A Gathering Evil

by Michael A. Stackpole

  The most heartbreaking aspect of what I saw in City Center was this: It would take generations for people like Estefan to attain what people like Marit had now. In that time, of course, the rich would have become richer. There would always be a buffer between the new and the old, which could only irritate and frustrate the new. A lot of energy would be wasted resenting those who really should have been beneath their contempt.

  Those emotions, I knew, could be positively explosive. Heinrich and his boys were a perfect example of that. Angered by what they saw as a loss of what they had a "right" to, frustrated whites lashed out at the minorities they saw taking over. Not only was their notion of racial superiority baseless, but their claim to America was purposefully blind. The Amerindians were here first and, especially in the southwest, the Spanish came before the Anglos. Using unsound logic and fabricated science designed to inspire fear and hatred, the Aryans sought to destroy that with which they could not compete.

  Logic dictated that, because all humans are equal at birth, all should be treated the same throughout their lives. The realities of the world ignored logic, pigeonholing people and limiting their possible progress. Grants and welfare programs ensured that people would not starve, but they offered no incentive to try to better one's lot in life. The whole system, while it might soften the savagery of life, also doomed people to live in a twilight existence that would not kill them, but could not provide them with happiness or anything I would call life.

  Working in City Center allowed the people of Eclipse to see what could be theirs. It also showed them how difficult it would be to attain. It guaranteed an escalating spiral of misery and bitterness on the part of the Mikes, and blissful ignorance of the building resentment by the gnomes.

  When it all fell apart, it wasn't going to be pretty.

  I stepped off the escalator and looked at Danny's Place. Through the big window I saw faded decorations that immediately tagged the place as a neo-retro-'60s bar. With a sinking feeling of dread in my stomach, I walked into the place and let my eyes adjust to the harsh glow of blacklight posters on the walls. Back in the corner a wide-screen projection TV showed an episode of some old sitcom about four young men in a band and The Beatles' "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" blared out over the speakers in the ceiling.

  I saw Marit wave at me, and I threaded my way through the bar. In doing so I noticed two things that struck me as very odd. All of the waitresses were tall and slender, wearing long wigs with straight brown hair. Each wore a baggy-sleeved shirt, a polyester vest and bell-bottom slacks to match, though getting that much peach fabric had to have been a special order. Each wore a button that said, "Hello, have a Partridge Day."

  Odder than that were the bartenders. I think they were all male, but I could only be sure of the two that had full beards. All of them were similarly attired in hot pants, knee-length boots with two-inch heels, a flowery blouse and a long, blond wig. While all of them wore their shirts open enough to see the hair on their chests, they all also wore a bra that was sufficiently stuffed to make them a very strange sight indeed. After an evening's worth of drinks I imagined it might be possible to mistake one of them for a woman and try to pick her up, but it would make for quite a surprise later when the truth was discovered.

  " '60s-retro with transvestite bartenders." I gave Marit a kiss. "You do know some interesting places."

  Marit, wearing a jeans jumper that probably had been new when people still thought Spiro Agnew was a cattle disease, kissed me back with enough passion to impress the other two people at our table. "The bartenders aren't really cross-dressers, but the owner, Danny, likes them dressing that way. They say they get good tips."

  "Not my choice of careers." I offered my hand to the man seated across from me. "Tycho Caine."

  "Watson Dodd, Build-more Operations." Slender to the point of looking malnourished, Dodd wore a denim vest that emphasized his lack of shoulders and accentuated his pencil neck. His John Lennon glasses, while appropriate for the setting, kept slipping down his hawk-beak nose. His Adam's apple bobbed like a harpoon barrel attached to a sounding whale and the flour-sack shirt he wore hung off him as if he were shedding his skin.

  He shook hands as if he thought I had the plague and was still contagious.

  Dodd put his arm around the woman with him. "This is my little baby factory, Dottie."

  Dottie shook hands more firmly than had her husband. The Mama Cass Levi's tent on her did not hide the fact that she was pregnant. Her face looked puffy and judging by both her expression and size, I guessed she was about a month shy of expanding the upper class. "Pleased to meet you," she said, and meant it.

  Dottie smiled at me. "Marit says you're going to Sedona tomorrow. Watson and I met there."

  "I hear Sedona is quite beautiful."

  "Spiritually enriching, really," offered Watson. He adjusted his glasses and did his best to look wise. "We studied under Chief Probitananda White Feather while he channeled Kesh-Hur, the 23rd Wizard-Emperor of Lemuria. In the Church of Searing Illumination we walked on fire and, had I not opted for this job, we would have learned to walk on water."

  I managed to restrain my laughter. "Walk on water? Quite a trick, that."

  Watson remained serious. "No trick, Ty, but real. With the fire walk we learned we could overcome any obstacle. We could use the power of our minds to insulate ourselves so that we would not burn when walking across a bed of glowing red coals. This is in our bare feet, mind you, and on coals that spouted little bits of flame now and again."

  "But I thought I saw on the television, Wat, a show where the Phoenix Skeptics said that was all nonsense..."

  His nostrils flared, stopping his glasses from a suicidal leap to the table. "Idiots. They ridicule what they don't understand. There are things that cannot be quantified by science. The mind is the key to unlocking all possibilities. With another year of studies, we would have been able to walk across an ocean."

  "Quite a useful skill here in the desert," Marit offered archly.

  "I wanted to learn how to fly, but Watson is afraid of heights." Dottie smiled at her husband. When he glowered at her, she stroked her swollen belly with her left hand, letting the bar's light glint from her wedding ring. Immediately the anger left his face, and he was himself again.

  A waitress appeared and took drink orders. Marit opted for Ripple with a twist and Dottie requested a Virgin Daiquiri. Watson, no doubt looking to win back some macho points, ordered bourbon straight up, adding, "double, rocks," as the waitress looked at me.

  "I'll have a Virgin Daiquiri as well." I gave Dottie a wink, then gave Marit's knee a squeeze under the table.

  Something about Watson made it constitutionally impossible for him to carry off a look of smug superiority.

  A new song started and Marit grabbed my hand. "Come on, Mr. Caine, dance with me." When I raised an eyebrow she leaned over and whispered in my ear, "There are those who think dancing is the same as having sex standing up. Care to test that theory?"

  I nodded, and we joined a vast throng crowding the dance floor. Bodies mingled and jostled us until we reached a fairly stable area near the center. The song itself had a basic beat which made it easy to dance to, though if I ever hear the lyric, "I think I love you," again, it will be far too soon. Surprisingly I slipped into the repetitive and rhythmic motions of the retro-dance without much trouble.

  Marit, though clad in a '60s dress and moving to '60s music, was not old-fashioned at all. She abandoned herself to the music and flowed through a series of very sensuous and fluid steps. With her hair hiding then revealing her face like veils, she kept her azure eyes on mine and a devilish grin on her lips. There, in the middle of the floor, she danced for me and were my mind on anything even remotely approximating science, I would have deemed her theory relating dancing and sex proven beyond a shadow of a doubt.

  The thing about proving theories is, of course, that the experiment must be repeatable. As that first song faded into "I Woke Op In Love This Morni
ng," she danced close and kissed me, then ran her hands down my chest and drew away. Behind her, barely registering on my consciousness, I saw Watson and Dottie cutting through the crowd to join us. I looked back toward our table and saw the waitress distributing our drinks. I also saw someone standing beside her, someone I thought I knew.

  It took me a few seconds to place that pasty white face, and then I realized why I didn't recognize him immediately. Except for the blue, star-shaped scar on his cheek, he looked just like a twin of the Reaper I'd shot in the face my first night in Eclipse. As I watched him unseen, his gloved hands came up, and he made a motion over the table, but I couldn't actually see what he had done. I did notice, however, his left hand seemed smaller than his right.

  Without thinking, I started wading through the crowd to get at him. He looked up and saw me, then turned and began calmly walking away. He glanced back over his shoulder at me and, when he saw I was about to clear the edge of the dance floor, he bolted and ran out the door.

  I knew, instantly, I would never catch him. I made it as quickly as I could to our table, then dropped to one knee. On the ground I found half of a gelatin capsule that had a residue of white powder in it. I put that in my pocket. Straightening up, I saw a thin dusting of powder on the table in an arc that connected my drink to Dottie's.

  As Marit came up, I purposely bumped the table with my stomach and tipped it over as I leaned on it to steady myself. The drinks crashed to the floor, and I managed a blush that made me feel hot enough to combust.

  Marit leaned over and rubbed my back with one hand. "Are you okay?"

  I nodded slowly and righted the table. Laurie, our waitress, gave me a concerned look. I held up a hand. "Sorry, just dizzy. I get that way, some times, when I dance. Low blood sugar." I pulled a $50 note from my pocket. "Here, get us another round, and keep the change for the inconvenience."

  Marit tucked a wisp of hair behind her left ear as the girl went off to get a cleaning rag. "Something wrong?"

  Sure, I just saw someone who might be back from the dead try to poison us.

  "Just thought I saw an old friend."

  "You remembered someone?"

  "Yeah, I did." I shrugged, "What I remembered is that he's dead, and has every reason to want me that way, too."

  When I fully explained what had happened, Marit became more shaken up than I was. She managed to cover her discomfort as Watson and Dottie returned to our table, but she quickly made an excuse for us and got us out of there. Without speaking we went to the elevators and headed home.

  When the doors closed, she hugged me, and I could feel her trembling. "Easy, Marit, it is not that bad. Nothing happened—no one was hurt."

  Hiding her face in a curtain of black hair, she sniffed and wiped a tear from her right eye. "I know, Tycho, but all of a sudden it hit me that I might lose you. I'd not expected that sharp a reaction." She looked up and stroked my cheek with her tear-damp finger. "You're in my blood, Tycho Caine."

  I kissed her hand. "And you are in mine." The elevator slowed, and the doors to the tranversor opened. "Early to bed and early to rise, and we'll be in Sedona before the assassins even open their eyes."

  Despite Hal's reservations about Sedona and the attempt on our lives, I slept well. I had half-expected another monster dream but, to my surprise, I did not dream at all. I awakened quickly and felt excited about the trip. After a shower and a quick breakfast, I joined Marit in the tranversor, and we headed down to pick up her Range Rover.

  Marit was dressed in knee-high boots, khaki jodhpurs and a khaki safari shirt with four shotgun shells in the little loops at her left shoulder. She carried a gun-case that contained a pump-action Mossberg with a pistol-grip and a shortened barrel. On her hip rode a Colt Python .357 Magnum and enough spare shells to win a small war. Dark glasses and a black baseball cap completed her outfit.

  I had to rely on my boots, jeans and one of the dress shirts Roger had provided me. As always, I wore my vest beneath the shirt, my shoulder holster over it and the windbreaker over that, concealing the pistol. I carried two full spare clips and stuck a box of bullets in Marit's gun case. While I didn't think we would have much cause to shoot anything, being safe beats being sorry by a long shot.

  The bright red Range Rover, which still dripped water from the washing it had been given, had been gassed up and stocked with a cooler. Anna had filled the cooler with soft-drinks, some sandwiches and a bag of grapes. I set Marit's gun case on the back seat, then climbed into the navigator's seat. Marit slid in behind the wheel, and we set off to Sedona.

  Even leaving as early as we were, I expected some sort of a commuter rush of traffic. I mentioned this to Marit, but she just shook her head. "You must remember, dearest, that people working in City Center generally live here, or commute in from Eclipse through the elevators. Those who work in the corporate citadels likewise live there, or commute via the maglevs. In fact, the only time there is any sort of traffic rush around here is when, generally in August, Phoenecians invade San Diego to escape the worst of the monsoon season."

  "Monsoons? In a desert?"

  "Monsoons. They generally start a week from now, with the beginning of July. Lightning storms like you've never seen." She smiled to herself. "It's funny, but the only time they crack Frozen Shade is to clean up after the storms, and there are enough clouds left that the folks still can't see the stars."

  As she spoke, Marit guided us through a labyrinth of narrow streets running between legions and legions of parked vehicles. Most of them were covered in shrouds, and those that weren't looked as if they had been dusted—if not waxed and polished—already that morning. Aside from the utter jumble of manufacturers represented, it would have been easy to imagine we were in the hold of a cargo ship bringing in imports.

  Finally Marit started us gliding down an on-ramp that brought us onto I-10 heading west. We joined the interstate just beyond the tunnel through which it passed beneath City Center and almost immediately hit the intersection with I-17. As we made the transition to the northbound road, I craned my neck to see if I could spot the Boxton cemetery where Buc had died, but I could not.

  We rolled along beneath the Frozen Shade and traffic was light enough that Marit used her high beams most of the time. "We want to be able to see freesprints in time to avoid them. Poor bastards."

  "What do you mean?"

  "The system will take care of folks. If you can't do anything, you can sell your vote proxy to the corps or pols and they'll take care of you. That's good enough for most folks: three meals a day, enough beer to stupefy you, and all the television you can watch to finish the job. That's a hell of a lot for folks who can't hold a job."

  I frowned. "I don't think the lot of a ballotman is very good."

  "True, but it sets a base level one cannot sink beneath. It does not prohibit you from doing anything to improve your lot, though many folks who opt for that way of living have really surrendered. They just sort of die inside and wait for their bodies to catch up."

  "So what is this about freesprints?

  "They are freeway runners. They get frustrated and decide to kill themselves, yet they realize they have a responsibility to their families. Because of that, they run onto the highway and force you to run over them. When a car is traveling 100 mph, the way we are now, they do considerable damage to the vehicle and could easily kill us."

  I suddenly saw what she was working toward. "They think their family will get an insurance settlement from your insurance company."

  "The tale of a big payoff is an urban legend. The insurance companies, using the proxy votes from ballotmen, have gotten a law passed that states anyone engaging in freesprinting is, in fact, guilty of assault with intent to kill. The law not only absolves the insurance company from any responsibility for paying off in freesprint cases, but it makes the victim or his estate responsible for reparations for the damage he does to the car." She shook her head. "I've seen families ruined by that sort of thing, and I don't want to b
e any part of it."

  Interstate 17 took us north out of Phoenix. We left Eclipse just beyond Del Webb's Near-Dead City—the remnant of what was once a thriving retirement community. Outside, where the temperature was already hitting 110°F, I saw desert that, for the most part, consisted of cracked tan earth and scrubby, leafless brush that sprouted cat-claw thorns. A bit further north the road started the long climb up the Mogollon rim toward Flagstaff. It took us through pleasantly named places like Big Bug Creek and Bloody Basin and terrain that looked like broken red pottery.

  As I looked at the land I knew it was totally alien to me. Rocks, rocks and more rocks abounded, somehow balancing on the side of steep hills that had long since had all their topsoil eroded away. Cactii somehow took root in the hard-baked earth, and I had no doubt that scorpions and rattlesnakes lurked in every niche and shadow I saw.

  As the vehicle made the long climb up out of the valley, the landscape began to change a bit. It went from desert to arid prairie, yet looked no more hospitable. The few trees I saw were stunted and dried out. The tan grasses looked the appropriate color for them to be ripe for harvesting, yet they lay in the fields in patchy clumps that rose no further than knee-height.

  I looked for the cattle I would have expected to see grazing, but I saw no living creatures in those fields.

  I didn't even see any road kill.

  I looked over at Marit, but she seemed oblivious to what I saw as abnormalities. That concerned me for a second, then I recalled that my grasp on reality was not all it could have been. I took my cue from her and tried to relax.

  "Marit, how did you get involved with Coyote? You explained a bit of it the othernight, but not the whole tale."

  She glanced over at me and looked as if she had not heard the question, but before I could repeat it, her face closed up a bit. "I had hoped this would not come up, but you have a right to know. Rock brought me into the group."