by Jack Yeovil
Hendrik walked towards Brother Carey and the preacher. As he stepped, he froze. Carey was distracted by some sound and looked away. Hendrik saw the perfect circle of his black hat for an instant before its centre became a red splash. Carey fell dead on his still-living sacrifice, his face shot away. At that moment, timbers burned through and the church tower collapsed like a straw house.
Hendrik went to a crouch, alert, taking cover behind the bell. Someone with a rifle had intervened. He remembered the horseman of the dawn and, with a dizzying certainty, knew the stranger was Brother Carey’s murderer.
He looked to the fields. They had burned down to stubble. Thinning smoke poured into the air, a veil over the landscape. Through the gauzy wisps, Hendrik saw the horse and the rider. They advanced deliberately through the burned fields. Hendrik lost himself in the shimmer, a great tiredness falling upon him.
The horseman could not possibly reload his rifle in the saddle. Hendrik stood up, ready to chance a bullet, and stepped away from the bell. The boards under his boots were slippery. He was shivering again, shocked awake. The cries of the dead pressed in on him. Again, he had made sacrifice and not been freed. The white pain still waited. He cast his razor away.
No Gentile stood. Josephites had fallen too, and Indians. Animals and men kicked their last, leaking life into the soil, seeding the dirt. Maybe these sacrifices would be the foundation of Joseph’s shining city.
The horseman advanced, empty rifle held easily. Hendrik saw a battered face under a battered hat. A long duster lifted in the breeze around his flanks.
To Hendrik, the saddle tramp looked like an executioner from God. He strode past Carey and his kill, stepping off the floor that would never be covered by a church. After a dozen strides, he was walking on the crunchy black stubble of the field. His bootsoles warmed in the thick ash. A ripe, cooked-corn smell hung in the air.
Hendrik thought he must have sacrificed ten or twenty Gentiles. He was Bonnet of Death. He stopped shaking. The stench of blood was as strong as the smell of the corn. All his offerings had been rejected. Despite it all, he was not free.
Somewhere, a goat-horned Jesus was laughing, and in his laughter was Eddy’s “tekeli-li, tekeli-li, tekeli-li…”
The horseman dismounted and slipped his rifle into a long holster by his saddle. A pistol hung on his hip.
Hendrik unholstered his Colt. It had been forgotten until now; neglected in favour of more personal killing irons. The gun was heavy in his hand. With his thumb, he eased back the firing hammer.
The horseman had also drawn his pistol. A curtain of smoke and low flame hung between them. The heat haze played tricks, making the horseman waver like a reflection in disturbed water.
Hendrik was aware of another in the field. The Ute, a long rifle raised as he paced steadily. Around his knees the flames still burned, but the sham Indian ignored any pain he felt. He waded through fire towards the stranger.
The horseman whirled around slowly, bringing up his pistol. He sighted on the Ute as the Ute sighted on him. The stranger presented his side to Hendrik.
At the edges of the smoking field, the survivors of the war party stood, silent like a congregation. Even the sorely wounded had hauled themselves to a position where they could watch. Crow Who Mourns held up his hand, keeping everyone else out of the drama. This was between the three of them.
The horseman and the Ute were fixed on each other, like a hawk and a snake. Their guns held steady. Hendrik brought up his Colt and sighted on the horseman. The stranger had a thick moustache and a crinkle of lines around his ice-blue eyes. A straggle of white-blond hair escaped from under his hat.
The three men stood, fingers tight on triggers. The moment extended. Hendrik realised his own hand was shaking. He saw the stranger in his line of fire but he also saw the whole scene from above. A triangle of men in a black-burned scar on an infinite plain of white. The black patch seemed smaller, the white sands a continent.
He blinked and focused on his gunsight. Beyond was the red-painted face of the Ute, mirror glasses flashing sunlight.
He glanced away at the horseman, who stood like a statue, and back at the Ute.
In the mirror-glasses, Hendrik saw tiny reflections. His own image was held in one lens, the horseman’s in the other.
“Thou must make sacrifice, Hendrik,” the Ute said.
Hendrik had been made to kill women and children. He had been made to do worse things than that.
The horseman did not avert his eyes from the Ute. The smoke was almost cleared now.
If Hendrik shot the Ute, would the slate be wiped clean? Was this the sacrifice that was truly demanded?
“On three,” the horseman said. His voice was strong, unwavering. The Ute nodded assent.
“One,” the Ute said.
Hendrik sighted on the horseman.
“Two,” the stranger said.
Hendrik sighted on the Ute.
“Three,” Hendrik said, firing…
XI
Three shots sounded at the same instant.
The Ute’s black hat flew off, a dash of blood appearing at his temple, smearing into his hair. Two wounds flowered in the stranger’s chest.
Hendrik had shot the horseman. His choice was made. It had been made for a long time. He had only deluded himself that things were other than they were.
The Ute lowered his rifle. He did not touch a hand to his wound. A tear of blood ran under his unharmed spectacles and dropped from his cheek.
The horseman staggered, arms out. He looked at the gout-ing holes in his shirt and dropped his gun. His knees gave way and he fell back in the stubble.
Hendrik had no idea who the stranger was.
The Ute did not make a move to reload his rifle. He stood tall, fires dead around him.
The stranger’s horse nosed the dead ground.
Hendrik walked across the ashes and looked at the fallen man. Wounds still pumped and eyes still fluttered. He was alive.
“You’re fast,” the horseman said, through blood. “Faster’n him,” he indicated the Ute. “I’d have holed his evil eye, broke his damn mirrors, only you got me fust.”
Hendrik cocked his Colt again and took aim on the stranger’s left eye. The horseman was unafraid.
“Finish the sacrifice, Hendrik,” said the Ute.
Hendrik looked across at the Ute. He was walking away to rejoin the war party. Hendrik had no idea who the Ute was either, but the man with the mirror glasses believed he owned Hendrik Shatner.
That might not be entirely true.
Hendrik pulled the trigger and put a bullet in the ground by the horseman’s head. Dirt kicked and the stranger lay still, holding his wounds.
“Done,” Hendrik called out.
The horseman, stilled, looked up with clear, shocked eyes. He must be in great pain, but he might live. And the Ute might live to regret his assumptions.
“Mighty fine shooting, pilgrim,” the horseman whispered.
Hendrik Shatner holstered his Colt and walked away from the man he had not killed.
Brother Clegg had his horse ready. Hendrik mounted up. The Paiute had left to make their own way home. Hendrik looked at the faces of the elect, smeared with paint and smoke and blood. They were solemn, but held no regret.
The war party rode away from New Canaan, not talking among themselves, not looking back. Someone, not Hendrik, began “The Path of Joseph”. Soon, all the riders were singing the hymn. The sun crawled higher into the morning sky.
The Book of Marilyn
I
8 June 1995
Trooper Kirby Yorke, United States Road Cavalry, shot a glance at the route indicator on the dash. The red cruiser blip was dead centre of the mapscreen, green-lines scrolling past. The ve-hickle’s inboard computer hooked up with Gazetteer, the constantly updated federal map and almanac. Geostationary weather and spy satellites downloaded intelligence into the electronic notice board.
The patrol had just crossed the old stat
e line and was heading up to a ghost place that had once been called Kanab. Through the armaplas sunshade wraparound, the rocks and sand of Kanab, Utah, could as well be the sand and rocks of Boaz, New Mexico, Shawnee, Oklahoma or most anywhere in the Des.
Yorke’s own reflected vizz, dreadfully young under his forage cap, hung in the windscreen, superimposed on the roadside panorama.
The Big Empty stretched almost uninterrupted from the foothills of the Appalachians to Washington State. Rocks and sand. Sand and rocks. Even Gazetteer could not keep straight the borderlines of the Great Central Desert, the Colorado Desert, the Mojave Desert, the Mexican Desert and all the others. Pretty soon, they’d have to junk all the local names and call everything the American Desert. By then, they’d all be citizens of the United States of Sand and Rocks.
The two outrider blips held steady. Tyree and Burnside, on their mounts, would be getting hot and sticky. You couldn’t air-condition a motorcyke like you could the 4x4 canopied transport Yorke shared with Sergeant Quincannon. That would be rough on Tyree and Burnside.
Yorke liked the feel of the wheel in his gauntlets, liked the feel of the cruiser on the hardtop. He appreciated a beautiful machine. The Japcorps could put heavy hardware on the roads and Turner-Harvest-Ramirez were known for impressive rolling stock. But the US Cav had access to state-of-the-art military and civilian tech. On the shadow market, the ve-hickle was worth a cool million gallons of potable water or an unimaginable equivalent sum in cash money.
He thought of the cruiser as a cross between a Stealth Bomber, the Batmobile, Champion the Wonder Horse and Death on Wheels. All plugged in to the informational resources of Fort Valens and, through the Fort, into the interagency datanet whose semi-sentient Information Storage and Retrieval Centre was in a secret location somewhere in upstate New York.
Ever since the Enderby Amendment of 1985 opened up, in desperation, the field of law enforcement to private individuals and organisations, Yorke had wanted to be with an agency. Sanctioned Ops were the only non-criminal heroes a kid from the N0G0 could have these days. T-H-R’s Redd Harvest, who dressed for effect, got the glam covers on Road Fighter and Harry Parfitt of Seattle’s Silver Bullet Agency was always being declared Man of the Month by Guns and Killing, the nation’s best-selling self-sufficiency magazine. It was the Wild West again. Heat went down all over the country: card-carrying Agency Ops out for the annual arrest record bonus and stone-crazy Solos who brought in Maniax for bounty.
But Yorke knew the only agency which guaranteed Ops a life expectancy longer than that of the average mafioso-turned-informer was the Road Cav. Quasi-government status bought better hardware, better software, better roadware and better uniforms. He’d joined up on his sixteenth birthday and didn’t plan on mustering out much before his sixtieth. He wasn’t ambitious like Leona Tyree. In a world of chaos, the Cav offered a nice, orderly way of doing things. He liked being a trooper, liked the food, liked the pay, liked the life.
He even liked Sergeant Quincannon.
Yorke reached up to the overhead locker and pulled a pack of high-tars down from the Quince’s stash. The flap was broken and wouldn’t stick back. The sergeant stopped pretending to be asleep, and commented, “I knew that gum-wad wouldn’t last.”
The flap fell down again.
“Wonderful,” Quincannon commented. “They can whip up a machine so tough it can take out Godzilla and so smart it can play chess with Einstein, but they still can’t get one itty-bitty little catch to stay stuck where it damn well ought to be stuck.”
The sergeant accepted one of his own Premiers. He used the dash lighter and sucked in a good, healthy lungful. Quincannon held it in for a few seconds, then coughed smoke out through his nose. He hacked for almost a minute, cursing between choked gasps as Yorke lit up.
“You jake, Quince?”
“Yeah, boy, fine,” he said, refreshing himself with another drag. His face had gone even redder. “You know, back when I was young, there were damfool eggheads who said cigarettes caused all sorts of disease. Heart trouble, the cancer, emphysema.”
“I’ve never heard that,” said Yorke, who’d smoked since he was ten. He dragged on his own Premier. “Dr Nick on ZeeBeeCee says nothing’s better for your lungs than a Snout first thing in the ayem.”
“It was a big flap, but it died down. Some say it was the tobacco companies bought or scared off the eggheads.”
“Dr Nick says nicotine prevents Alzheimer’s,” Yorke said.
Like a lot of people his age, the Quince was paranoid. He was full of stories about the government and the multinats, and the sneak tricks they’d pulled. Yorke didn’t believe a tenth of them. If he had a few snorts of Shochaiku in him, Quincannon would start claiming the President was mixed up in underhand arms deals. Yorke was used to the ridiculous fantasies the Quince picked up from those mystery faxes which spread malicious rumour and gossip.
Quincannon choked again but kept on dragging. Hell, if smoking were dangerous, the sergeant would be mummified in a museum by now.
Yorke stowed the pack of Premiers and shut the locker. The flap fell loose again and he noticed a picture of a girl taped to the inside. It must have been from some old magazine, because it was in black and white and the image was faded. A blonde stood on the street in a billowing dress, showing her legs. They were nice legs, particularly up around the thighs. The print on the other side of the picture was showing through, giving her gangcult-style tattoos.
“Old bunkmate, Quince?”
Quincannon grunted. “No, Yorke, just the fillette who got us all into this.”
“Into what?”
“Hell, me boy, hell.” The sergeant sounded wistful. “See those legs. They changed the world.”
Yorke sucked in a lungful of gritty smoke and held it until his eyes watered. Tyree’s blip wavered. Since there was no longer any such thing as a Utah State Government, the road ahead was unmaintained. Tyree was signalling slowdown. Sometimes sand drifted so thick you couldn’t see asphalt. Without thinking, Yorke adjusted the speed of the cruiser.
“Who was she, Jesus’s mother?”
Quincannon didn’t laugh. “No, that girl was Marilyn Monroe.”
“Hell, I know who Marilyn Monroe is. She’s in that show on the Golden Years net, I Love Ronnie. The fat lady who lives next to Ronnie and Nancy. Her feeb husband is always coming over and making trouble.”
Scanning again, Yorke saw Marilyn’s eyes in the pretty girl’s face. They didn’t quite fit her now.
“Marilyn Monroe, huh?”
“Yeah, she’s the one,” the Sergeant said, almost wistfully. “Before you were born, she was a big star. Movies. Back when you saw movies on a screen, boy, not in a box. That pic’s from The Seven Year Itch. I saw all her pictures when I was a kid. Bus Stop, River of No Return, How to Marry a Millionaire. And the later ones, the lousy ones. The Sound of Music. She was no nun, that’s for sure, they laughed her off screen in that. The Graduate, with Dustin Hoffmann. She was Mrs Robinson. And Earthquake ’75. Remember, the woman who gets crushed saving the handicapped orphans?”
Yorke had never had Quincannon figured for a movie freak. Still, on patrol, you wound up talking about almost anything. Out here, boredom was your second worst enemy. After the gangcults.
“So, she was your pin-up. I kinda had a crush on Sue Dallion back when she was with that Sove rock band. And Drew Barrymore was a knockout in Lash of Lust. But that don’t make ’em world-changers.”
The cruiser beeped a gas alarm at them. Refuel within 150 klicks or face shutdown. Yorke stubbed his butt into the overflowing ashtray. The interior of the car could do with a thorough clean-out at some near future point. It was beginning to smell pretty ripe. Dr Nick said there was nothing a woman liked better than the good, strong stench of tobacco, but Tyree always pulled a face when she got a whiff of the ve-hickle’s upholstery.
“Marilyn wasn’t like the others, Yorke. You’re too young to remember it all. Sometimes I feel like I’m the only on
e that remembers. The only one who knows it could have been different. It was October 1960. That was an election year. Richard M. Nixon…”
“I remember him. Trickydick.”
“Yeah. He was running against a bird called John F. Kennedy. A Democrat…”
“What’s a Democrat?”
“Hard to tell, Yorke. Anyway, Kennedy was a real golden boy, way ahead in the polls. A hero from the Second War. A cinch to win the election. There was a real good feeling in the country. We’d lived through the first Cold War and put up with Dwight D. Boring Eisenhower, and here was this kid coming along saying that things could change. He was like the Elvis of politics…”
“Who?”
“I was forgetting. Never mind. Jack Kennedy had a pretty wife, Jackie. Old money. She was in all the papers. Women copied her hats. Back then, everybody wore hats. In October 1960, a few weeks before the election, Jackie Kennedy opened the wrong door and scanned the freakin’ future President of these United States in bed with Marilyn Monroe.”
“Sheesh.”
“Yeah. And they weren’t playing midnight Pinochle. It was in the papers for what seemed like years. People fought in the streets about it. I’m serious. The Kennedys were Catholics and the Pope had a big down on divorce back then, not like the new man in Rome, Georgi. But Jackie sued Jack’s ass. He took a beating in the court and a bigger one at the polls. The country let itself in for eight years of Richard Milhous Criminal. Remember that scam with the orbital death-rays that wouldn’t work? And the way we stayed out of Indochina and let the Chinese walk in? Trickydick was like the first real wrong ’un in the White House. Since then, we’ve not had a winner.”
Sometimes Quincannon had these talking spells. Like a lot of old-timers, he remembered things having been better. That was sumpstuff; the Quince just remembered when he wasn’t old and fat and tired, and assumed the rest of the world had been feeling good too.
