A Fistful of Strontium

by Jaspre Bark

  "That's just for starters," the guard shouted. "I won't tell you again. Now lay down your weapons!"

  "What are we going to do?" cried Fingers, an edge of panic to his voice. "They've got us over a barrel. We can't get to them through that crowd and we daren't fire on them for fear of hitting innocent people. In the meantime, they're just picking us off."

  "Listen to me," said Johnny, addressing the hostage prisoners directly. "Your liberty is now in your own hands. By my guess you outnumber the guards behind you by at least six to one. It doesn't matter how well-armed they are, you can still bring them down by sheer weight of numbers."

  A blaster bolt shot through the crowd directly at him and Johnny hit the ground as it exploded over his head in a burst of fierce heat.

  "I don't die that easily," he boasted. "As you can see, their weapons aren't infallible. What do you think will happen if our attempts to liberate you fail? If you thought you had it bad before, think how bad it's going to get. Is that any kind of life to cling to? Would you rather live on your knees, or fight on your feet?"

  Another volley of blaster bolts shot out, but most of them misfired or crackled off into the sky without hitting anything. A scuffle was obviously going on at the centre of the crowd. More and more of the inmates turned inwards to engulf the guards, months and years of resentment at their mistreatment ignited by Johnny's words. Their fear turned to righteous fury, but more than that, they were motivated by hope; hope that the Salvationists had suddenly brought them.

  The battle was over.

  The remaining guards dotted about the camp surrendered without firing another shot. The inmates could hardly believe they were free. Many of them wept openly, giving vent to the grief that they had kept locked up inside them for so long.

  Johnny despatched several parties to hunt down and capture or kill the guards who had fled. He didn't want word of the camp's liberation getting back to General Rising and Kit until it had to. Then he went to check on Youngblood.

  The barracks had been turned into a makeshift infirmary where the camp's one physician was attending the wounds of the injured Salvationists at gunpoint.

  "Is this really necessary?" he asked Johnny, indicating the blaster that was levelled at his head. "I was practically a prisoner here myself and I'm just as glad to be freed." The man was nearly a norm. The only thing that distinguished him was the extra hand that sprouted from the end of each of his arms. Johnny nodded to the volunteer who was covering him and she stood down.

  Johnny went to Youngblood's bedside with the physician. "How is he doing?" he asked the doctor.

  "Not too good. I'm afraid some cadaveric tissue got into the wounds and poisoned his blood. He doesn't have long."

  Youngblood motioned for Johnny to come closer and Johnny bent down to talk to him. "This wretched blood of mine, hey Johnny?" Youngblood whispered. "I knew it would be the death of me one day. I let you down, I'm afraid. I couldn't hang on to this life that you saved for me."

  "No," said Johnny. "No, you didn't let me down at all."

  "All the same," Youngblood continued, "the short life I have lived, since you rescued me, has been fuller and more fulfilling than anything I've ever known. Whatever it cost, it was worth twice the price we paid for it."

  Youngblood even managed a faint smile before his eyes rolled up into his head and he was pronounced dead.

  Johnny closed the young mutant's eyelids and walked outside. He looked at the corpses of all the mutants strewn about the camp: mutants he had helped norms to kill. He thought about how much this war had cost him so far. He knew it had hardly even begun.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  DOUBLE BLUFF

  "You are surrounded. Dismount from the animal and lie face down on the ground with your hands above your head!"

  Middenface took a good look around him, careful to turn his head slowly and not to make any sudden moves. The soldier was telling the truth, but he had already known that. He counted a dozen more emerging from the rocks around him. A dozen blasters were trained upon him and he only had his knife and club. He had walked into a trap. He would be dead before he could take out more than four of them.

  Everything was going according to plan.

  After Johnny's group had left for the internment camp, Middenface had waited in the nearly deserted volcano base for an hour, staying out of the Consoler's way. He would have more than enough of his company to look forward to.

  At the agreed time, the pair had climbed the ladder and squeezed down the passageway to the camp entrance. Middenface had walked a short way ahead, alert for any sign of threat. Since every other able-bodied Salvationist had gone off to fight, it was up to Middenface to make sure that the Consoler was protected. Their camp and their leader had never been so vulnerable.

  He had also hoped that, by putting some distance between him and his companion, he could discourage conversation. No such luck. The Consoler had been in a contemplative mood and had insisted on grilling Middenface about his past on Earth of all things. Then, faced with a truculent silence, the Consoler had begun to guess the answers for himself, and came uncomfortably close to the truth.

  "I know what it's like to be brought up in an atmosphere of violence," he said. "I know what it does to you. It programmes you to believe there is no other way. It erodes your ability to reason beyond the most immediate links of cause and effect."

  At first, Middenface had thought he was being insulted, but it was worse than that. He was being pitied. And not for the endless struggle that had been his childhood on the rough streets of Glasgow, but for what that life had made of him. It was too much.

  "Listen, pal," he growled, rounding on his tormentor, "ye can say whit ye like aboot me, but ye insult ma upbringing, and ye're insultin' ma dear auld granny. And anyone who insults ma granny gits tae pass his teeth through his bladder, dae ye see whit I'm saying?"

  The Consoler saw.

  Middenface had forgotten about the animals Elephant Head had mentioned. Certainly, he had seen none around the camp, but the Consoler had led him to a concealed cave a short distance away which had been kitted out as a makeshift stable. Straw was strewn about its floor, tethering posts hammered into the stone. The six beasts inside had seemed too frail to bear his weight, let alone the Consoler's too, but they were stronger than they looked - and faster.

  They had been christened heffalopes, and were indigenous to Miltonia. They were lean and wiry with hungry looks on their doglike faces and two pairs of double-jointed legs. The heffalopes were easily domesticated, but the Consoler had warned Middenface to hold tight to him all the same. He soon found out why. One prod and their mount had shot out of the cave opening like a bullet. It was incredibly agile and surefooted on the treacherous rocks, bounding between plateaus with a zigzag motion that made Middenface's stomach lurch. At one point, to his horror, the heffalope had leapt over a cliff edge. Somehow, it had found a safe way down, ricocheting between a series of footholds that were almost invisible to Middenface.

  The Consoler sat in front of him, holding the reins. He'd been jabbering about something but with the wind in his ears Middenface hadn't heard a word. For that reason as much as any, he'd decided he liked this method of transport, and once he was used to predicting the heffalope's erratic motions and shifting his weight to counter them, he had been able to relax and enjoy it.

  An hour passed before he knew it. The Consoler brought the heffalope to a sudden but graceful halt and announced that it was time to switch places. Middenface had been apprehensive at first, but the creature reacted quite decently to his amateur tuggings.

  Once he'd got used to controlling it, Middenface began to concentrate on the next step of the plan: to knock out his co-traveller.

  They had used a preparation provided by Moosehead from the same plant that had almost killed Middenface. For a minute or more, Middenface had been certain that it did not work. Then the Consoler's many eyelids had drooped and he'd slipped into a deep sleep. Middenface lashed h
im to the back of the heffalope with a rope. He kept their speed down to a trot after that, but he hadn't had too far to go in any case.

  They had been following a course described to Middenface and Johnny in the air cruiser on their way into the mountains. Rising's lieutenant had been circumspect about what lay at its end, but Johnny had guessed that there was a military base out here somewhere. Sure enough, Middenface's keen eyes soon found a concealed camera. He figured he was at the edge of the mountains now, and outside the magnetinium field. His every instinct had urged caution, but to make this work, he had to act as if he had no reason to distrust the government's mutant militia. He flashed a cheery grin at the lens and trotted on.

  The soldiers had appeared less than three minutes later.

  "Steady on, fellas," Middenface said as he struggled to climb off the heffalope's back while keeping his hands in sight. For his trouble, he caught his foot in a stirrup and almost fell flat on his face.

  "Ah'm a frien'. Name's Middenface McNulty. Ye call the palace and ask General Rising aboot me." He nodded toward the unconscious and bound form of the Consoler. "Ah've fetched him a prisoner."

  Middenface's return to the palace was in very different circumstances to his first visit. He arrived incognito in the back of an army transport, and was all but smuggled in through a side entrance while two mutant soldiers carried the Consoler between them. There was no talk of taking weapons from him, but then again, what use were his knife and club when everyone else had blasters?

  He was met by Rising, who was flanked by two guards. The general led Middenface to a large service elevator which creaked and whined its way down to the second sublevel. Here, they were greeted by stale air, reinforced walls and sterile lighting panels that buzzed quietly. Middenface filled the silence with an account of his great victory over his prisoner. He concentrated on the fun parts, almost getting carried away as he explained how he had punched the Consoler repeatedly in the face. He sighed sadly at the fact that none of it was true. Fortunately, the target of his imaginary violence was so mutated that nobody could tell if he was bruised or not.

  The Consoler began to come round as he was manhandled into a tiny, dark cell. Without waiting for him to struggle, his bearers dashed him to the ground and kicked him into submission before closing the heavy door on him.

  "Was tha' necessary?" protested Middenface, realising his mistake as half of Rising's eyes narrowed in suspicion. "Ah mean," he added quickly, "ye said the poor guy'd been brainwashed by them Salvationist scunners, it's no' his fault he wa' helpin' them."

  "Nevertheless," said Rising, "he is an enemy of the state. We can't afford to take chances with him. Now, if you would follow me, please."

  Rising led Middenface to a small room a short distance away. It was furnished with a table and two chairs, and reminded him uncomfortably of the interrogation room at the spaceport. Johnny had warned him to expect something like this.

  Rising dismissed the two soldiers, but his own guards took up positions inside the room, flanking the door. He motioned to Middenface to take one of the seats and lowered himself into the other.

  "I do apologise for this," he said with a smile, still faking congeniality. "I know you must be tired and hungry, but there are one or two matters we must clear up." Warily, Middenface nodded his assent.

  "May I ask what happened to your partner?" Rising asked first.

  "Och, Johnny Alpha!" Middenface spat with feigned distaste. "Always too fond of the chatter, that one was. The Consoler here, he brainwashed him too. Kept tellin' him how his group were the injured party, can ye credit it? Ye ask me, it's a bit rich fer any norms tae be complainin' o' persecution after all they've done tae oor kind."

  Rising was keeping his expression carefully blank, but Middenface detected a flicker of approval there.

  "Ah said tae Johnny," he continued, "Ah said, 'This ain't oor business, let's just dae what we came here fer an' collect oor bounty,' but he wouldnae have it. So, I saw ma chance, an' I bagged the Consoler fer myself and scarpered."

  As Rising mulled over his story, Middenface sat back, proud to have got the words out in the right order. Even as the eight-eyed soldier opened his mouth to speak, though, Middenface started and blurted out: "Och, ah fergot tae say, ah reckon it's 'cos Johnny ain't so mutated as us, 'cos he can pass for a norm sometimes, that he fits in better wi' that Salvationist lot."

  Johnny had told him to say that. He said it would help. Middenface was glad he had remembered in time.

  A look of bemusement crossed Rising's face but it passed as his eyes hardened. "There's something I'd like you to explain to me. Yesterday morning, two mutants attacked a resettlement camp in the mountains and broke out three illegals. We have no pictures, of course, but the descriptions given by the guards are uncomfortably familiar."

  Middenface nodded. Johnny had prepped him for this question too. "That wa' Johnny's idea," he said, playing nervously with his hands. "We found yer camp while oot lookin' for the Salvationist base, an' Johnny pointed out that some o' the people in there, being treated so bad like, they were mutants."

  "Lesser mutants," interjected Rising sharply.

  "Aye, well, ah didnae twig that till later on. Johnny said that maybe this had somethin' tae dae with Identi Kit, an' we should break out a couple of these, um, lesser muties, fer questioning like."

  "And you just went along with him?"

  "Aye, that's right." Middenface nodded eagerly. If Rising was going to prompt him, then this would be easy.

  "And what about Identi Kit? Did you find him?"

  "Oh, we found him all right. He was with the Salvationists, like ye said he would be. Running aboot in his own body like he thought he were untouchable. He came oot wi' some cock-and-bull story aboot not being who we thought he was." Middenface stared into Rising's centremost eyes as if daring him to react to that, but the general revealed nothing. "Then he tried tae run so ah shot him," he concluded bluntly.

  Rising raised all eight of his eyebrows. "Shot him?"

  "Wi' an arrow," said Middenface, realising the flaw in his story. "Johnny took the head so we'd have proof to tak' back tae the Doghouse. Ah just hope he comes tae his senses soon. I wouldnae wanna have tae go after him tae git that head back, y'ken what I'm saying? An' speaking of collectin'..."

  Rising nodded. "You've done us a great service by rescuing the Consoler. The whole of Miltonia is grateful to you."

  "Aye, well, ye can git that Nose Job guy doon here tae show me how grateful," Middenface said eagerly. "Fifty thousand, we agreed."

  "Mr Johnson is in conference with the president at the moment," said Rising. Middenface scowled his disappointment. "He knows you're here and he'll be with you as soon as possible. In the meantime, there are a few more things I need to know from you. The location of the Salvationists' base, for example."

  "After ah get ma fifty thou," said Middenface firmly, "and ma hardware back, and ye'd better no' have been mistreatin' it or there'll be some laldy dished out."

  "Patience, Mr McNulty. I'm sure you know the president well enough to trust that he will honour his debt." Middenface bit back a retort and forced a smile. "As for your equipment, it is safe in our stores and will be returned to you shortly."

  Rising pushed back his chair and stood. "While you're waiting, I thought you might care to sit in on my interrogation of the Consoler. I'm sure you'll be interested to hear everything he has to say for himself."

  Middenface groaned inwardly.

  The next hour was one of the longest of his life. His one consolation was that the Consoler's unflappable loquaciousness was, if anything, even more exasperating to Rising than it had been to him. And the more exasperated the general became, the calmer the Salvationists' leader appeared to be in contrast.

  "I have already explained," he said with infinite patience, "that I believe in non-violent protest. I have certainly not sanctioned any acts of terrorism, and if any such acts were carried out by my people, then I am deeply sorry."


  "If?" roared Rising. "Is that what those criminals told you? That they were squeaky clean, that this is all a conspiracy?"

  "I have also explained that I am not an unwitting dupe as you believe. It was I who formed our organisation."

  "And you expect me to believe that you spend your time sitting around your campsite writing protest songs and painting up banners?"

  For the first time, the Consoler looked uncomfortable. He squirmed in his seat, unable to hold his interrogator's stare. Sensing that he was onto something, Rising leaned closer to him, his nose wrinkling into a snarl.

  "You're planning something, aren't you? What is it? Some contingency for if you were captured? What did those little fanatics say they'd do, storm the presidential palace?" The general laughed at the absurdity of his own suggestion, and then his face hardened again. "I think you should face it, Consoler, you're on your own. The Salvationists don't care about you. They were using you! It's just you and me now, and I can promise you things will go a lot easier for you if you tell me what I want to know."

  He barked out the questions again; the questions he had asked a dozen times already. How many Salvationists were there? What weapons did they have? Where did they intend to strike next? Did they have friends in the government? And, over and over again, where were they hiding out?

  Sandwiched between the general's guards, Middenface shifted from foot to foot. For now, Rising seemed determined to crack the Consoler almost for the sake of the victory. Ultimately, though, he would have to accept defeat, and then he would turn to his other source of information: his supposed ally.

  It wasn't supposed to be like this. Kit, in his Nose Job guise, was meant to have been here by now, lured by his brother's presence. What was keeping him? Could he suspect a trap? The attack on the immigration camp would have begun long ago. Only the magnetinium field, with its ability to block radio communication, was keeping word of it from Rising. He wouldn't remain ignorant of events forever, though. How would he react when he found out? Would he put two and two together and throw Middenface into a cell with his other prisoner?