streets like a glittering carpet of hail, crunching and tinkling underfoot. The ground-effect skirts of the aircars blew gusts of powdered glass into the air. Maze dwellers shielded their faces, or fled to cover.

  Smoke and chemical fumes belched from the shattered glass windows. Occasionally another pane gave up the ghost: a brief burst of light colored the sky, and fractured crystal rained into the streets below.

  The Omnivision remote trucks had packed up most of their equipment. There simply wasn't much that was newsworthy in the Maze. Oh, yes, there were the usual dosages of death and carnage, the usual squalor and human misery. Families who could afford full-spectrum Omnivision service didn't want dead rats and heavy-metal poisoned babies floating over their duck a l'orange. It was too depressing, too discouraging and unappetizing. And too damned common. Every net had thousands of hours of digi they would never use. Just no ratings in it anymore.

  McMartin's Omnivision module projected its image into the air two meters above the surface of his flotation pool. The pool was ten by fifteen by five meters, covered by an immense emerald plastic environment dome, and eternally warmed to ninety-three degrees Fahrenheit. Tons of glycerin were dissolved in its depths, greatly increasing the water's buoyancy. Drifting there, he watched and felt and listened to the disaster, his eight hundred pounds of tissue supported by the water. A gentle whirlpool action swirled away body wastes. He swam many, many laps in that slimy tank every day, but rarely moved from its depths.

  McMartin's bloated fingers roamed over a floating tray of truffles, dithering as if they had noses and palates of their own. They hovered above a particularly fat one, a starburst carved from white chocolate, and popped it into his puffy pink sphincter of a mouth.

  "How?" McMartin's characteristically syrupy, cherubic voice was even sweeter than usual. The voice was disorienting, coming as it did from his incredible mass of glistening pink flesh. McMartin used that disorientation as a weapon. "How did they get away? We had the block sewn up. There was no way out. It should have been resolved in one of two ways: a massacre, or encouraging the illegal intervention of the Gorgons, which would have put pressure on President Harris to dissolve the unit. Instead you turned it into a total cock-up."

  In a wheelchair at the edge of the pool sat the leader of the Mercs, Marcel Killinger. Killinger wore no makeup now. There were no Omnivision recorders trained upon him. Without the latex and prosthetics his appearance was grotesque. Killinger had no lips, no face, souvenirs of a prematurely ignited firebomb. McMartin wondered how much of the man was still the original equipment.

  And now, of course, he was suffering torn ligaments as a result of this raid. He really should have been in surgery already. Or at the very least on painkillers.

  "We have a report ..." Killinger rasped. His voice was another souvenir, won in his escape from that long-ago, smoke-filled inferno. "The crab video units were active, and we have a positive identification on the people involved in the rescue."

  Grimacing, he spread out a series of tridee sheets on the table in front of him. As always, so eerily convincing were their illusions of depth that they gave the impression of holes opened in the tabletop. As he spread them out, the identical images appeared in the air above McMartin. "Definitely Scavengers. And this man"—his finger trembled as it tapped the center picture—"the one they call Warrick, is their leader."

  McMartin's swollen hands stirred the water. "Their leader. Shit. What can we do with them?"

  "Technically, nothing. The NewMen got out of the building. Scavengers didn't break any laws." He closed his eyes briefly, and fidgeted at his chestpack medi-comp.

  "No!" McMartin roared. "Not until you have finished the report. Then dose yourself into a coma for all I care."

  "It. . . hurts."

  McMartin smiled beneficently. "Suffering is good for the spirit. Go on."

  "When the building collapsed, shock armor protected my men until we could get them out. I tried to stall until one of them died."

  McMartin raised a moist eyebrow. "Yesss. That might have given you some leverage. What happened?"

  "I just couldn't slow up the rescue enough. We do have one possibility. This man . . . Warrick."

  "What about him?"

  Killinger's lipless mouth pulled back from his teeth in a grotesque parody of a smirk. "That's not his real name."

  "No?" McMartin's eyes glittered with interest. "Then who is he?"

  "The real Warrick was white. Died three years ago in a gang war with the Ortegas."

  "The Ortegas. A gang war. How quaint. You must have enjoyed that little unpleasantness."

  "Wrong branch of the family. I worked for Wu. Little bit after that, this nigger took over. Name of Aubry Knight."

  "You know him?"

  Killinger's breath rasped more harshly. "Yes," he hissed.

  "I knew him. He crossed Luis, ended up in Death Valley Maximum Security Penitentiary. Murder, attempted rape. He escaped during the riots of '24."

  McMartin rolled over in the water like a bloated pink walrus. He virtually glowed with pleasure, his air of irritation sloughing away. "Excellent. Excellent. By allying themselves with this criminal, the NewMen have shown their true colors. Excellent. I'm not sure that I could have arranged it any better myself." He made a motion with his upper body that was curiously like a man trying to sit up while floating. "You may anesthetize yourself, Marcel."

  Killinger's fingers eagerly stroked his medi-comp controls. Almost instantly, his scarred face relaxed, and he sighed. "Oh." He giggled, then straightened himself upright again. "Shit yeah. That's much better."

  "Good. Of course you understand that we want his body, alive if possible, to turn over to the federal authorities. If not, then dead will suffice, as long as his DNA scan matches. How long will it take you to get him?"

  "That depends on the ... ah, cash involved." There was a leading question in Killinger's slurring voice.

  "The Great Man who we both serve considers this of paramount value. Consider yourself on Carte Blanche. The money will be routed through the usual channels. This matter must come to a conclusion before July."

  McMartin switched off the live broadcast and clicked in a different video.

  The air wavered, and opened on a new vista.

  The Omniscan took a long, majestic scan of a crowd, pulling back and back until they were in the rear of the auditorium. The auditorium overflowed earnest faces. There was no easy method of categorizing the audience. They were young and old, male and female, white and black and brown. They watched and listened to the flawless hologram at the front of the auditorium.

  "—this great land of ours? Your hearts hold the answer! Your hands hold the power! We have tolerated sin in our midst for far too long. In the eyes of the Lord, America has become Sodom, has surpassed Gomorrah. And we are being punished. Punished for tolerating perverts in our midst—using Harris's tame sodomites for murder and terrorism. We wonder why Swarna and the PanAfricans sell uranium to the Soviets? They have every reason to hate us! It is the Gorgons who slew Swarna's half brother, and all the world knows it! As long as we support such filth and immorality, disease will ravage our country, our wives and children. Inflation and economic chaos will destroy our lives, our hopes, the dreams of our forefathers."

  The scan moved up to the podium, to the projection of Sterling DeLacourte.

  DeLacourte's iron-gray hair was gloriously leonine. On other men such a mane might have seemed affected. On DeLacourte it evoked a sense of the biblical, conjured images of heroes from a simpler, sterner, less forgiving time.

  To the right of the projection stood two of his advisors, in the flesh. They were quiet, dark-garbed men who had resigned from the current administration to join his campaign. To the left was a projection of his lovely wife Gretchen. It flickered weakly.

  "Damn," McMartin snarled. "The Montana feed is off again."

  The three-dimensional shadows of DeLacourte and his wife shared smiles. He turned
back to the audience. "I will not allow this country to sink into the slime."

  McMartin diddled the Omnivision control key chained around his neck. The room around them disappeared. The flotation pool disappeared. Suddenly McMartin and Killinger were there, at the rally, surrounded by DeLacourte's followers. They zoomed up until they were seated in the front row, until every theatrical flip of DeLacourte's hair was an assault on their sensibilities.

  "The lives of my family, my wife, my child, are at stake. I pledge the last drop of my blood in this holy war. I give you a challenge. This country belongs to the children of the Bible. Old Testament, New Testament, Christian, and Jew. The men and women who built her and love her and revile the flood of filth as I do. In my heart, I know that any one of you would give his life to purify this country. I ask only the chance to make that sacrifice myself. This is the ultimate contest, with the ultimate prize: the soul of every man, woman, and child on this planet. Today, as in the time of Moses, what we need is a strong man to run the race. 'His going forth is from the end of heaven, and his circuit unto the ends of it: and there is nothing hid from the heat thereof!' "

  He paused, panting more with excitement than exertion. "Such battles are not easily won. In another time, another day, victory would have demanded your lives, your blood. Today, by the glorious grace of God, all I demand is your votes!"

  The crowd roared thunderously.

  McMartin switched the Omnivision off again. The scene dwindled, the audience faded and shriveled into a dark shadow, finally dying altogether.

  McMartin splashed in the pool, paddling himself around. "This present business must be resolved before the convention, Marcel. If for a moment I thought that you weren't the man to do this, I would find someone else. I hope you believe me."

  "I know the timetable."

  "Good. Good. Then, I think that you have some medical business to attend to. I wouldn't want to detain you."

  Killinger spun his wheelchair around and purred out of the room, late for his appointment with the surgeons. The door clicked shut behind him.