by Jack Yeovil
Stack picked up speed.
The noise got louder, painfully so.
One of the Oscars was mounted with maxiscreamers. At close range, within ten seconds, the noise would trigger epileptic fits in those susceptible to them, and make susceptible 7 % of those not previously afflicted. Within twenty seconds, it would cause motor neuron dysfunction, triggering nausea, vomiting, diorrhea, internal and external bleeding, uncontrollable hiccoughs, loss of bladder control. Within thirty seconds, it would crack your skull like a plate and cook your brain like a microwave. By then, Stack would have been dead anyway, because at about twenty-five seconds the pitch would be enough to detonate the slugs in his pumpgun and, more importantly, the ScumStoppers in the rings of his bandolier. Stack beat any and all of his own personal records over the distance.
Behind him, rocks flew apart as the waves of ultrasound vibrations hit them.
Stack grit his teeth as they began to rattle, and resisted the temptation to jam his hands over his ears. That would just slow him down, and his only chance was to get out of the range. The maxiscreamer was a riot control device. It was supposed to put people within a few hundred yards out of commission so the mop-up squads could move in. Its drawback was that you couldn't send anyone or anything into the field while it was turned on. If he could outrace the sound, then he would have a head start on the Oscars.
He felt a trickle of blood come form one of his ears. Later, he would find whether he had a ruptured eardrum. Later…If there was a later.
He was between the half-buried hulks of buildings now. Twenty feet below there would be the street level of old Lake Havasu. The necks of streetlamps stock out from the sand. The business signs were flush with the ground level.
There would be whole buildings down there for future archaeologists to pick through.
Up ahead, looming out of the sand, was a battered hardboard cut-out of John Travolta, greasy pompadour half-broken away, grin still in place, and rhinestoned arm reaching for the sky. Behind him were broken letters. This had been the Rialto, the local movie-theatre. The curtain must have come down on Havasu during the run of the Grease-Saturday Night Fever reissue double bill in the early '80s.
Stack had heard that John Travolta was out of show business these days. The story was that the star had joined the Josephites and was out there in Salt Lake City. That might have been a smart decision, Stack figured. It didn't look like the gentiles were going to come out of this well.
The dome behind Travolta was cracked like an egg. Stack squeezed through, dropped fifteen feet and found himself crouched between rows of rotting velvet seats. He was up on the balcony. A withered corpse in an usherette's uniform, with a tray of dusty confectionary, lay a few feet away. The carpets were thick with sand, ticket-stubs, cartridge cases and used Trojans.
Incredibly, there were pictures playing in the dark. There was no sound, and the silver screen had three long horizontal rents across its Panavision breadth; but the projector was still working.
It was a bizarre assemblage of spliced-together offcuts from late '70s Hollywood, up-to-date porno, Russian musickie video and newsnet footage. Down there in the stalls, there must be an audience. Stack realized he had stumbled into a sandrat nest.
Clint Eastwood raised his Magnum .44, mouthing "do you feel lucky, punk?" The German hardcore star Billy Priapus— who had bio-implanted horns and goat's feet—strutted his stuff, slobbering. Petya Tcherkassoff preened to a disco beat. A pair of esperadoes slugged it out mentally in a Puerto Galtieri backstreet, veins popping.
The Oscars would be here soon. He supposed he ought to get out of range before innocent people got killed in the crossfire.
He found the stairs, and barreled down them. People, no more than skeletons in rags, were sleeping in the corridors, huddled against the walls. The foyer was lit by a burning torch. Outside the reinforced glass doors, the sand was a solid wall.
"Have you got a ticket, boy?"
Stack turned, his gun up. An old, old man in what was left of a commissionaire's coat staggered at him. His eyes were dark voids.
"Quick, how do I get out of here?" Stack asked.
"Can't get out without a ticket, boy."
"How do I get a ticket?"
"You pays at the counter. Kids today don't know nothin' about respect. You forms an orderly queue and you pays at the counter."
Stack glanced at the cashier's box. A bald fashion mannequin was stuffed into it, her ballerina's tutu fluffed up around her, her stiff arms broken.
There was a commotion outside. The secured doors shifted, and sand dribbled through at the bottom.
"I can't stand customers who track dirt all over the carpets, you know."
Sand was being scraped away from the doors. Stack saw the metal face of an Oscar, and the glass exploded inwards. The shards were followed by fifty tons of sand.
"You can't come in like that," said the commissionaire. "You can't…"
Stack barged through the double doors into the auditorium. The Oscar was floundering through the sand behind him. Stack had heard the creak of a lase visor being raised.
The show was over, and the audience—sandrats, gaudy girls, no-hope gamblers, AWOLS, a few Indians—were on their feet, singing.
An MC with protruding cheekbones and a top hat led the chorus in "America the Beautiful, 1999".
"Oh beautiful,
for spacious skies
Oh amber heaps of sand…''
The Oscar was in the auditorium, its lase lashing out like a whip. A row of seatbacks burned through. Some people scattered. Others kept singing.
"Oh poison mountain majesties
Above the blighted land…"
Stack whirled and fired the pumpgun. His shot clanged harmlessly against the Oscar's durium torso. The android's head swivelled, trying for a lock on Stack's heat pettems.
"America, America,
God spat His curse on thee…"
The audience was panicking, crushing through the exits. The MC kept singing, waving his thin arms, keeping the beat with a conjurer's wand.
"And made it worse
With massacres
From sea to stinking sea…"
There were two more Oscars in the cinema now. Sand pressed in after them like a slow wave. A chandelier fell from the ceiling, and draped around the first Oscar like an incredibly ostentatious diamond necklace.
Stack fired again, and got the machine in its lase hole. The Oscar stood stiff, and fell forwards, smashing seats like balsawood. Its companions came for him.
Stack backed away, towards the screen. There were pictures playing again. Marlon Brando as Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars. The old sage of the spaceways was ranting, cotton falling from his cheeks, at C-3PO, a golden-skinned robot. As a kid, Stack had seen Star Wars twenty or thirty times.
The Oscars came down the aisles. Bitterly, Stack wished all robots could be cute and bumbling like C3PO.
He climbed upwards, the picture playing over his body. He plunged through the fabric, which parted with a steady rip, turned, and fired again. The shot went wild, mainly perforating the ruined screen. One of the Oscars detached its hand, and threw it. The thing sprouted waspwings and dived at Stack, red lights winking where the electrodes were. Stack knew it was a shock-sticker, and if it touched him he was fried for sure. He reversed his gun, getting a grip on the hot barrel—searing his palms in the process—and swatted at the hand. He connected, and hit a home run. The shock-sticker smashed, sparking and spitting, to the floor.
There was a ladder set into the wall. He climbed fast, gun tucked between his arm and body. The plaster was crumbling and the rungs were loose. If he could make it alive to the hatch he saw in the ceiling, be would have lost these Oscars. With their weight, they would never be able to use the ladder.
A shell exploded in the air near him. The pumpgun slithered free of his armgrip, and clattered on the floor below. Shit, that left him with only his side-arm.
Stack wondered if Chantal was still alive.
/> He headbutted the skylight hatch, and it flew up. He scrambled through onto the roof of the Rialto. The sun was going down.
V
"You know, don't you?" a woman's voice said in the dark. "What's going on?"
"Yes," Chantal said.
The lights went up. She found herself in a small room with a rack of guns on the wall. Her arms were being held by the beefy, red-faced sergeant—Quincannon—she had seen excercising the intake yesterday. Her questioner was the Captain—Finney—who had been at the monitor when they traced Stack's cruiser to Welcome. Neither of them looked happy, and they were both violating Standard Operational Procedure.
"I have diplomatic immunity," Chantal said.
Captain Finney wasn't impressed. If she couldn't get through to these people, Chantal would have to hurt them. She didn't want to do that.
"Tell me," ordered Finney.
"Quincannon? That's an Irish name, isn't it?"
"What?" The Captain was bewildered. The Sergeant was surprised.
"Irish. You're Catholic?"
Quincannon's grip relaxed on her as he nodded.
"You, Finney. You're a sufi. You said so yesterday."
"What does all this have to do with it?"
Chantal had graduated from prisoner to advisor. Quincannon stood back respectfully.
"I'm a nun. I'm on a special mission from the Pope."
Finney was still off-balance.
"Do you believe in the Devil? In a personalised force of Evil?"
Quincannon grunted an assent. Finney took a deep breath, "Well, that's a hard question for a sufi. You see, we believe the world is composed of balances and…"
"Enough. What has happened here since I left?"
Finney took another deep breath, but was terse this time. "Younger is dead. Rintoon's gone mad. Lauderdale's a homicidal maniac. And the computer is doing things computers can't do…"
"As I thought, Fort Apache is possessed."
Quincannon crossed himself.
"You must take me to a terminal."
"Possessed?"
"By a demon. I have to perform the rite of exorcism."
"Holy Mary, Mother of God," said Quincannon.
“I'll take all the help I can get. Are you in?"
The Sergeant saluted, and Finney opened the door. "There's a conduit through here. We can get into the access space under the Ops Centre. There's a terminal there."
"Lead the way…"
VI
The demon was taking a time-out for gas and oil. It wanted to have total dominance of Fort Apache before it spawned again and made a push for the next node. It was hungry for the multiple inputs of El Paso, but it knew the triumph would be all the sweeter if it waited, nourished its own desires, its lusts, its needs…
Defer the gratification, and the blood tastes better.
Lauderdale was an annoying acolyte, a messed-up pissant in blue, pretending to be naughty, gingerly dipping a toe into the Dark but holding back. Deep down, he was just another chickenbelly scared sumpless of the monsters. He lacked the force of will of The Summoner. He was a zeroid waster even set beside the Frogman between whose ribs the demon had nestled. But Lauderdale was serving his masters adequately, and he was sure to be rewarded for his efforts.
Too bad; the demon would have got its rocks off teaching Lawdy-Lawdy-Lauderdale the true meaning of the word torture.
Before the Summoning, it had never been more than a servitor of the Dark Ones, fed with the cast-offs of the Great. The tongue-tentacles of his original ectoplasmic body were scraped raw from assaulting the Big Boys of the Outer Darkness. Here, on this Earthly Plane, it was a Giant, it had found a destiny.
"Destineeeee," it sang, to the tune of Jealousy, "I got me a destineee…"
The power was building up. It coursed through the channels of the Fort. It sealed off the underground garages, and sucked out all the oxygen in the air. Thirty-eight personnel tried to fill their lungs and collapsed, blue-faced. "Suck on that, airheads," it boomed over the tannoy as they asphyxiated. Score another bunch of notches for the killer. The demon was riding high, itchy souls wriggling in torment under its clawhomed feet.
And yet it sensed danger. There were still humans struggling against its will. They were trivial. They could be ignored until he was ready to stick it to them. He owed that Swiss Miss a thorough freaking-over for living through their rumble in Welcome, but that could wait. There was something else, something which carried within it the Light that was anathema to the Dark Ones, the burning, cleansing Light that had always banished the Night.
Outside, the Sun was setting. But there was Light blazing.
For an instant, the demon knew Fear. Then, it felt better within itself. The Light was a puny, paltry thing. The Light could be dispelled.
The sun was down. And night-time was the right-time for the rituals of blood and iron. Night was for the masters, not the slaves.
It launched all the fort's missiles, trusting them to find targets in the desert somewhere.
"Just gimme that rock and roll carnage!" it screeched, sending feedback throughout the fort.
"Two-four-six-eight, time to de-cap-it-ate!" An orderly halfway through a dumbwaiter hatch found the door slicing down.
'Three-five-seven-nine, killin' folks makes me feel fine…"
A chaingun above the courtyard opened up. Troopers scattered or fell.
"This is the life," the demon thought to itself.
VII
The moon was up. In the desert, the temperature had plunged. Stack, in his shirtsleeves, was shivering as he darted from cover to cover. Lauderdale's androids were still tracking him. One of his knees had popped, and every step was like taking a bullet in the leg.
A while back there had been a mess of explosions. Fort Apache had fired its missiles. Even if there hadn't been any nukes in the parcel, a lot of damage must have been done in Havasu. Stack wondered if the bridge had got it. That would be a shame. It had come a long way to wind up in pieces in a dried-up river.
Sooner or later, he would drop from exhaustion, and the patient robots would bear down, lases slicing, electrodes primed. That would be it. Stack hoped Chantal was making some difference, because he was certainly out of the picture.
Thirty-eight wasn't so young to die these days. It was more years than Mozart had managed, than Keats, than Alexander the Great, than Billy the Kid, than Bruce Lee, than Jean Harlow, than James Dean, than Chuck Berry…And LeonaTyree, who had been thirty-three last month. And Miss Unleaded, who probably hadn't made fifteen.
He thought he couldn't hear out of his left ear, which was gummed up with blood. His knee was on the point of giving out completely.
The Oscars moved silently, without fatigue, without sustaining wounds. His sidearm was about as useful against them as a cap pistol, but he couldn't bring himself to throw it away.
He felt as if he was wading through a last-running stream. His shins were frozen. The cold was numbing, almost pleasantly so. His aches and pains faded.
Finally, his legs refused to work, and he pitched face-first into the fast-cooling sand.
He crawled a few yards, his bruised chest flaring up as he rubbed it against the ground..
He heaved himself onto his back, and looked up at the silver circle of the moon. As a kid, watching Star Wars, he had wanted to be part of the space program. He had tried out, but came along just too late, just after the moonbase fiasco and the final collapse of the Satellite Weapons Systems. Uncle Sam hadn't been in the market for spacemen. And so it had had to be the Cav. Obi-Wan wasn't being any help.
He called upon the Force. Nothing. He was still incapable. He thought he heard heavy, thumping footsteps. The Oscars were closing in.
He prayed. Chantal would have liked that, he thought. He still couldn't believe that the Op was a nun.
He heard something besides the marching androids. Out in the sand, somewhere. Something was coming, something that clumped, but jingled, almost subaudially, at the same ti
me.
He rolled over, and looked across the desert. The dunes were silvered by the moonlight, and a figure was moving fast, coming at him out of the Great Empty.
Great. Someone else to try to kill him. It was open season on US Cav tonight.
At first, Stack thought the stranger was on a motorsickle. But the shape was too tall, and lurched too much.
It was someone on a horse. The jingling he heard was spurs. There was something magical about the sight, as if one of the ghosts of the West were galloping out of the Past to be in at the loll. Who was it? Wyatt Earp? The Lone Ranger? Shane? Sir Lancelot?
From the other direction strode the four remaining Oscars, the shining, soulless embodiment of the techno-fascist's Utopia of the future. They were the mechanist nightmare made metal and plastic and glass. One of them would have a nuclear heart, ready to burst with loving death at the touch of a button
Between the past and the future, crippled in the present, Stack pushed at the ground. His knee burned inside.
The horseman came onwards. In the still night, Stack could hear the horse breathing heavy, the slap of the rider's legs against his mount's flanks, the thump of his saddlebags.
The stranger got to him first. Stack forced himself to stand up, but the rider still towered over him. He wore a long slicker, a battered grey hat that seemed to sparkle in the moonlight, and had his neckerchief up over his mouth and nose. The horse was a grey, tall and well-muscled, steaming in the night. It reared up, and the rider kept his seat. Outlined in the moonglow, the apparition was awe-inspiring. Stack felt tears stand out in the corners of his eyes, and his spine tingled with a chill that had nothing to do with the cold.
A lase beamed by from the Oscars, cutting empty air.
The horseman pulled his kerchief away from his face. It was lined and leathery, but his blue eyes were sharp and strong. He had a shaggy moustache and a strong jaw, hawk's cheekbones and white-blonde hair.
"Son," he said to Stack, "you look like you need a friendly gun."