by Pat Murphy
The soldier behind the car fired a burst across the crowd, but the people didn’t notice. The chanting continued. Jax saw the soldier turn and flee.
She stepped from the shadows and made her way through the crowd to the storm drain from which she had come up. People smiled at her as she slipped among them, and she felt the heat of their bodies around her. She lifted the manhole cover and looked up once more. One of the women smiled and waved and Jax recognized her mother in a happier time. Jax waved back and slipped down into the tunnels.
In the darkness beneath the city, she felt warm, as if the phantom sun of that long-ago afternoon still shone on her. For a time she could hear the voices of the marchers echoing through the tunnels: “No more war.” She hurried back to headquarters, filled with the hysterical joy that often follows a narrow escape. Even in the tunnels she could hear the marching ghosts, catch the distant rumble of their chanting.
The Machine was on his way back to headquarters when he saw a Hash of golden light in the darkness below. For a moment he took it for a fire, ignited by a spark from the fireworks, and he swooped low to check it out. For a moment, he lost sight of the light; he could not see it anywhere on the ground beneath him. He glanced upward and saw the angel flying above him.
He could not see it clearly—just a spark of light from a glowing eye and the reflection of moonlight on burnished wings. But he felt its presence with a jolt as sharp and clean as an electric shock. It had come for him.
He followed, even when the angel dove low, dodging through the twisting streets. He was caught by a feeling of impossible rightness. Ah, the glory of the angel. The beauty of a polished gear neatly meshing with another, so perfect and inevitable. The satisfaction of a ball bearing, rolling in its track without a catch or a moment’s hesitation. The wonderful intricacy that added up to such complete simplicity, like the complex mechanism of a ticking clock.
In pursuit of the angel he plunged into the canyons of downtown. The tips of his rotor passed within inches of the buildings, but he did not pull up. He could not pull up without losing his quarry and he would not allow that.
Beneath him, he heard the rattle of gunfire. For a moment the sound drew his attention to the street. A group of soldiers was firing at a parked car. In a tiny sliver of time, a crystalline shard broken from eternity, he saw Danny-boy and Snake taking shelter behind the vehicle. He saw the patrol closing in.
It all happened very quickly or very slowly. He did not know which. It did not matter. He saw everything: Snake’s hand, reaching for his rifle; Danny-boy’s face, smudged with soot from the fireworks; the soldiers’ eyes, wide and frightened in the darkness.
He knew the proper course to follow. He understood why the angel had led him to this place. He cried out and his voice blended with the engine as he twisted the throttle to give the gyrocopter more gas.
Ah, it was a beautiful night. He had never felt air as cool and pure as the air that caressed his face as he dove. It filled his lungs and made his heart beat faster. His heart—he could feel it beating in his chest and with each beat the blood surged in his body.
He laughed out loud and rushed down to meet the soldiers.
Jax was the first to reach headquarters, now in a Pacific Heights apartment building with a view of downtown. “I got him,” she told Lily, who met her at the door. “I got him and escaped. No problem.” Her hands were shaking and she could not make them stop. “Where are the others? Aren’t they back yet?”
“Not yet.” Lily’s voice was strained. Jax could not see her face in the darkness of the lobby. “The fireworks stooped half an hour ago, but there’s no sign of them yet.” She put her hand on Jax’s shoulder. “You’re trembling.”
“I’m OK.” But she could not stop trembling, even when Lily draped a blanket over her shoulders. Lily urged her to go up to the penthouse apartment, where some of the others were watching for more fireworks, but Jax refused.
“I’ve got to talk to Fourstar,” Jax said. “That’s what I should do. He’s got to know that I can get to him. He’s not safe from us.” She got the field radio and sat on the front steps with Lily. “Hey Johnson,” she said into the microphone. Since the other guards would not tell her their names, she called them all Johnson, after the first one to talk to her. “Get Fourstar, would you? I’ve got to talk to him.”
Lily pulled the blanket around Jax’s shoulders and put her arm around her. The shaking was easing somewhat. Jax felt better now that she was doing something. From the steps they could see all the way down the hill to the Civic Center Plaza, where spotlights still blazed. It took a while for Fourstar to come to the microphone and when he greeted her, he sounded groggy.
“Are you ready to give up?” Jax asked.
Through the radio, she heard a chair creak as Fourstar sat down. She imagined him—he was wearing his jacket and leaning forward a little. His hair fell across his forehead, but the lettering on his cheek was clear.
“I don’t give up,” he said. “I don’t know how.”
“You can’t win. This place belongs to us. We belong to the city. You’ll never win.”
A long pause. She could hear him breathing.
“That was a clever trick you used to get away,” he said softly. “That wasn’t a trick. The city rescued me. Those were ghosts from the city. They live here.”
“I don’t believe in ghosts. I don’t believe in spirits. I believe in things I can touch.” He sounded, just for a moment, like he was trying to convince himself. Then the doubt slipped away and his tone of certainty returned. “You know, when I catch you I’ll have to kill you.”
“Why?”
“To prove that you’re a woman, nothing more. My men think you’re a ghost. Some of them fear you more than they fear me. So I’ll have to kill you.” She heard his chair creak as he leaned forward. “I think you understand the need for blood and the need for fear.”
“You won’t catch me.”
“You sound so sure.” His voice was just a little slurred from the anesthetic, but he spoke with confidence. “Maybe you’re starting to believe your own legend. Maybe you think you can’t be killed. Do you think that?”
Jax said nothing.
“You’re wrong if you do.” Fourstar’s breathing was labored. “My men once thought that I was more than mortal. They know better now. But even when they believed that I was more than a man, I never made the mistake of agreeing with them. I always remembered that I could be killed. You must always remember that. Remember I can kill you.”
“You won’t catch me.” Jax turned off the microphone.
“I hear someone coming,” Lily said suddenly. She stood up and looked down the hill. Jax let the blanket slide from her shoulders and picked up her rifle. She slung it over her back as Danny-boy and Snake approached.
Danny-boy stopped at the bottom of the steps. She went to meet him. She put her arms around him, but his body felt stiff and wooden in her embrace.
“What’s wrong?” she said. “You’re back. You’re OK. What’s wrong?” She pulled back to look at him. Tears had traced meandering lines through the soot on his face. “What is it?” He shook his head, but said nothing.
She put her hands on his shoulders, staring into his face. “Tell me what happened.”
Still, he was silent.
“The Machine’s dead,” Snake said. “A patrol was after us. He crashed his ’copter into them. He couldn’t have survived.”
“Dead?” she said. “He’s dead?” She was shaking again. The vibration came from deep within her and she knew that it would not stop this time. “I should have killed Fourstar. Then The Machine would have died for a reason.” She did not know she was crying until Danny-boy brushed a tear from her cheek. She backed away from him. He watched, his hands open at his sides.
“Jax,” he said. Then he stopped, as if he did not know how to continue. He held his arms out to her, and she took another step back. “Where are you going? Don’t go.”
She wa
lked away. When she reached the end of the block, she was surprised to find Danny-boy still at her side. He took her hand. She stepped back, jerked her hand up and out to break his grip. Her hands were in fists. “Don’t get in the way, Danny-boy,” she said. “You grieve your way, and I’ll grieve in mine. Don’t get in the way.” She turned from him and ran down the hill.
Fog and smoke filled the streets. She heard Danny-boy calling after her, but she ran from the sound. All around her there was gunfire, always distant gunfire. The darkness around her seemed like the darkness of a dream, where some things are very clear and others are vague and ill-formed, as if only half imagined. A streetlight with a woman’s face; the howling voice of the wind, singing across the mouth of an open pipe; a department store window filled with skulls.
She did not know where she was going. She was going away, that was all that she knew. Somewhere in the darkness she would find what she needed: a quiet place where there were no friends and therefore no pain. Love caused pain—she knew that now and she wanted no part of it. She was very tired and the shadows seemed to shift and follow her. Faces watched her from the windows of the houses.
Overhead, she heard the thunder of wings. Through the fog she saw the glint of gold, like the sun on burnished metal. She lifted her rifle and fired at the angel. The fog spoiled her aim—at least, she blamed it on the fog, rather than the tears that blurred her vision. She followed the sound of wings as she ran through the alleys and streets. She fired until she ran out of ammunition, and then she discarded the useless weapon.
The streets took her deeper into the darkness. She did not care. In the darkness, she knew she would find the angel.
She found a soldier instead. She ran from the fog and saw his face, a pale oval in the darkness. She dodged him and started to run past, still chasing the angel. But the man called out and the rest of the patrol caught her. A young man brought her down with a flying tackle and held her. When the sound of the wings faded, she stopped fighting.
Suddenly calm, she looked at them. Five young men, three of them DEAD. Two held her arms; the others stood a respectful distance away, holding their rifles ready. They searched her for weapons and took her knife, her paint kit, her smoke grenades.
When she rubbed her forehead, her hand came away streaked with blood. Her other hand ached. When she opened it, she found that she had gashed the palm. She had a vague memory of falling and catching herself with that hand, but she could not remember when or where. She rubbed at the cut, trying to rub some of the blood away, and she was surprised to feel pain.
The soldiers marched her through the streets, past the razor wire and the spotlights. “We have a prisoner,” they called to the sentries on duty. “A prisoner.” The sentries stared at her curiously. The rising sun touched their faces with pale light.
“She’s too small,” one of them called out. “She can’t be one of the artists.”
Her guards did not stop to answer; they headed directly for the building that housed Fourstar. From the trees in the plaza, she heard the high sweet peeping of tree frogs. She glanced around her, seeing the Civic Center Plaza in daylight for the first time in weeks. Dirty snow filled the gutters. The air was cold, and the men who stood near the kitchen tent looked tired and dirty. “A prisoner,” she heard them saying. “One of the artists.”
The soldiers took her directly to Fourstar. While she waited in the lobby, soldiers crowded around her, but her captors kept them back. Faces marked DEAD stared at her. She looked past them, meeting no one’s eyes. The guards brought her to another room, where Fourstar was waiting.
His gray hair was rumpled, as if he had been asleep. His shirt was wrinkled and one cuff was marked with a coffee stain. He looked tired.
“Can you speak?” he asked her.
“Yes.”
“Make that ‘Yes, sir.’”
She studied him for a moment, considering her options. “Why?”
Smiling, he reached out and slapped her across the face. She did not dodge far enough to avoid the blow.
“Don’t be stupid. You’re unarmed and my soldiers are all around you. Say ‘Yes, sir.’”
She regarded him steadily. “Yes, sir.”
“Good,” he said. “Very good. What’s your name?”
She realized suddenly that she could lie. She could disown her name and he would never know. She hesitated, studying the signature on his cheek. He stood with his hands locked behind his back. It seemed important that he know who she was. She wanted him to know.
“My name’s Jax,” she said.
He studied her for a moment. She stared back, her face carefully neutral. “I see,” he said. “When I said we would capture you, I didn’t think it would be so soon.”
She shrugged wearily.
“She’s unarmed?” Fourstar asked. “Yes, sir.”
“Good. Leave her then,” he told the guards. They seemed glad to leave. “Post a guard on the door.”
“Yes, sir.”
The soldiers left and he studied her face. “Sit down,” he said, gesturing at a chair. She sat. He sat in another chair and continued watching her. His eyes were shrewd. “I realize, of course, that you could have killed me last night,” he said at last.
She nodded. “That’s so.”
He nodded, his hands forming a steeple in front of his chin. “You should have. Because if you think that I’m grateful that you spared my life, you’re wrong.”
She said nothing. She had no expectations.
“Why did you come here? You’ve been so clever for so long that I can’t believe you’d simply run into a patrol by mistake.”
“I was following the angel,” she said. “The angel?”
“The angel. I heard his wings and I was following the sound.” She felt empty and cold. Her own words seemed to come to her from a distance, as if they were echoing through the tunnels beneath the city.
“So you followed the angel to me,” he said. “The angel of death, maybe? That seems appropriate.” He leaned forward and poured two drinks from the bottle on the table. He gave her one and took the other himself. She sipped from the glass: it was whiskey and she winced when it touched a cut on her lip. “I have no qualms about killing.”
She said nothing.
He sipped his whiskey. “I’ve been wondering when my luck would turn. It seems it finally has. Now the question is: What will I do with you?”
“I thought,” she said slowly, “that we talked about this once before.”
He nodded, obviously enjoying himself. “We did. But that was a different situation, wasn’t it? You would never have said ‘Yes, sir’ then.”
“True.”
“Make that ‘Yes, sir,’” he said.
“The soldiers aren’t here,” she said. “Why put on a show?” His grin broadened. “Perhaps for my own amusement?”
His grin penetrated her weariness. “If you’re going to kill me anyway, I’d rather not amuse you first.” She knew that he could order the soldiers back to beat her, but she did not care.
He laughed and slapped his hand against the arm of his chair.
“I like you, Jax. So angry, so arrogant. You know—it’s possible that I might not kill you at all.”
She kept her face still, hiding her surprise. How strange, she thought, how very strange. An option she had not considered.
“I need some information,” he said. “For a start, you can tell me where your headquarters are.”
She shrugged. “Headquarters change from day to day. They’ve moved by now.”
“Where were they?” He stood up and moved a little closer. “Where were they last?”
When she did not speak, he smiled and calmly slapped her across the face. She could feel the pain, but it was distant, as if it had happened to someone else. She shook her head, trying to clear it of the pain. She spilled her drink; she could feel the cold whiskey soaking her leg.
“I thought we’d gotten past that,” she said.
“Just
a reminder,” he said. “Now, you were going to tell me about your headquarters.”
“There’s nothing for you there,” she said. “I can’t tell you anything of value. Temporary headquarters can be anywhere. We carry our weapons with us. Even if I told you all I know, you’d learn nothing of value.”
He returned to his chair and leaned back in it. “Unfortunately, I suspect you’re telling the truth. I could make you answer, but the information you gave me would be worthless by the time I got it. Would they ransom you, I wonder? What would you be worth?” He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Or maybe I could persuade you to work for me. Suppose I sentimentally spare your life. You could surrender publicly and swear allegiance to me. What do you think?”
She licked her lip, tasting blood. She studied his face. He did not frighten her anymore. He was willing to bargain with her, like a trader in the market. “If I said yes, what then?”
“You’ll tell me all that you know. And then I will assemble the troops and you will vow allegiance to me.”
“And if I don’t.”
“In that case, I think we will have a public execution. A hanging on the steps of City Hall.”
She liked living. She sipped her drink and the whiskey tasted good. She could hear one of Gambit’s bells ringing in the distance, but the sound did not touch the silence in the room. What difference would it make if she pledged loyalty to Fourstar? None. It would mean nothing. The words would just be words, words like “Yes, sir.” She liked living. She swirled the whiskey in her glass. Danny-boy would say that the words were symbols. They were fighting a war of symbols. Danny-boy was crazy. He was wrong. She liked living.
“Hanging is, I think, one of the most dramatic ways to execute a prisoner. It’s really ideal. There’s the anticipation while the stage is set—the men build the scaffold in a central place and everyone watches it take form. There is the execution itself—the moment of silence when the prisoner is led forth, the touching ceremony when the blindfold is offered, the brief delay while the noose is adjusted around the prisoner’s neck. Then the sudden crack when the trapdoor opens and the moment of heart-stopping pathos when the prisoner dances in the air, struggling against death and losing. And after the event is over, the memory lingers. The shadow of the scaffold stretches across the plaza, the body sways in the breeze, a constant reminder of death. Of course, I’ll leave your body hanging until the war is over.”