by Jack Yeovil
When the Psychopomps hit Spanish Fork late the night before and headed for Colum’s 25-foot bar, Job Fiske had made a personal call to inform the judge. Colpeper considered things a moment and looked up the rap-sheets on the interagency datanets. He didn’t consider crimes committed outside the city limits much to do with him, but he liked to keep abreast of things. There was a girl with the ’pomps, Jessamyn Bonney, who was earning herself a rep. Twenty-three semi-confirmed kills, starting with her own father, and some interesting black-market surgical amendments. She would be a Guns and Killing pin-up within the year.
The judge told Fiske to keep a watch for a girl with one eye, and make sure her lieutenant Andrew Jean wasn’t too enthusiastic with the beehive-hairdo-concealed slipknife. A solo Op in Montana had got a nasty surprise from ignoring the orange-haired ’pomp with the eye make-up and there hadn’t been much left to bury afterwards. Otherwise, if the ’pomps were content to be good customers, and pay for their food, drink, gas, auto repairs and party favours, the judge was content to let them be. The secret of the town’s survival was that folks that other communities saw as threats, Spanish Fork treated as customers.
By now, Colum’s bartender down at the Feelgood would have told the ganggirls all about him, and maybe, if they were lucky, they’d respect his rep. It had been a while since he’d officiated at one of his special quintuple necktie parties.
Things were pretty quiet. A recorded note from Fiske on his oak desk reported that the Psychopomps had enthusiastically partaken of the fare at the Feelgood and broken a little furniture. Nothing indispensible. Then they’d rented cabins over at the Katz Motel and broken some of Herman Katz’s ugly tables and chairs while passing round the glojo Ferd Sunderland mixed up in the back of the drug store. A couple of the hardier boys and nancier girls from the Pussycat Palace had gone back to the Katz for a little Strenuous Recreation with the ganggirls.
The judge had a warm glow as he imagined the fun the boys and girls must have had and still be having in and around the shower units, hot tubs and water-beds of Herman’s Party Cabins. They wouldn’t be too competent at trouble-making, at least until suppertime.
Judge Colpeper fastened his bootlace tie and put his big silver-banded black hat on his flowing silver locks. He felt his inside vest pocket for the derringer dartgun he habitually carried and slipped polished Colt .45 Pythons into his hip holsters. The guns were satisfyingly heavy, fully loaded with ScumStopper explosive rounds. The weight dragged his pelvis down and back, inspiring him to puff out his chest and walk tall. He settled into his long black frock coat, ensuring the skirts hung properly over his guns. Scanning himself in the mirror, he was well pleased.
Descending from his study to the courthouse steps like God from heaven, he was ready when Larroquette came by to accompany him on his regular tour of the town.
“Good mornin’, judge,” the deputy said, taking off his Cyberfeed stetson. The sockets on his shaven head stood out raw. He had been scratching them again.
“Good morning, Matthieu. Thank you for the report on the Psychopomp situation.”
“Weren’t nothin‘, Judge. Just keepin’ tabs, like you always say.”
The judge joined Matthieu in the street. Job Fiske, quiet and compact, ambled out of the shadows to join them. Fiske hefted a robobit arm, replacing the one he lost in action against the Clean, and clacked his claws encouragingly. Behind his back, some of the Feelgood boys called him Deputy Lobster, but a nip from the doodad discouraged disrespect.
“Any strangers to report, Job?”
Fiske stood straight, “There’s some old cowpoke, judge. On a horse, if you can credit it. He’s been seen a couple of times on the outlying spreads. Nowhere near town though.”
“Not messing with our weed?”
“Not as far as I can tell.”
“There’s no trouble from one lone ranger, then. Still, if you can find anything out about him, do so. A man on a horse is unusual round these parts. A man without wheels under him has got to be some sort of weirdo.”
“Herman Katz says he passed by the motel two, three days back. Herman says he thought the cowpoke had been out on the trail a long, long time. Covered in white dust, like a ghost.”
Colpeper grinned. “Well now, Herman’s been a mite touched since that sad business with his mother. It’s a shame, but you shouldn’t take much account of what he says.”
The judge looked up and down Main Street. Ferd was sweeping up out front of the drugstore. Colpeper returned the druggist’s wave. The man was a world-class pharmaceutical whiz but he had opted to retire to Spanish Fork for his health and tinker away with his chemistry set. His special Candy Z mixes attracted a lot of customers.
Accompanied by his deputies, the judge walked his rounds. Every day, this gave him a sense of his power, his stability. He knew the solids could set their clocks by him. If they saw him about, they knew the town was still safe.
Kids played by the gallows, throwing stones at the head of the car thief the judge had sentenced yesterday. Damfool had been caught with electronic keys lodged in the shock alarm of the Magruder station wagon. He’d been too stunned shaken to say anything during trial or execution. They never did found out his right name, though he looked a bit like Burt Reynolds. The Judge hated the way the Smokey and the Bandit movies made rural law-enforcement officials out to be pompous martinets; probably been a contributing factor in the severity of the sentence.
Colpeper smiled as the children ran up to him, hands open. He found the bag of Ferd’s jujubes he always kept for the little ’uns and passed them out. They ran off again, ’jubes popping as they pressed them to their tiny, happy nostrils.
“You see, Matthieu, Job,” he declaimed. “You see what this is all about. What we’re standing up for here in Spanish Fork.”
Larroquette pulled his Cyberfeed down over his head and drew in his breath sharply as its terminal plugs slid into his sockets. The stetson hummed and the deputy held up his amended arm. Electricity crackled between his fingers and he primed the pump action. He saluted, ready for work.
As they walked down Main Street, the judge bid good morning to various citizens who passed by. Carnadyne lurked by his coffin shop, nodding in thanks for the county fee on the car thief; he’d have the whelp off the gallows and into a lime-pit by nightfall with no ceremony at all. Colpeper bowed to Miss Dolley and told her to report any undue wear and tear on her folks before the ’pomps left town.
Larroquette’s stetson downloaded information.
“Anything new, Matthieu?”
“We got some Josephites coming into town, with United States Road Cavalry escort. It’s a motorwagon convoy. They’ll be passin’ through on the road to Salt Lake City.”
The judge pondered and his hand just happened to end up resting on the pearl-inlaid handle of a Colt Python.
“Josephites, huh? This town’s got good cause to care very little for Josephites, Matthieu. Too much like Mormons for my taste. All that hymn-singin’ and holiness. Mormons used to think they owned the State of Utah, Matthieu. I hear tell that damfool in Washington DC says these Josephites can have it now.”
They were passing the Corn Exchange Video Arcade. A wind-worn cross stood, its base bearing a plaque that listed the names of the settlers killed by Josephites and Indians in the Massacre of 1854. You could hardly read the names any more and one arm of the cross was bent since some unwise Maniak used it for target practice. A mangy cat, nesting under the monument, took fright at the approach of the law and slank off towards some shadows.
Colpeper looked at the monument and thought back. Utah folks didn’t need to go as far back as 1854 to have a reason not to like Josephites; President North’s declaration of last month was enough to set the blood a-boil. When it came to turning over an entire state of the Union to an outside authority, Ollie North claimed he had consulted authorities throughout Utah, but nobody had asked Judge Thomas Longhorne Colpeper anything. And the judge did not much cosy up to the idea o
f living along the Path of Joseph.
“Matthieu, Job,” the Judge said “nobody asked me whether I wanted to be a citizen of Deseret and give up my cup of morning recaff, my slug or two of Colum’s whiskey, my shot of Ferd’s zooper-blast, or my Saturday evening hide-the-salami sessions with Miss Dolley. And, you know what, boys, I don’t reckon I do want to give up those things. And nor, I would certainly wager, does anyone else in this lovely little city. I’m a peaceable man, but sometimes you have to fight for the little comforts you believe in. Do you get my drift?”
“Yes, Judge.”
Larroquette extended his arm, palm flat out, and flexed his bicep. There was a bang and a discharge of smoke, and the mangy cat twenty paces down the road flew to pieces. The deputy bent his elbow, then straightened out again, the spent cartridge popping out of the hairy slit in his forearm. It fell in the sand. Larroquette primed his pump-action arm again.
“I believe you do, Matthieu, I believe you do.”
II
12 June 1995
Jazzbeaux woke in the dark, sunwarmth playing over her. She was out of doors, mainly undressed, hair straggled over her face. On her back under a blanket, she felt soft pseudo-grass and sand beneath her. Through her optic sensor, the sun was a penny of heat in rust-red sky. Someone had switched her patch to cover her good eye. Probably Sweet-cheeks. The dear girl always thought that hilarious.
She sat up, the aftershocks of last night’s party still pleasurable as she unwound, and took a look at the heat picture. Recognisable ve-hickle shapes were warming in the sun, hot metal carapaces burning brighter than coolish engines. Otherwise, this was terra incognita.
Yesterday, after settling with the DAR, the ’pomps had hit Spanish Fork and wound up in a motel a klick out of town, getting some serious party favours. Jazzbeaux’s nostrils stung, reminding her she had been persuaded to backslide and snort a few jolts. Just Candy Z, she stayed off the zonk. Pretty colours ran across the surface of her occluded eye.
She slipped the patch back to the proper side of her nose and blinked. She had ended up outside one of a row of neat, off-white cabins. Up on a small hill was a gingerbread Gothic house: tall and wood and creaky.
The Katz Motel, she remembered. She toga-wrapped the blanket around her bod; otherwise, all the clothes she had on were go-go boots and a red star choker. The fabulous shades, as she had come to think of the pair scavved from the preachie, were stuck up in her hair.
Images and sensations from the party flickered back through her graymass: ’Cheeks stabbing a ruby pump into the non-abusable screen of the pornovideo, shouting how much she hated that satyrstud Billy Priapus as the set spark-destructed; Varoomschka strapping on a hardy boy, tying his hands to the bedboard with a leather bullwhip and riding him like a bronco for the full twenty minutes; Andrew Jean going weepy-sentimental about being all old and used up and having to be comforted with cuddles and kisses; Sleepy Jane, ripped on tequila, trying to shoot down spysats with a dart-gun; ’Cheeks singing ‘Long-Haired Lover From Leningrad’ way out of her key as a couple of the hardies tried to unpeel her without using their hands.
Just the regular Psychopomp Victory Good Time.
Jazzbeaux found a black leather miniskirt inside-out on a window-sill. It fit her, so she ditched the blanket. Feeling sunwarmth on untreated nipples, she wondered if this much exposure was good for her. Doctors recommended a six-monthly skinsmear against UV rays. She’d not been near a sawbones since her last amendment.
Thinking of amendments and worrying about her breasts reminded her that Daddy once told her that the Amazon warriors of old used to have one of their tits amputated. That way, the surplus gazonga didn’t get in the way of drawing a bowstring and firing off an arrow. Jazzbeaux had used a crossbow a couple of times but never a longbow, so she couldn’t tell if the Robin Hood act really twanged a nipple off every time you sank a yardshaft through one of the Sheriff of freakin’ Nottingham’s Norman dogs. Her rule for amendments was that they were all right so long as they didn’t spoil the package. Her eye was an exception, she hadn’t chosen to have the thing fished out so she had this hole in her face which needed filling. Doc Threadneedle, her favoured bio-surgeon, could jazz her up inside, but she wanted to stay as human as she was.
She pulled the shades down and took a quick scan at the landscape. Nothing was different. She had tamed the effect.
Humming “I Enjoy Being a Girl” from Flower Drum Song, she thought about her own victory celebration. Naturally, as the heroine of battle, she rated the best of everything: Colombian champagne, non-vat meatburgers, pick of the hardies and nancies, first go in the hot tub, and dibs on the cabins.
Jazzbeaux had selected a sweet-faced hardy boy, all cowboy hat and low-slung jeans and wispy face fuzz, and gentled him into the tub for a long, slow seduction. Having been on the road with the girls for so long, the boy was a nice change. She almost lost control when she flipped him over and, just as she was finishing off, kept forcing his head under the ripples. When it was over, she had to squeeze soapy water out of his lungs and give him tongue-to-tongue artificial respiration.
After that, she took her jolts and was carried in triumph around the complex by all and sundry, then turned over to So Long Suin and her acupuncture needles. With three precise jabs, So Long—without otherwise touching—brought her to a cataclysmax which thrilled her entire body. Now the warmth revived tactile memories of the pleasure paths her gangbuddy had mapped on her living body. And unlike the boy, three needles didn’t half-drown when you showed them a good time.
She turned lazily around a corner and threw a startle into a birdlike, jittery young man whose face instantly reddened. She crossed her arms modestly and tried to smile.
The young man looked every way but at her, all at once, and stammered into an apology.
“We met yesterday?” she said.
“H-H-H-Herman K-K-Katz, ma’am. Like the K-K-Katz M-M-Motel.”
“Ahh,” she said, “that Katz.”
“N-no ma’am, that K-Katz is my mother,” he darted a look up at the old house. “She runs the place, I just help out.”
“Dutiful son, huh? A rare thing.”
“A boy’s best friend is his mother.”
Jazzbeaux saw there was an uncurtained window in an upper storey, and a shadow figure looked down. Against the sunglare from the window, she instinctively slipped the shades on and regretted it. A black swirl of deathly evil seemed to pour out of the house, stretching tentacles toward them. Mrs Katz was probably scandalised her little boy was talking with a mostly naked woman. She lifted the sunglasses and let her hands fall to her sides, trying not to smile too broadly. For effect, she licked her lips.
“I, uh, found some, uh, ladies’ clothes, strewn around,” Herman said. “I guess you lost ’em during the, uh, party.”
She shrugged, noting the way Herman’s eyes kept being pulled back to her chest. This was pure wickedness, but hard to resist. She never got to flirt much; most people understood her straight oft
“It must be lonely out here, Herman.”
“I have my mother, and my birds.”
“Birds?” she raised the brow over her good eye.
“It’s my hobby,” Herman replied. “Stuffing birds. It’s fascinating work, preserving life in death.”
She was suddenly bored with tormenting this timid, inoffensive character. If anything, she wanted to charge up the hill and face the old lady. That black, swirling cloud must mean some oppressive force, some wrinkled and bony thumb pressing down on a butterfly life. Let the kid go, she should say, it does no good to keep him shackled like a slave. In the end, he’ll turn. She was surprised Herman hadn’t already followed the Jessamyn Bonney Rid-Yourself-of-a-Cloying-Parent Manoeuvre. Perhaps Mrs Katz was cannier than Daddy Bruno. She was a woman, after all.
All over her Jazzbeaux felt the grit she had slept on. Like a cat, she needed to clean herself
“I feel like a long, hot shower,” she said.
That s
eemed to excite Herman even more. His mind was easy to read, even without the fabulous shades; every porno-video had a scene where some big-titted fillette takes a shower and gets intimate with the soap.
Amused, she used the glasses and looked at Herman, which was a shock. She expected slobbering prurience but what she got was death, a skin-covered skull with empty sockets. The gaze of the death’s-head was stabbing, vicious, accusing…
Lifting the shades, she still scanned something dry and ancient looking out through Herman’s eyes.
“There’s a shower unit in your cabin,” he said, with a slight croak. “We have to pay a huge kickback to Judge Colpeper for use of the well-water, but we offer the only decent facilities for klicks around.”
She could almost hear water slicing around her, feel the dirt sliding from the folds of her body, water gathering in her hair and turning it into a heavy tail that slipped down to her waist. In a precog buzz, she heard a strange shrieking and felt a shuddering chill. The skullface she’d seen loomed through shower curtains, blade-like nails shredding plastic and reaching for skin. Gooseflesh pricked her breasts.
“Well if that ain’t pretty as a picture,” a rich, deep voice said.
At the same time, there was a startled, startling animal sound. A rattling inrush of breath. Jazzbeaux instinctively assumed a fighting stance, hip tilted to launch a kick, hands apart and loose, fingers together like bone-blades. She must scan like an Amazon warrior of old now.
The rattle had been a horse almost whinnying. The man who spoke sat comfortably in the saddle, a roll-up in the corner of his mouth, leaning forward.
Herman shrank back against the bleached wall of a cabin as if he had seen a ghost.
The horseman wore a long duster, which was chalky with desert dirt. His face was deeply lined under his battered old hat, but she couldn’t tell how old he was. He looked as if he’d been riding out here since the days of Billy the Kid and Jesse James.
Her Daddy claimed they were kin to Billy Bonney, Billy the Kid, but she’d looked the Kid up in a datanet file and found out his real name was probably Antrim or McCarty. Bruno also mentioned Anne Bonney, the female pirate, as an ancestor. It was a wonder he didn’t rope Bonnie Parker and Bonnie Prince Charlie into the family tree.
