by Jack Yeovil
She wished she could see his face.
"No, really. You can live to an old age, have kids, rent a house on the beach, get into politics."
The rifle wavered. She knew he wasn't going to bite on it.
"Rodriguez, you don't have to be an asshole. It's not a contractual obligation."
The gun jumped, but she wasn't in front of it when it went off.
She extended the forefingers of her right hand in a V, and jabbed at Rodriguez's faceplate. The reinforced darkglass shattered, and she felt warmth around her hand as her durium-laced fingerbones stabbed through the man's skull.
Wiping her fingers off on her trousers, she told him, "You didn't have to die. You didn't have to."
0001-0001.
She knew the procedure. There would be some top cat out there in the desert, sealed up tight in his High Performance Auto, sitting out the slaughter and counting the expenses. Mr Holderness or Mr Manolo, she expected.
There was supposed to be no way to get at the bastard. But she felt she had to try. She needed some leverage to help her attack the Op's ve-hickle. She looked around for a tool, and found a soldier's dropped bayonet. It still had a good edge.
It would have to do.
0001-0001.
Manolo stabbed the dashbuttons, intending to blank the reading. Only one figure disappeared.
0001.
It was 0001 in blue. His own reading. As long as the number was there on the dashscreen, he was alive.
He would have to sit it out, but he would live. He'd spend hours down at the Pyramid talking through his emotions on this one. There would be untold anguish to purge in the group sessions. But Gari would help him cope with it. Guilt was no good, he knew. He had to quash that, and learn to feel good about himself again. That was the main thing, to feel good about yourself.
He wished he hadn't blasted so many beers. His bladder was full to straining, and there was no catheter-tube in the DeLorean. He would have to piss in the backseat, and that was imported Argentine leather hand-tooled by a specialist flown in from Tijuana.
He should never have taken on this penny-ante bounty hunt. Bob Holderness wouldn't have touched it. He had wanted the Agency to specialize in political cases. That was probably why he wasn't around any more. Manolo had always known there were men in suits behind the Surf Nazis, but he'd never carried the vendetta to them.
When he got out of here, he would make that up. He would track down the boardroom where the orders were issued, and he would declare all-out war on whichever Japcorp or state authority had been behind the singe.
The car shifted, and something clanged. She was out there. Jessamyn Bonney.
She couldn't get in, but she was out there. The ve-hickle rang with her blows. She would get frustrated soon, and go away. Bronson Manolo could wait her out.
He had chewed his moustache ragged. His teeth were clogged with hair. That wasn't supposed to happen. His barber-surgeon had guaranteed the attachments against all eventualities.
The banging continued.
0001.
Manolo muttered to himself. "Home freeee, you can't get meee…"
She would have to be an H-M exec to get through the DeLorean's brain, and unseal the system.
The banging stopped, and there was peace for a moment. She must be giving up, walking away. Manolo had pressed his bleep-alert The Insurance people would be here within minutes.
There was a hum of machinery, and a hiss of expelling air.
It wasn't possible. The car was rolling over and kicking its legs for her. The doorseals receded, the shutters vanished.
Manolo squirmed, pushing himself back against the seat. He didn't even have a gun.
A breeze passed through, as the doors raised like beetle-wings.
"Ommmmm," Manolo said, trying to attune his thoughts. Positive thinking could make this go away. "Ommmmm."
She was a dark silhouette outside. She threw something onto the seat beside him.
It was a human hand, raggedly severed at the wrist.
"Open sesame," she said, slipping into the car.
0001.
0000.
0000.
0000.
PART FOUR: JESSE FRANKENSTEIN'S DAUGHTER
I
The Monastery of Santa de Nogueira had been imported stone by stone from Portugal to the Gila Desert, Arizona, in 1819, and abandoned after the Mexican-American War. Parts of it were eight hundred years old, the basements were half-filled with fine sand and whatever lived there, lived alone. When the heart of America dried up and blew away, things didn't change much in the Gila Desert. But the sand was thinning: the bones of dead monks were drifting to the surface of the pit that had once been a graveyard, while the headstones sank slowly towards the bedrock.
This was the Holy-Place-From-Over-the-Great-Water. It was exactly as it had been drawn in the family for generations. Hawk-That-Settles knew it at once. He was struck by the way that the buffalo hide pictures from the last century, drawn by his great-great grandfathers, showed the monastery as it was now, in 1997. This was not only the place, this was the Time.
He had walked the length of the state, his waterskin slung over his shoulder, keeping away from the roads and the gangcults. The Navaho had long since learned that the best way to live was to stick to the land no white man would want to take from him. Taking his direction from the moon and the stars, he had kept on course. By day, under his sunshade, he had Dreamwalked ahead, learning where the sandrat nests were, divining which waterholes were safe.
Once, he had sensed a presence following him on the trail. A man on a horse. Perhaps a ghost, perhaps not. For two full days. Hawk and the horseman travelled the same course, just out of each other's sight, but then, one evening, the presence was gone. Hawk almost missed the stranger. They had been a match, an Indian and a cowboy. There had been no Darkness in the stranger, and Hawk recalled that one of the spirit warriors who would stand with the One-Eyed White Girl in the last battle was called the Man Who Rides Alone.
Otherwise, it was an uneventful trek. Hawk slept with his guards up, and was not much bothered by spirits. Of course, there was great agitation in the spirit world as the Last Days drew nearer. He half-expected to be set upon by demons—the God of the Razor, Tartu or Misquamacus—but his part in the developing story was ignored. Once, a wendigo, straying far from its Northern haunts, brushed by riding a freak wind, but it took no interest in the lone Indian.
Everywhere he went, he felt traces of the One-Eyed White Girl. She was fighting her battles elsewhere, hauling herself out of the rut of common humanity to the point when she would be ready to accept the training the medicine man of the line of Armijah was destined to give her.
He arrived at Santa de Nogueira three days before the spirit warrior. He passed the time Dreamwalking. He travelled, sensing the works of the Dark Ones everywhere. Wars raged, famines spread, diseases ran unchecked. Death enveloped the world, seeping from boardrooms to battlefields. Those who could commit suicide, directly or indirectly, were doing so; in this War, suicide was the only way to resist the call-up. Everyone alive was being influenced, Hawk knew. Everyone would have to take sides. He was very much afraid that the side he had chosen would be outnumbered forty to one by the minions of Darkness.
Then, at nightfall, she came out of the desert in a sleek automobile with bloody upholstery. He saw her dust devil from a long way away, and knew that she had been led here by her own dreams, by the pull of the moon. Her picture was titled the Moon and the Crocodile. She would be confused, but he would have to deal with that.
The machine slid to a halt inside the courtyard, and Hawk stepped out of the shadows. The car's door raised, and the One-Eyed White Girl emerged. Her hair was long and black as a raven's feather, untied so one wing partially covered her patch-covered missing eye. She wore loose black pyjamas, moccasins and a black brassiere. She wasn't tall, she wasn't obviously muscled, and she was young, a girl not a woman.
She didn't look like a great warrior, bu
t Hawk sensed her strength immediately. He knew some of her past, and he would learn more. Her eyepatch apart, she bore no obvious scars, but she had fought many battles, vanquished many foes. He opened his mouth, and sang the song of the One-Eyed White Girl, the song his father had taught him.
Her hand went to the holstered gun slung on her thigh. She had polished black fingernails, a single touch of ornamentation.
He spread his empty hands to show her he meant no harm. His song continued, echoing through the monastery as once the chanting of the monks must have done. The devout were long gone, but the Sacred Purpose remained.
The girl's hand relaxed, and fell away from her weapon. The moon rose, and her pale face glowed.
II
This is ZeeBeeCee, The Station That's Got It All, bringing you What You Want twenty-four hours a day, sponsored by GenTech, the bioproducts division that really cares…
And now, as part of our public service program, we hand you over live to Lynne Cramer and Brunt Hardacre in our Beverly Hills Studios…
"Hello, America. It's June 16th, 1997, and it's Lynne again, welcoming you to SnitchWatch USA, the program in which you, the viewer at home, can help fight crime for cash money and prizes by interfacing with our datanet on your home peecee. Remember, GenTech is offering goods or the credit up to the value of ten million dollars for any and all information leading to the arrest of ever-so-desperate felons. Now, over to our Op from the Top, Brunt Hardacre…"
"Thank you, Lynne. Last week, you'll remember, we put a bounty out on the head of that scuzzbo, Jimmie Joe Jackson, South-Western Sector Venerated Warthog of the Maniax. Well, we've sorted through the heads that were sent in to the studio, and we're real pleased to report that Jackson's was indeed among them. He's positively been identified by EX. Wicking of the T-H-R agency and by Colonel Younger of the United States Cavalry, and those bio-implanted replacement lungs are winging their way to a viewer in Phoenix who has asked us, for reasons we fully understand, not to reveal his name. Thank you, public-spirited do-gooder, whoever you are, and good luck with your tar-free windsacks…"
"Say, Brunt, what do you think? Would someone with terminal cancer have a better life expectancy than someone who was publicly known to have ratted on the Maniax?"
"That's a good question, Lynne. Of course, we'll never know the answer because ZeeBeeCee absolutely guarantees the confidentiality of all our informants. Not one has ever fallen victim to a gangland-style hit after coming forward with solid information. Some other stations don't have such good security, you know, and their crime-fighting shows rack up pretty heavy casualties. But with ZeeBeeCee, you can snitch in safety…"
"Phew! Say, I sure feel safer now that Jimmie Joe Jackson is out of business, Brunt."
"There are a lot of people who feel like that, Lynne."
"I'm sure there are. Tell me, who's the scumbag for today?"
"Well Lynne, today we're giving equal time to the ladies and throwing the spotlight on one of America's Most Wanted Femme Criminals, Ms Jessamyn Amanda Bonney, sometimes known under the aliases of Jazzbeaux or Minnie Molotov. Guns and Killing magazine currently rate her as the sixth most dangerous solo outlaw in the Americas, and she is the highest-ranked woman on the list, coming in at thirty-seven places above the Antarctic esperado Ice Kold Katie. Formerly affiliated to the Psychopomps gangcult, her chapter was broken up in 1995 during a pitched battle with the Road Cavalry in Spanish Fork, Deseret. Jessamyn is now believed to be working alone."
"What kind of a girl gets to the Most Wanted list, Brunt?"
"Jessamyn was born in 1978 in the Denver NoGo, Lynne. She got off to a bad start on the streets as the child of Bruno Bonney, convicted pimp, pusher, armed robber and bilko artist. ZeeBeeCee has gained a court order allowing access to Jessamyn Bonney's juvenile records, stored in the central infonet of the Bruyce-Hoare Agency, and we can exclusively reveal for the first time on national television that evidence which has come to light since her 1992 parricide hearing has suggested that she was indeed guilty of the murder of her father, a crime for which she was acquitted in court on the testimony of one Andrew Jean, since deceased, a gangcult associate and known perjurer."
"Well, that's just a thrilling revelation. Brunt."
"You said it, kiddo. After knocking off her old man, Jessamyn rose through the ranks in the Psychopomps, and racked up quite a score. Then, after Spanish Fork, our information gets a bit shaky. We have uncovered evidence that suggests she was working in league with famed mass murderer Herman Katz in the Spanish Fork area…"
"That's the guy who stuffed his mother?"
"You got it, Lynne. Now, sources close to the receivers of the H-M Agency of Los Angeles suggest that it has been conclusively proved that she was involved in the massacre at Dead Rat, Arizona, last year, during which a peaceful force of process-servers were murdered by members of the Maniax gangcult, who then razed the community to the ground. It will be remembered that popular Los Angelino Op Bronson Manolo lost his life in that engagement."
"I remember it well. Bronson Manolo was a personal friend of mine. We were co-worshippers at the Surfside Pyramid."
"Tough break, Lynne. It is believed that Jessamyn underwent extensive bio-engineering under the scalpel of Dr Simon Threadneedle, the disgraced GenTech surgeon who was also among the dead in the Dead Rat Incident. Details are not yet available, but it is possible that Dr Threadneedle turned her into some sort of cyborg death machine."
"That's not good news for law-abiding citizens, is it?"
"Certainly not, Lynne."
"So, is Jessamyn Bonney in fact the Most Dangerous Woman in the World?"
"Well, we asked that question to Redd Harvest of the T-H-R agency as the Op was on her way to face a cadre of the Trap Door Spiders."
"And what did Ms Harvest say?"
"I can give you the exact quote. Her reply was 'not while I'm alive, she isn't.'"
"So, what's Jessamyn up to these days?"
"Little has been heard of her since Dead Rat, but she is believed to be in the South-Western United States. Her known associates are all deceased, although a sighting which has not been discounted would put her in the company earlier this year of Hawk-That-Settles, a Navaho, medicine man and dealer in controlled substances. Hawk-That-Settles left the Navaho Reservation last year and is classed by the US Cavalry as a 'renegade,' having been associated in the '80s with the militant Native American terrorist organization, The Sons of Geronimo."
"Scary people. Brunt. What does Jessamyn look like? Is she pretty?"
"You don't have anything to worry about, sweetheart."
"Flatterer."
"Well, Jessamyn's appearance has changed over the years, from her first arrests as a pre-teenager to this last photograph—please excuse the quality, it's a blow-up from a spysat picture taken from an orbital pass over Arizona last December—which shows her as we must assume she is now. She is identifiable by her missing left eye, and her green right eye. Her hair has usually been black, and worn long. She is, of course, dangerous, and should not be approached."
"And what's the damage, Brunt?"
"Rewards on her total over one million dollars, for offences that range from felony bank robbery to first degree murder. Bounties on her head have been filed by the United States Government, the Holderness-Manolo Agency, Turner-Harvest-Ramirez, GenTech, G-Mek, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Hammond Maninski, the Winter Corporation, Westinghouse, Co-Cola, the Tabernacle of Joseph, the National Enquirer, Interpol, the Government of the Republic of Mexico, Walt Disney Enterprises, the Denver Civic Improvements Committee, the Colorado Diocese of the Roman Catholic Church, and this station, ZeeBeeCee."
"And in addition to those rewards, Brunt, we know that anyone coming forward with information leading to the apprehension or termination of Jessamyn Bonney will be entitled to one hundred thousand dollars' worth of bio-improvements supervised by Dr Zarathustra himself, a duplex apartment in the PZ of your choice, a fully-guaranteed and pirate-protect
ed Caribbean cruise, this complete household computer hook-up and two thousand hours net-time on the interface of your choice, one of our new range of Venus-Adonis model companions, and a further one hundred thousand dollars in the currency or negotiable bond of your choice. So, viewers at home, do not hesitate, if you have even the slightest piece of useful data, hook up that modem and call, in complete confidence, our unmonitored SnitchLine on the number that is flashing at the bottom of your screen…
"The lines will remain open for three days, until the next edition of SnitchWatch USA. Until we next meet over the airwaves, this has been Lynne Cramer…"
"…and Brunt Hardacre…"
"…saying Keep America Safe for Americans, and have a snazz day…"
III
This was where the moon had brought her. The moon, and Hawk-That-Settles. He had explained it to her, explained that there were great forces in the universe and that she was destined to serve them. She didn't yet know how she felt about that. Serving great forces was not what she had signed up for this trip, but somehow it felt right. The gang-girl she had been seemed as remote from her as the child she had been before that. Doc Threadneedle had warned her that the alterations he had made would affect her mind, so she could be confused without realizing it. But actually, she felt her thinking was clearer now. She had been at her worst between Spanish Fork and Dead Rat, when Elder Seth and the voices of the dead were arguing inside her head. Now, she had that under control. The monastery of. Santa de Nogueira was a peaceful place, and she was working through her life, straightening out the kinks in her psyche. Hawk did not look like a soce worker or a shrink, but he was getting to her in a way the juvie officials never used to.
They sat at the great wooden table, drinking a little water out of earthenware bowls, chewing cactus. She had given up meat. The taste was too strong, and brought the memories of martyred animals into her mind. She could live on water, and a little cactusflesh. She felt all the better for it. Doc Threadneedle had turned her into a human perpetual motion machine, like one of those dipping birds her father had bought her as a child. If she kept her beak wet, she could go on forever.