by Jack Yeovil
For the first time since leaving the seminary, Roger Duroc felt like worshipping something.
The Jibbenainosay descended. No, it expanded downwards, extruding thick feelers with tips like clawed mouths. One slunk towards Duroc, but his raised hand warded it away, and it fastened instead on the dead head of Elder Hawkins.
Other tentacles came for the other corpses. Some burrowed through the black cloth covering the backs of men who had fallen face-forward onto the table, some attached to hands, some to shoulders, some to stomachs. One clasped Beach by the face, and dug through his head, swelling his neck as it latched onto the inside of his chest.
“It needs flesh, Roger,” said Seth.
“Why have you brought it here?”
The Elder took off his dark glasses. His eyes gleamed.
“The Krokodil must die.”
VII
Krokodil needed him now. She used up three days’ water cleaning herself off, and asked him to cut her hair. Using a stiletto she gave him, he did his best to shear away her black tent, and then she tied what was left up in a knot. She looked a little like some of the women on the Reservation. She found her eyepatch, and slipped it on. Then she dressed in clean clothes, and sat cross-legged in the courtyard. Hawk-That-Settles sensed her nervousness, her uncertainty. If this was the Sixth Level of Spirituality, he was glad to remain comparatively unenlightened. For a moment, she was the old Jesse, then she was the coldblooded reptile woman again. The song was drawing to its close. In some old movie he had seen, there was an Indian who got up every morning, looked around, and said “this is a good day to die.” He had thought that absurd. He had a bottle of tequila left, but he just poured it out and watched it seep into the sand.
“Gentlemen, I’m afraid this is all completely beyond me. My background is purely in the military uses of satellite technology.”
“Mr President, this is completely beyond all of us. It’s an anomaly we can’t explain, like the business with the Sea of Tranquillity last year.”
“Run the stats by me again, General Pendarves.”
“Well, one of our geostationary spy satellites was knocked off course last year by an electrical failure. Its orbit has been deteriorating ever since, and we expect it to burn up sometime in late 1999. We have not been able to control it, but we have still been able to get data from its sensors.”
“So we’ve been peeking in backyards?”
“More or less. Until recently, we’ve just been able to track a few wolves and trappers in the Canadian wastes. But three weeks ago, we had another kink in the course, and the damn thing ended up over Utah.”
“Deseret, General. Deseret. We renamed it, remember? It was a plank of the election platform.”
“Yes sir, Deseret. Since it’s only notionally United States territory, we saw no harm in taking a look. Some of the reports that have been creeping back have been disturbing.”
“I have every confidence in Nguyen Seth, gentlemen. He is a true example of the pioneer spirit that has made this country great.”
“Yes, yes, yes… but there are things going on in Salt Lake that we have no explanations for. Mr Fenin has been monitoring them.”
“There have been disturbances.”
“What, earthquakes? Typhoons?”
“Maybe, Mr President. But along with that they have an assortment of phenomena we have no handle on. Mr Fenin is from our ESP division.”
“Mr Fenin?”
“Mr President.”
“We turned the data over to him.”
“And… ?”
“And I have a few precedents for this, but nothing that makes sense. There’s an immense power source of some sort in Salt Lake City, apparently in the depths of the Josephite Tabernacle itself.”
“But the Josephites are back-to-the-land types, surely. They’re not tekkies. They wouldn’t set up a nuclear power plant, would they?”
“Not that kind of power, sir. Non-physical power. We haven’t really got a name for it. Psychic force, spiritual energy, call it what you will.”
“The United States of America does not recognize ghosties and ghoulies, Mr Fenin. And I can’t recall authorizing any expenditure for a department of magical crackpots!”
“Sir, if you’ll recall, the Soviets are very advanced in this field. The previous administration felt there was a psychic gap. President Heston appointed James Earl Carter to head the Commission.”
“Balloon juice, gentlemen. I won’t hear any of this.”
“But, Mr President, there is every possibility of some cataclysmic force being unleashed…”
“That is abject nonsense, and you are aware of it. I believe it might be time to relieve you of your command, General.”
“Mr President…”
“I’ll hear no more of this. Mr Fenin, good day. General Pendarves, you will report to this office tomorrow for reassignment. The issue is closed. Ghosts… pah!”
Dr Ottokar Proctor saw the Indian cutting the woman’s hair, and kept out of their way. Afterwards, he went into the cell, and gathered up the hair. It was soft, and smelled sweet. He wanted it.
Inside his mind, a crate from Tasmania shook. Nails came loose.
His eyes focused properly. His knife slipped as he was working on Bugs’ teeth, and he cut himself.
Licking his finger, he tasted blood.
“Your holiness, we believe the ground zero will be in Southern Arizona, near the Mexican border. In the Gila Desert.”
Pope Georgi I looked at the mapscreen. Father O’Shaughnessy amplified the projection and narrowed down the area.
“Somewhere about here.” He tapped the screen with his pointer.
“What’s this name?”
“Santa de Nogueira. It’s an old monastery.”
“Ours?”
“It was, but it’s been empty for over a century and a half. We still own the ground, but only through a Spanish land grant that probably has no legal status.”
“Is anybody there?”
“Somebody must be, or the demon wouldn’t be on its way.”
“Who?”
O’Shaugnessy lit his pipe. “There, Holy Father, you have me. Cardinal Mapache is scouting the area…”
“The prophet?”
“He’s an esper, Holiness.”
“Indeed.”
“He is trying to divine any presences in the monastery.”
“Results?”
O’Shaugnessy exhaled smoke. “Mixed. There are at least three people in the building, probably refugees from justice. The deserts are full of criminal factions, juvenile delinquents. But it’s not the people who interest Mapache.”
The Pope frowned. “Continue.”
“There seems to be a supernatural presence.”
“A demon?”
“That’s hard to say. It is attached somehow to one of the people, but not in a standard possession. Mapache says they have formed some sort of gestalt.”
“Is that orthodox?”
“The Holy Spirit has spoken through human beings before. The son of God took mortal flesh.”
“You are flirting with blasphemy.”
“Blasphemy and I are just good friends, Holy Father.”
The Pope smiled.
“Can we get anyone there in time?”
“Mapache says no. Sister Chantal is busy in Kamchatka, and Mother Kazuko Hara is still convalescing. I don’t think we have anyone else qualified to handle something like this.”
“Your suggestions?”
O’Shaughnessy spread his hands. “Prayer, Holy Father.”
Duroc watched the Jibbenainosay disappear into the sky like a Montgolfier balloon, and was relieved to see the thing getting further away from him. It still trailed its corpses like puppets, and had sprouted some non-organic looking appendages that seemed capable of doing plenty of severe damage. He got the impression that even Nguyen Seth wasn’t exactly unhappy to see the Dark One off on its way to get Jessamyn Bonney.
Duroc could
n’t believe that it had come to this. The Jibbenainosay was something you called up if you wanted to sink Antarctica, not take out an eighteen-year-old girl. Of course, the Manolo and Proctor options hadn’t proved effective. Jessamyn—Krokodil, she was calling herself now—was demonstrating an unsuspected resilience. Still, she would have no chance against the Dark One.
Then, Duroc supposed, Seth would have the problem of finding something else to keep the Jibbenainosay occupied.
It didn’t rain any more, but sometimes this part of the desert was visited by violent sandstorms. Hawk-That-Settles thought one was coming along. At the height of the afternoon, the wind began to blow gently, and sand drifted against the walls of Santa de Nogueira. He hadn’t seen Dr Proctor around all day, but that didn’t worry him. It would probably be time to gather the womenfolks indoors, board up the windows and sit tight until it blew over. But he knew Krokodil wasn’t going to be be the proper squaw and let him protect her from the elements. She stood on her chapel roof, looking unblinking to the North as the sand blew in her face.
Erich Von Richter, born Ethan Ryker, pulled back the joystick and lifted his Fokker up over the turbulence. He had been with the Red Baron for three years now, giving air cover for the Flying Circus’s raids. They only had two planes, but the rest made do with Kustom Kars kitted out with razor-edged biplane wings and machete-blade propellors.
The convoy was down on the road, drawing level with a couple of eighteen-wheelers. He was alone in the skies today, because the Baron had some business with the yaks in Welcome. He was turning over a percentage of the scav for a tankerload of fuel, and an extension of the warranty on the Fokkers.
Von Richter loved flying, but he didn’t care for the aerobatics that were the Baron’s special thrill. He much preferred laying down a blanket of napalm in front of an interstate wrapper, or opening up with his twin burpguns, kicking up ruts in the road and puncturing the running groundrats.
His old man had sprayed crops for a living, back when there were crops. This was a much better way to use the skies.
“Yo, Rikki,” said Heidi in his earchip. She was groundleader for the day. “We have the camels in sight. Are you available?”
“There’s some weird whirlwind effect up here.”
“If you can’t handle it, we’ll be okay without you, flyboy.”
Heidi was always taunting him, jockeying for his plane. “Nothing I can’t breeze through, roadcrawler. Remember, you’re talking to an ace.”
He dipped the bird’s nose into the turbulence and swooped down. It was rougher than he had thought. The stick jarred in his hands, bruising his palms.
The motors cut out and the Fokker fell thirty feet like a deadweight before they cut in again. That shouldn’t happen.
“Flyboy, what are you freaking around for? This is combat, here. Squirt some lighter fluid on those trucks and leave it to the Arizona Korps.”
He didn’t answer Heidi. He was too busy with the stick, trying to regain control of the biplane.
Suddenly, he was surrounded by a cloud. No, there were no clouds in the Big Empty. It must be smoke. It was black and thick, as if night had fallen in an instant. It wasn’t like regular air. The instruments weren’t responding properly.
Von Richter shivered as the temperature fell. Ice formed inside his goggles, and his sweat crystallized.
The engine stopped, and he tried to scream. A gust froze his throat.
The Fokker didn’t fall. It was suspended in the black cloud.
“Rikki, what is that freaking thing up there? Tell me I’m having a GloJo flashback.”
Von Richter thumbed his gun controls and the guns chattered, spinning bullets and cartridge casings into the black. They emptied quickly, but he still kept pressing.
This was serious weird shit.
A face ten feet across appeared in the blackness. It was more or less human. Von Richter screamed, and beat his hands against the ribbed canvas.
The face’s thick lips opened, and a white beak pushed out, opening three ways. A violet thing shot out of the beak, and latched onto Von Richter’s face.
Tiny filaments threaded instantaneously through his entire body, and there was a mighty tug as the black thing turned him inside-out.
The Fokker fell out of the sky, and crashed into the sand, surrounded by chunks of ice. Pieces of Erich Von Richter rained down around the wreckage.
The Jibbenainosay sped onwards, towards the South, thinking less of its latest prey than a desert wanderer does a single grain of sand.
The Arizona Korps didn’t stop to bury their ace.
Dr Proctor had been polishing his knife. When the Indian came into the wine cellar, he looked up, teeth bared again.
“Hello, Tonto,” he said.
The Ancient Adversary was puzzled. The Vessel was not what he had expected, not the titanic being that could bestride a world and wrestle mind-to-mind with the Dark Ones.
This Jessamyn Bonney was so fragile, so slim, like a butterfly. It knew a moment of doubt. Then, it firmed its resolve.
It was shrunken inside Jessamyn now, inside Krokodil.
Alone, Nguyen Seth sat in his library. The Jibbenainosay was on the loose, and Krokodil could not withstand it.
Inside his mind, he could still hear her: tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock…
He opened a book, but could not concentrate on the text, could not even recognize the language in which it was written.
This distraction must end soon. There were things to be done. He had another demon to summon, a subtler fiend, and a more complicated enemy to be struck down.
The Jesuits were becoming a nuisance. He would have to do something about the Vatican.
The sand was blowing hard now, stinging her face. This was the first sign of the Jibbenainosay.
She remembered her dead foes: Daddy Bruno, Miss Liberty, eyeless Holm Rodriguez, Susie Spam-in-the-Can Terhune, Bronson Manolo. And Dr Proctor, not dead but neutralized.
Behind all the faces, she saw Elder Seth.
The Krokodil part of her knew what was coming, what the Jibbenainosay was, and it was afraid. That was a first for it.
The Jessamyn Bonney part didn’t care any more.
On the road. Trooper Nathan Slack was concentrating on the screen, wondering again whether he should try to be reassigned. He didn’t know whether riding with Leona was a good idea after their break-up, but he wasn’t sure if he could stand the thought of some other grunt drawing the duty. Sergeant Leona Tyree handled the United States Cavalry cruiser with expert ease. They had had a call-in from an interstate convoy, out of Phoenix for the East. Someone hadn’t paid off the yaks, and a polite oriental gentleman in a suit had made a scrambled telephone call, and the Arizona Korps were cutting loose again.
Stack saw a shower of blips on the screen. “Dead ahead, Leona. Five ve-hickles. They’re stalled.”
Then, the whole screen lit up, a solid mass of light.
The cruiser swerved as Tyree looked over at the radar, but she got it back on the hardtop.
The glitch was gone.
“What was that?”
Stack tapped the screen. “According to this heap of junk, that was a flying object the size of the U.S.S. Nimitz.”
Tyree laughed. “You startled me there. I’ll have the system stripped and overhauled when we get back to Fort Apache.”
“Yeah.”
A thought occurred to him. “Say, Leona, do you want me to log it as a UFO?”
Tyree sneered. “Nahhh. That gag’s stale already.”
The Jibbenainosay cleaved through the air, gradually delighting in the unfamiliar sensations of physical existence. The human brains it had absorbed taught it much about this universe. Its new form was awkward in some ways, but there were things about it that offered possibilities.
It had never had things to hurt before. It found that it enjoyed inflicting pain. Even more, it relished taking away the spark of life from these scumspeck beings.
Soon, this un
iverse would belong to the Dark Ones.
“Dr Proctor, you’re… ?”
“Better?” The Devil laughed in his face. “Yes, I suppose I am.”
Hawk-That-Settles was backed up against a winerack. The bottles were long gone, but in their nests were a series of figurines. This was where Dr Proctor stored his cartoon creations.
The Devil had his whittling knife, and was making leisurely passes with it, just under Hawk’s nose.
“There’s a storm coming, isn’t there Tonto? I can feel it in the air.”
“Yes. A bad one.”
“Do you perhaps know anything about the history of your people?”
Hawk, gulped, the shining knifepoint a hair’s breadth away from his adam’s apple.
“Of course you do. You are a Son of Geronimo, are you not?”
Hawk nodded his head.
“Do you know what General Phil Sheridan, the war hero, said…”
Hawk knew what was coming next.
“‘The only good Indians I ever saw.’ old Phil said, ‘were dead.’”
Hawk’s eyes went to the doorway. It was too far off. He would never make it.
“Tonto, how would you like to be a good Indian?”
She remembered Doc Threadneedle trying to tell her to stay human. She supposed he wouldn’t have been proud of her.
The horizon was invisible now, the air thick with sand. She could hear the Jibbenainosay coming through the whirling winds.
Krokodil hoped there was a way she could make it up to the Doc.
Where was Hawk-That-Settles? He should be here to see her take the final steps, to see her progress to the Seventh Level of Spirituality and beyond.
