by Victor Koman
I stepped over to her and knelt down.
"Congratulations," she said, handing me the shares. "You now own controlling interest in a failed spacecraft company."
Across the field of green, George stirred as if waking from a deep sleep. One of the guards lifted him up while the other deftly retrieved the pistol.
"Let's go." Ann shook her hair back and crammed the last few chips into the bag. She turned to go, only to bump up against the arm of a slender black man. He reacted as though nothing more than a breeze had wafted by.
A few men and women glanced at Ann as we waded through the crowds toward the casino exit. Their gaze would light on her, then wander, their expressions growing blank.
My last view of George was of him being escorted to the security office by three gentlemen in nicely tailored black tuxes. He looked as if he'd been deflated and hung on a coathook.
"You rolled him like a drunk," I said.
She shrugged. "Poker is a lot like assassination, Dell. Sometimes someone gets wiped out."
"And assassination is a lot like poker-you've got to understand the minds of all the players." I spoke quietly, waiting for her to convert her winnings at the cashier. "What I've been trying to figure out all along is your part in this. A little roughing up by a priest wouldn't drive most people to such efforts."
She said nothing. The cashier calmly wrote out a chit. He might have been playing with the money all by himself for all the notice he gave Ann. You'd think they had women shot at every night.
She deposited the chit in her handbag. When she looked at me, it was with a flush of excitement. The light in her eyes warmed, like fire seen dimly through ice.
"I've got a lot more than that to get even with, Dell. A lot more than a little pushing around."
I stepped out of the casino with her at my side. "Let me guess," I said. "Your parents were Bible-beating fundamentalists, right?"
She grimaced. "Hardly."
"Then you possess the ultimate Electra complex, which you try to sublimate by helping to murder your heavenly Father."
She laughed. Her laughter grew louder and higher until it cracked.
"Not exactly," she said after a moment. All humor had drained from her face, as if someone had slugged her. She said nothing more until we separated to go to our hotel rooms.
The next day we visited my rocket factory.
17
Starfinder
STRATODYNE CORPORATION, INC.
ALTERNATIVE TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS
NO TRESPASSING!
"They don't encourage much walk-in trade, do they?" I stared at the peeling sign on the rust-stained gate. The cyclone fencing could have been torn apart with a buttonhook. A formidable padlock connected the two ends of a chain that could have been cut in half with a pair of scissors.
Ann reached over to the steering wheel to honk the horn.
"Not much need for security out here," she said. "But they try."
A faded guardhouse stood beyond the gate. A bent old black man in a grey uniform stepped out, unlocked the gate, and stepped over to my side of the Chrysler.
"We called," Ann said. "This is Mr. Ammo."
The old man nodded. "That's right. That's right." He walked back to the gate to open it all the way.
"Sort of lonely out here, isn't it?" I said.
The old man pointed at his guard shack. "That thing's full of a mess of books. Time to read's what I got. I'm seein' the world." He waved us through as if in a dream. "Seein' the world."
The path to the factory was unpaved. We kicked up enough dirt to signal our movement for miles. We wouldn't have to worry about that, though. Clouds darkened the sky overhead. The streets in Claremont a few miles back had been slick from morning rain.
A drop of water spattered against the windshield like an angry bug. A few more droplets descended from the sky to hit the car or make little dust explosions on the road. A starling hopped out of our way, cursing the twin intrusions of car and rain.
We drove into a narrow canyon that widened around a bend, revealing the vast StratoDyne manufacturing empire. A decaying assembly building covered an acre or so of real estate. Another acre of unpaved parking lot abutted its south side. A sloping concrete wall about a mile away separated the building from a circular concrete launching pad.
One lone thirty-year-old Buick, wearing more rust than paint, snuggled up close to the building. A crow cawed wearily, circling about the facility dodging raindrops. It landed on the roof of the building to seek sanctuary under a girder.
I drove down an incline toward the Buick. The rain had already begun to drag the road dust down the shoulders in little rivulets.
I parked in front of the other car. After a quick sprint, we reached a door marked
General Office
, standing halfway open. A fluorescent lamp flickered inside. The rain fell around the building like a collapsing world.
Ann pulled the door shut. Her khaki jumpsuit looked like a leopard's spotted hide. The brass buttons and buckles that served as functional accents glinted in the unsteady pulsations of the indoor light.
The office was empty. The intermittent buzz of the lamp could not compete with the sound of the rain outside.
I looked around. Vacant chairs faced naked typewriters. Paper trays squatted on desks like starving animals, waiting to be filled. The wall clock was an hour and a half slow. Someone had once tossed sharpened pencils at a poster of a NASA space shuttle, where they still remained stuck. The words
Good Riddance
had been scrawled across the poster. I wondered whether they referred to the abortive NASA fiasco or whether a disgruntled employee had fired a parting shot. I suppose it didn't matter in either case.
Somewhere amidst the noise of the downpour, the sound of a radio faintly drifted into the room. It played a forgotten tune by an obscure rock band.
I glanced at Ann.
She shrugged. "Follow the music?"
I nodded.
The wet bottoms of my gum-soled shoes made annoying squeaking sounds against the cement floor. Ann's boot-heels clicked in pleasant contrast. Neither of us could have sneaked up on anyone.
I felt like an explorer in a haunted tomb.
I preceded Blondie through the rear door of the office. It led directly to the main assembly room. Almost an acre of open space spread before us under a vaulted roof. It would have made an impressive indoor tennis court, though I'd seen larger ones.
Partitions hung here and there, obstructing our forward view. Looking up at the ceiling was the only way to see the entire span of the place. We weaved past several of the barriers. Then we saw it.
It lay there on its landing gear-white and gleaming and smooth and graceful. Like a giant dove, its wings were swept back in anticipation of flight. The cockpit stood twenty feet above us-a multifaceted gem inlaid against sleek pearl.
"It's beautiful," Ann whispered.
A deep voice behind us said, "It's a piece of junk."
We turned to see a tall man in a pair of greasy red coveralls. He was young, with the usual vague tan that typified nearly everyone from L.A. He sat next to the radio, legs outstretched, leaning against a pile of titanium struts. His fingers were interlaced behind his head.
"Junk?" My shoes squeaked with my turn.
He stood. "Old man Geislinger had a good idea, building low-cost space shuttles. Only problem was, NASA didn't want anyone competing with their overpriced jalopies."
I put a foot up on a crate. "They didn't like that, I suppose."
"No, sir! The Federal Trade Commission nearly drove the old man to ruin. The only money he made was in the countereconomy. When he finally
ad astraed
, the company went up for grabs, and George Turner tried greenmailing a leveraged buyout to drive the stock price up."
"Doesn't seem to have worked," said Ann, surveying the remains of the factory.
"No, ma'am. George was never much of a businessman. The gre
enmail blew up in his face. The management revolted and unfurled their golden parachutes. He wound up stuck with a gutted company and no one to run it. Then the Hudson Phoenix shot the cost of spaceflight through the floor."
He stood to stretch, sticking his hand out to me. "The name's Canfield. I piloted some of the old man's shuttles until Georgie boy took over and I got put back in electronics."
He gave me a firm, friendly grip and an open, unpretentious smile. His prematurely grey hair was short and neat.
I introduced Ann and myself, then asked, "Can you fly this thing?"
He gazed up at the shuttle. "If I were suicidal. The old man had us building good, solid spacecraft. None of that multiple redundancy crap you find on most ships. He built them cheap and sturdy, and they worked just fine. Then Turner comes in and decides to comply with FTC regulations. It was downhill after that."
I didn't want to hear the entire history of StratoDyne. "What would it take to get you to fly this thing?"
"Modifications."
"Such as?" Ann asked.
He eyed her up and down, then let his gaze drift to the spacecraft. "I call her
Starfinder
. I like that better than
S-D/X-93A.
" He stepped over to pat the underside of the hulk. "Yeah, a lot of mod-"
One of the glossy black tiles fell to the floor.
He picked the piece up. "George thought it would be wiser to copy the NASA way of doing things. Junked the old man's spray-on ablation that worked so well. I'd want to go back to that."
"Fine," I said. "How much will it all cost?"
"I'll do most of the electrical work myself, if you're really serious about this. The rest will probably run about a million or so. That's in Panpacific dollars, mind you." He tossed the tile into an oil drum filled with trash. "Where'll you be sending her?"
"To crash the gates of heaven and kill God."
He laughed, then said in a wistful tone, "I'd pay that price to get into space again."
I frowned. Was I getting another kook in on this? "We'll be taking her up to synchronous orbit. A satellite repair flight."
Canfield rubbed his jaw thoughtfully. "Lot of junk up there. Which one do you plan to retrieve?"
I smiled. "I don't plan to retrieve anything. It'll be an in-orbit modification, which we'll discuss nearer our launch date." I took a moment to eyeball the shuttle again. "I'm putting you in charge of hiring the right people as of now."
"Okay. Everyone's files are still in the office. I'll call the good ones back." He jerked a thumb toward
Starfinder
. "Her lifting tanks are still in Guatemala. Turner refused to bribe the local bureaucrats after the last flight. Other than that, we'll probably need a lead time of five month-"
"Can't," I said. "Five weeks max. We launch on New Year's Eve."
He gulped audibly. "Okay. Umm... five weeks." He withdrew a small, bent notebook and a pen from his flight suit. "December thirty-one, nineteen ninety-nine. Hour to be determined." He looked up from the notepad. "Say-you're not involved with those ads I've been hearing on the radio, are you?"
"Open conspiracy," Ann muttered, looking away.
"Something about God dying on January first?"
I kept my mouth shut.
"Are they serious about killing God?" he asked.
"Were you?" I said.
We left him staring at us, his face a puzzled field of thought.
18
Magick
I spent more and more time either accessing information on plaques or sitting in the library in Old Downtown. I preferred being at the library. Sitting there in bad lighting, wedged between stacks of real books and old drunks, I absorbed all I could about religion, psychology, ESP, drugs....
Each previous assassination had required extensive research and planning. This one turned out to be no different. The preliminaries usually consisted of surveillance-watching the victim to gain knowledge of his routines.
In this case, the Victim was well hidden. When it came time for the confrontation, I'd have to be ready for any possibility.
I had just finished scanning a book-the umpteenth by yet another illiterate who claimed he was able "to intimately contact" the Holy Spirit that was sending UFOs to tell us to eat wheat germ and bean sprouts and refrain from sex, profit, and other base urges.
I threw the book against a stack to my left. Nut literature toppled, spilling across the worn table. Another library patron, using a sack of plain-wrap gin for a pillow, roused a bit to eye me blearily.
I realized that I still didn't believe the crap.
The thought hit me like a set of knucks. Here I was up against God Almighty-encountering portents in the sky, priests bent on mayhem, and satanic rites amidst nuclear rubble.
And I still didn't believe that God was anywhere to be found.
"It's just fear," Ann said when I told her about it that night. We sat in the bar of Casino Grande.
"Fear of failure?"
"No. I mean that believing in god is just fear. Fear of the unknown. And no matter how much anyone professes
not
to believe in god, deep down there is that trace of fear of the unknown that impels the belief in an unknowable power beyond man. It's the existence of that fear that you must believe in. That is what you must attack."
Even though she'd been meeting with promotional people all day, she still maintained a glow of freshness and energy about her. She toyed with her champagne glass and smiled.
"In fact," she said, "rather than conjuring up a belief, perhaps you merely ought to suspend your
dis
belief temporarily." Her smiled faded into seriousness. "Magical ceremonies and rituals are designed to create the sort of atmosphere you'd need."
I snorted. "Magic? You mean the sort of theatrical drivel Zack performs? Whom shall I cut open?"
She stopped fingering her glass to shake her head emphatically. "No. What he engaged in was a black mass-a Christian heresy. It is a magical ritual, but one hopelessly ineffective and crude."
She leaned over the table toward me. She seemed a touch drunk.
"I'm speaking of the Old Ways. The craft that Bridget preserves and practices."
I stared at her. "Witches?" This was getting to be too much. "Broomsticks and black cats and cauldrons?"
"We needn't take the cauldron, Dell." Having broached the subject, she took another sip of her drink, allowing her cool gaze to warm a bit. "You've read enough by now to realize that the legends of witchcraft consist of a lot of misinterpreted myth. I suspect the only broom Bridget owns is used to sweep out the store."
I polished off my bourbon and spent a moment surveying the patrons of the bar. No one appeared to be eavesdropping, though the wonders of electronics could easily have had me fooled.
"I had planned to do away with Him scientifically."
"Remember what Bridget said. `Two great forces must join and two great forces must clash.'"
"Is that the final piece of the puzzle? If it is,
I'm
supposed to produce it with a flourish, and
you're
supposed to say, `Astounding, Holmes.'"
She gazed at me with searching eyes for a long moment. She looked disappointed.
"Final piece or not," she said, "the answer to the puzzle is this. The two great forces that must clash are good and evil."
"I suppose I'm on the side of good? Look who hired me." I ordered another drink.
"Sometimes evil aims can unwittingly set good actions into motion," she said. "Besides, Zacharias changed his mind after thinking about the consequences." She plowed on, undeterred. "The two great forces that must unite are science and magic. The roots of god reach deep into magic and myth. Without magic, no amount of science can affect him."
I shrugged my weary shoulders. Her theory was no more ridiculous than anything else I'd considered.
"All right, angel. I'll give it a whirl. Wh
at have I got to lose?"
Ann stared gloomily into her drink and didn't answer.
19
Crone
"Out, out,
out
of my store!"
Bridget appeared less than thrilled to see us again. Kasmira-dressed in a black-full length peasant dress-watched silently from behind the cash register.
Plywood boards still covered the broken windows of Trismegistos. Wide strips of masking tape held gray chipboard in place over holes in the glass counters.
"Things have been rough, haven't they?" Ann said.
A pile of damaged merchandise lay on a card table. A sign hung from it, reading,
THE
"WE DIDN'T EXPECT THE SPANISH INQUISITION"
SALE-
ALL RED TAGGED ITEMS HALF PRICE!
Bridget looked at me with poorly veiled unease. "I gave you your damned message," she said. "What more do you want?"
"Your help."
"Help in what? Your wild-gander chase? That insane advertising of yours?"
I bit the inside of my cheek, glancing over at Ann. She merely rolled her icy blues.
Yeah
, I thought-
I know.
"We need a spell," she said. "A powerful spell. You have the knowledge. You have the power. Please help us." She reached out to touch the old woman's arm. Her frigid eyes warmed to pools of imploring dewiness. The angel really knew how to lay it on.
Bridget sighed miserably. "It's useless to fight. He has the whole world in His grip. Our influence is dying, crumbling." She shook her aged head. "Those few of us who have held on for so long have seen the light grow dimmer year by year, age by age. Perhaps this millennium
is
the Equinox of the Gods."