by Jack Yeovil
None of the Daughters made an effort to fetch their champion. They stood before the bank like American Gothic statues.
Jazzbeaux pulled her eyepatch away and scanned the DAR. They were impassive as the optic burner angled across them, glinting red but not yet activated.
"Is it decided?" Jazzbeaux asked, wiping blood out of her eye.
An older Daughter, with a pillbox hat and a grey-speckled veil, came forward and stood over her sister. The girlie on the ground moaned and tried to get up on her elbows. The veiled Daughter kicked Valli Forge in the side. The poison blade sank in. The fallen Daughter spasmed briefly and slumped again, foam leaking from her mouth.
"It is decided," said the veiled Daughter.
The DAR picked up the deadmeat and faded away into the darkness.
The Psychopomps pressed around her, kissing, hugging, groping, shouting.
"Jazz-beaux! Jazz-beaux! Jazz-beaux!"
The Psychopomps howled in the desert.
"Come on, let's hit somewhere with intelligent life," Jazzbeaux shouted above the din. "I'm thirsty, and I could use some real party action tonight!"
VI
10 June 1995
"Sergeant," shouted Yorke. "Incoming from Fort Valens."
Quincannon jogged back to the cruiser, belly bobbing between his suspenders. His placket shirt was undone and his yellow bandana was unfolded into a lobster bib.
Night had come down hard on the drive-in and the Josephites were at a trestle table, singing all 48 verses of "The Path of Joseph" before launching into supper. They offered to share their meal with the patrol. The invitation was not mandatory, which Yorke considered a mercy; he'd rather eat K-rations than chow into the gray gruel the sisters were serving up. He could understand why a body would want to think up extra verses of the anthem to put off that first fateful mouthful. Maybe if you wore your mouth out on the hymn, you couldn't taste the gunk.
The sergeant squeezed himself into the cruiser and keyed in his reception sign. The two-way screen irised open and Yorke saw Captain Julie Brittles at her desk, fussing with her waves of hair and the two rows of buttons down the front of her tunic. Brittles was always fidgeting with something.
"Quince," she said, "we've got your report. Good work. Nice and concise. No words surplus to needs."
"Thank you, ma'am. It's all cleared up here. Burnside has done his best with the Josephite mechanics and I reckon the motorwagons will roll out of here come tomorrow. Not much else we can do. Just add the charges to the warrants out on the identified Psychopomps, especially this Bonney fillette."
"Quite. Ms Redd Sainted Harvest has put a bee on our tail about that specific individual. She makes it clear that she doesn't want a lacquered hair on her pointy head hurt in the arrest process."
Quincannon whistled. Brittles gave a captainly shrug.
"My guess is that Ms H wants to do all the hurting in this instance. I understand there is personal business between them…"
Yorke understood it was not a good idea to interfere in Redd Harvest's personal business. The Op was almost as fond of violence as the sort of gangfilth she tracked.
Brittles kind of smiled and said, "Also, Quince, we have polite E-mail from GenTech BioDiv, with regards to an incident in the vicinity of Canyon de Chelly."
"It's in the report, Captain. I've made suggestions as to further investigation. Those 'bots had run into something strange we haven't seen before. We should get a team out there."
Brittles's smile got tight. "GenTech respectfully request we keep our noses out. They'll do the follow-up. The remains of the Knock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots have been officially labelled property of BioDiv. We're soldiers, not scientists. No side issues, Sergeant. Remember the Thin Blue Line."
Quincannon didn't argue. He didn't talk a streak about the boiling point of water either. Rule One of the Cav was to bitch down, not up; that wouldn't be affected by alterations in the fundamental nature of the universe.
"My suggestions are in the report already, Captain."
"We'll handle the deletions, Quince. No need to bother yourself with keyboardwork. We need you in the field, not at a console."
"Yes ma'am."
Brittles wasn't saying something. Yorke saw the shifty look in her eyes. The captain was the kind of old girl who wasn't happy unless she had a long-tongued trooper under her desk working up a shine on her boots. Yorke could tell when she was gearing up to dish out a zeroid assignment nobody in their right mind would accept. Like now.
"Permission to circle back to Valens, ma'am? We've been out for five days now."
"Denied, Quincannon."
Her slight smile had a nasty twist in it. Yorke wondered if there had ever been anything romantic between the Sergeant and the Captain, and whether that had anything to do with the way Quincannon's troop, of which he was a fully paid-up member, got all the scut details. Like checking out Sodom and Gomorrah, Ariz., or escorting the Dirty Protest Skunx chapter of the Maniax to the Alcatraz Express.
"You have fresh orders coming in," Brittles said. "The cruiser will print them out directly."
Captain Brittles cut out and Quincannon said "goodbye" to dead screen. The dashprinter gurgitated a strip of paper. The Quince and Yorke looked at it curling out of its slot. The orders ended and they both sat in the cruiser, putting off the moment. Finally, with a protracted sigh, Quincannon tore the paper free and scanned it, face falling.
He swore, crushed the paper into a ball, dropped it on the floor, swore again, got out of the cruiser, kicked some sand, swore extensively – affrighting a pair of Sisters who happened to be passing – and walked off, muttering thunder and fire.
When the Quince was gone, Yorke picked up the paper, uncrushcd it. and got a sneak preview of the troop's orders. He swore too.
VII
10 June 1995
You could burn up by day and freeze to death at night in the desert. The Josephites built a cooking fire but let it go out. They kept warm by going to bed early, though Tyree was damned if she could see what for.
"No carnal relations," Yorke kept chuckling, "it hardly seems like living at all."
Back at Valens, Yorke had come on to her a couple of times when Nathan was out on patrol. She hadn't let anything develop as long as they were in the same troop. She didn't want to divide loyalties. Still, once she got her cruiser and had maybe a stripe or three on her shoulder, things might change, especially if Nathan dropped out of the running.
She looked into the fire and thought about the future. Everybody seemed to think it was all used up. Even the Josephites were convinced these were the Last Days.
Kirby Yorke was sort of appealing, with his fair hair and crooked smile. But he kept making remarks about the way she filled her Cav pants, and she was bored with that. Every woman in the service got fed up with cracks about her ass. Tight pants were about the only thing you could wear on a mount without risking a stray fold of cloth getting caught in the workings and causing a flip-up crash. Nobody ever passed remarks about the way sergeants and troopers of the male persuasion strained the seats of their uniforms with that species of elephantiasis of the butt so common in Americans of a certain age.
Quincannon had detailed Burnside to requisition firewood and get a pot of recaff going. He'd nastily offered a cup to Brother Bailie, but the man virtuously resisted the temptation. Tyree could tell Bailie missed recaff and probably other things too. You didn't yank out your taste buds and hack off your primary sexual characteristics when you converted to the Path of Joseph, though there were sects which went in for that sort of thing.
And there was that creepy Wiggs weaselling around. From something Sister Maureen had said, she understood he had gone for a dick-ectomy. The snip explained a lot. She wouldn't have liked to meet W. Bond Wiggs before he took the drastic surgical option. He must have been a pedigree hound.
She wondered if it was a good idea to check warrants on the Brethren. Elder Seth quite likely specialised in recruiting former sinners. Poor soul
s might earn the forgiveness of the Lord before troubling themselves with earthly obligations like prison sentences.
Wiggs would look mighty cute in stripes and she just bet his unusual genital arrangement would be boffo in the showers.
"Are we really stuck with these damfools, Quince?" asked Burnside.
Quincannon swilled the last of his recaff about his tin mug and threw it in the sand. "I'm afraid so, Wash. Orders from on high."
"General Haycox?"
"Higher." Quincannon stuck a Premier in his mouth and swivelled eyes to heaven. "The Prezz himself is behind Elder Seth. Hell, he practically gave away Utah. Can you imagine what'd happen if he tried that with New York? He thinks resettlement is a jim-dandy idea and is backing up the Brethren of Joseph in their scheme to rebuild Salt Lake City."
"Why didn't he send the army out to guard this wagon train instead of letting 'em get cut down like dogs by every freakin' stray comes by?"
A match flared and the Quince sucked smoke. "I said North was backing the Josephites, Leona, not that he wanted to spend money on them…"
Everybody laughed. The federal government was reputed to be bankrupt after the last round of trade incentives. Ottokar Proctor, the famous free-market economist, had prodded President North into a policy, endlessly announced in TV ads, called the Big Bonus. Its planks seemed to be high public spending, high unemployment and massive tax cuts. Tyree wasn't a genius-level economist, but it sounded like a Brink-of-Doom spree to her and she wasn't surprised now that it had fallen apart. There was something about Dr Ottokar Proctor that made her skin crawl; he had tiny eyes, like a mean cartoon character.
The Cav were still being paid in scrip, redeemable only at the fort's authorised stores. Valens scuttlebutt was that the government even planned withdrawal of its portion of the US Road Cavalry funding next season, and that private individuals and companies were invited to step in. The rumour mill suggested, the best tenders so far had come from GenTech, Winter Corp and Walt Disney Enterprises. They could be wearing Mickey Mouse shoulder insignia next year.
Tyree would be a lot less happy having to do or die for faceless corporate creeps than for John Taxpayer. The corps owned enough of the world as it was. Somebody had to be on the side of people.
"Ollie made a snazz speech about the resettlement drive last week and swore to cash in on any good publicity there might be if Elder Seth doesn't get himself killed. But he hasn't got his neck stuck out so far he'll look a bozo if the Brothers and Sisters disappear in the Des."
"Why are we along for the ride?"
Quincannon exhaled a cloud of smoke. "We're wagonmasters, Yorke. We're protecting the wagon tram from injuns and varmints and outlaws. Like in the first pioneer days, when the West was a virgin wilderness waiting for the farmers to cultivate it."
"But that was then…"
"It wasn't so long ago. I was born down in Wyoming. Pretty good country it was before it stopped raining and all the grasses dried up and blew away."
"There weren't never no freakin' grass in Wyoming, Quince. I been there. It's worse than here. Just sand dunes."
"It wasn't always like that, Yorke. The Midwest used to feed the world. We had enough for ourselves and some over to spare for other country's needy folks. Not now, though."
"More of your UEs, Quince?" Yorke said, grinning crooked.
"Nope, don't need paranormal phenomena to explain that. We can't blame this on the universe, it's our own sweet fault. It's to do with the freakin' pollution. Back when Trickydick was boosting American industry in the Golden Days of the '60s, Congress squashed a whole raft of laws which regulated where the factories dumped their trash. A man named Ralph Nader poured pollution over himself outside the White House and lit up a match as a protest, but nobody paid any attention. The idea was supposed to keep America competitive with all those hellholes like Poland and Indonesia where eight-year-olds with kleenex masks work in sulphuric acid fumes for ten cents a day. The corps pumped their waste sludge into the rivers and the oceans and the water don't evaporate no more. So it don't rain, and we ain't got no grain nor grazing land. That's why there's a big desert filling up the map of the United States. Funny what folks will do for cold money, ain't it?"
Burnside listened intently to the old man. "Is that why the seas are rising?"
"I suppose so. I was in N'Orleans once, when I was a kid. Right pretty city it was too. Now, I hear it's half-underwater and all the houses are on stilts. Crazy. My daddy fought in Europe in World War II. I was born the year that one ended. He used to tell me he'd taken up arms to make a better world, but I guess this ain't the one he meant."
"They say things are better in Russia."
Quincannon laughed so hard he started coughing, and coughed so hard he brought up a mouthful of brown spit that hissed in the fire.
"Oh yeah, Russia. Boy, that is a good one."
Yorke was hurt. "What did I say?"
Quincannon wouldn't tell him.
"Quince, did you ever see the Mississippi?" asked Burnside. "Back when it was a river, I mean, before the Great Lakes dried up?"
"Yeah, I scanned the Missus-hip, and the Missouri, and Niagara Falls – that's Niagara Muddy Trickle these days – and I remember when you could swim in the sea off Monterey without wearin' a self-contained environment suit and when New York didn't have that damn wall to keep out the stinking water. I remember all those things. But when I die, that'll be it. You can all forget those days and get on with what's here and now. At least Elder Seth is doing that, coon-crazed as he is."
Tyree recalled the sunsets in Elder Seth's eyes and the iron in his voice. She would not have called him crazed. He was too resolute, too scary for that. She supposed it took more than a nice guy to lead a wagon train.
"Do you believe in what he's doing, Quince?" she asked. "In the resettling?"
"Hell, Leona, I wish I could. I hauled in a drunken Comanche from that war party who took on the Bible Belt last month. He said his people have returned to the old ways because the buffalo were coming back. They were going to cover the land like a thick rug. That ain't never gonna happen. And the wheat ain't coming back neither. Just sand, like Kirby Yorke here says. That's what America's gonna be. Just sand. Over a hundred years ago there were people in uniforms just like these helping to build a new nation, to create something. We're here to stand back while it falls to pieces. Not a thankful task, but someone has to be mule-headed enough to do it, and I guess we elected ourselves."
The fire burned low. Out in the Des, something was howling. It might have been the thing from last night, loping along in the hope of mating with Burnside's flute. Tonight, it was louder and hornier and angrier.
"And that," said Quincannon, "sure as hell ain't a freakin' buffalo."
VIII
11 June 1995
Quincannon had a Sons of the Pioneers CD on and hummed along to "Bold Fenian Men". The cruiser was at the head of the motorwagon train as they passed through a place called Moroni. It was just a ghost town. Yorke, out of habit, was about to log it as still unpopulated.
Whenever they scanned signs of new habitation, they were supposed to call in so Valens would schedule a check-out sometime soon. It wasn't exactly illegal to move into a ghost town, but most of the people who thought that sounded like a good idea were into practices that were.
"See up there, Yorke, the roofs."
On Main Street, the frontages were topped with soot, where fires had once been. There was still a little smoke. Some of the charred boards were rimmed with glowing edges.
"Looks like we missed a party."
There had been torches in the streetlamps. Yorke scanned the buildings with the cruiser's sensors. There were no body-heat blips.
"Whoever it was, they're long gone. Quince. Want to stop and do a recce?"
The sergeant pondered.
"Nope, just log a note. It's another information bit. You never know, maybe it's the piece someone somewhere is looking for to complete his puzzle."
"This patrol is dragging on, Quince. Do you reckon we'll ever get back to Valens?"
Quincannon grunted and shrugged. None of the troop were happy with this detail. Playing nursemaid to the Josephites seemed too much like walking through downtown Detroit or Pittsburgh with a "Shoot Me" sign picked out on the back of your jacket.
The Prezz might have given Elder Seth Utah to play with, but he hadn't guaranteed to clear out the former owners or any gun-toting vermin that might be left behind. The truth was that the President of the United States of America was only something like 112th Most Powerful Individual in the World these days. He ranked somewhere below most GenTech mid-management execs and could probably put less soldiers in the field of combat than Didier Brousset or the fabled Exalted Bullmoose. Corporate smoothies and psychotic punks ran the world and the Cav was one of the few hold-outs against any and all factions.
Admittedly, it had been quiet so far today. Quincannon pretended to be asleep in the passenger seat, but kept stirring to check the scanners and change the music. Burnside and Tyree were talking back-and-forth on open channels and Yorke was getting just a little jealous listening in. Guys in cruisers were supposed to pull all the tail, not guys on the mounts. It was a Cav tradition. Yorke felt he was letting the troop down by allowing Burnside to make time with Leona. She had cold-shouldered him so far, but he knew he was well in there. Nathan Stack was more or less definitively out of the picture. After this patrol was over, he would be making some definitive moves, and then he would have some stories for the bunkhouse. If this patrol was ever over.
Tyree was telling Burnside about a vacation she'd taken in Nicaragua with Nathan Stack. She was full of praise for the Central American Confederation, and said the people were less personally hostile to Norteamericanos than you'd think. And they had the real stuff, coffee. Yorke worked up a little jealous glitch, imagining Stack sharing a pot of coffee with Leona Tyree. He couldn't remember ever seeing her out of uniform. In Managua, she might even have worn a dress. It was hard to imagine, but pleasant…