Systemic Shock tq-1

by Dean Ing

  By mid-July, Lt. Commander Boren Mills had seen the orders posting him to Sound Stage West. His floppy cassettes, his notes, even old textbooks were accorded special security and Mills made certain that his personal effects were packed in the same containers. In one container lay a souvenir for which he had a less than compelling cover story. It was hardly larger than a breadbox. He hoped he would not have to claim he had found it among the personal effects of Radioman Second Class Kimball Norton.

  Chapter Seventy

  The revenues of Schleicher County, Texas were not wasted on air-conditioning the Eldorado jail. Quantrill had sweated off two kilos after three days in his shared cell. "Man's got a right to be with his helpmeet," he yelled, shaking the bars, the concrete walls mocking him with echoes.

  "If you was a man," chuckled the husky scarred specimen who lay on the lower bunk, "you wouldn't'a let no half pint deputy bust you both."

  "God's curse on 'em," Quantrill spat, then railed again at the bars. "God's curse on the gentile bastards!"

  "I've had about enough of your noise," said his cellmate. "You and that hightits bitch in the women's wing — what's her name? Delight?"

  "Delight," Quantrill yelled, his shoulder-length hair flying as he gripped the bars again. "Pray for deliverance, darlin'!"

  From the opposite wing came an answering cry; a pitiable hopeless wail of female anguish. Sanger's voice, maintaining the guise of a young woman easily led.

  The open-handed slap drove Quantrill's head against steel bars. "I'll give you deliverance if you don't shut up," said the man, fists on hips, no longer good-humored. "Them gentiles won't care if I beat some true religion into you."

  Quantrill, huddling on his knees, hid his face and surreptitiously watched the man's feet. A reasonable amount of abuse, he could handle; but he could not pursue an assignment in the field with broken ribs. Snuffling, wishing he had the knack of weeping real tears on demand: “You sound like my pa."

  "Maybe I am your pa," said the man, pleased with himself. "Your ma ever mention a Mitch Beasley?" Beasley eased himself back on his bunk.

  "My ma didn't talk about men," said the youth querulously. "She was a good God-fearin' vessel — like my Delight. " He let the silence spread; turned and wiped his nose on his sleeve; let his eyes grow wide and full of ersatz trust. "You really do remind me of my pa," he said. "But pa wasn't no gentile. He was kind of a prophet."

  "The hell you say," Beasley murmured.

  "We liberated a lot of folks, pa and me," Quantrill insisted. "Andalotofwordly treasure, too. Why, the stuff we buried near Ozona would buy salvation for a dozen sinners."

  Beasley, after a long thoughtful pause: "I might just want to meet your pa."

  "Gone to his reward," Quantrill said, biting his lip, looking away.

  Locusts buzzed in the hackberry tree outside the cell. Beasley's bunk creaked. After an endless thirty seconds: "What if I was to tell you they call me Prophet Beasley?"

  Contact. Quantrill had begun to think he'd wasted three more days on another false lead. He made his eyes wide again, came up to a kneeling position, his mouth slightly open. "I didn't think no jail could hold a true prophet," he said.

  "Not in the fullness of time," Beasley intoned, studying the muscles of his heavy forearms as he stretched. The deep-chested voice lowered to accommodate the topic: "Maybe it was God's will brought us together, boy. You ever think about that?"

  Quantrill gave a tentative nod, then clasped his hands and bowed over them. "Before you decide to leave, will you bless the union of me and my helpmeet?"

  "It don't always work that way," Beasley said.

  "Maybe — just maybe, God sent me as your earthly salvation."

  Time to set the hook. "I'd have to think on it, pray on it. One thing sure, whatever happens me and Delight already said our vows before God."

  "You sayin' you're purely stuck on that little hightits I seen joggin' around the exercise yard?"

  Quantrill, head bowed: "We said our vows. I can't change that now."

  "We'll see," said Beasley, and began to whistle a border tune through the gap in his front teeth. The youth retreated to the far corner of the cell, palms together, speaking in a near-whisper unintelligible from Beasley's bunk.

  Quantrill had promised to pray for guidance. In a way he was doing precisely that. "Tau Sector, Tau Sector," he narrowcast, and waited for his critic to reply. Control had set them onto cold trails twice; this one felt warmer by the second.

  Sandys jurnal Jul 18 Fri.

  Mom says their going to librate profet Beasly soon as profet Jansen and his men get back from trading up north. They make lots ofhooraw about revlashuns but there afraid to say boo without Jansen. Mom says sooner or later theyll come back with a possy on their tails. Dont you wait for nothing me or Child either Sandy, she says, you hitail it. These dam profets wont let us be took alive.

  Chapter Seventy-One

  Though it had been dark for three hours, Quantrill was still perspiring as he lay on his sodden upper bunk cursing a week of inactivity and Beasley's body odor. An insomniac locust still sizzled outside, endorsing the summer heat. He heard the faint squeal of brakes in the distance, then only night sounds. Presently he heard a murmur beyond the lockup; someone talking with the lone deputy. Quantrill would never know how the deputy had been taken out, but knew from the muffled commotion outside the window that someone outside was not too worried about discovery.

  "Gadianton," said a male voice somewhere outside their window. In the front office, an alarm quavered, tripped by perimeter sensors.

  Beasley rolled to his feet, chinned himself to the high window ledge. Quantrill noted the man's swift physical power. "Lamanites," Beasley hissed the countersign. "Here; and hurry up, I got acolytes."

  A cargo hook grated on the ledge, linked to a steel beam that Beasley laid across inside the bars. Beasley was obviously experienced at demolition. From his upper bunk, Quantrill could see gloved hands arranging a one-cm, glass rope that stretched away into darkness. “We got maybe five minutes," said the man outside; "Jansen's got a reg'lar Saturday-night ruckus goin' in a roadhouse up north. But he didn't say nothin" about nobody else."

  "I got reasons he'll understand," Beasley insisted. "Now, haul away!"

  "On yore head be it — and you better get under somethin', don't forget that roof collapse in Ros well." Racing footsteps dopplered away.

  A diesel coughed to life, steadied, clamored in the dark. At the window was only a keening scrape of protest while the cellmates lay curled beneath thin musty mattresses. Then a screech of metal, a shambling clatter of concrete and a puff of dust into the cell.

  The hole started waist-high and extended to the ceiling. Beasley went through it with careful questing feet, backward, then was in urgent argument with others outside. Quantrill saw Beasley in the spread of half-light, now armed with a machine pistol. "I've told you what betrayal means, boy," he said. "Among the prophets, I'm the only friend you got."

  "I want Delight," Quantrill whined, scrambling through the hole, one eye closed as Marty Cross had taught him. If you kept one eye closed in the light, that eye would have better night vision.

  "Ever" body wants delight," an unfamiliar voice snickered. Faintly they could still hear the alarm; Quantrill felt sure it was patched into a radio alert.

  "We got a little hightits vessel to get yet," Beasley warned, scooping up the beam and glass rope.

  "You get her yourself," was the reply over receding steps of two men. Beasley stopped, indecisive.

  "Go on," Quantrill said, taking a chance. "I'll find a way to get her out tomorrow."

  "Tomorrow, shit, you don't know much! There ain't time; leave her!"

  "I dunno where pa buried the stuff, and she does," Quantrill said, playing his hole card.

  More cursing. A small vehicle thundered away without lights and Mitch Beasley sprinted to the larger vehicle. “Find the bitch so I can line up the truck," he called, tossing the cable into a cargo bay.<
br />
  Quantrill knew Sanger's location; knew also that Control had arranged the transfer of other prisoners. He warned Sanger to get under a mattress, then resumed his monotonic transmission to Control. If law enforcement people reacted too quickly, he warned, they might blow the whole operation.

  Beasley backed the terratired vehicle furiously toward the far end of the lockup; rushed to aid Quantrill at the high window. "Don't be scared, darlin'," Quantrill crooned through the window. "The kingdom of God almighty is at hand," and then the truck was lurching away, the glass cable humming as it came taut. The embedded windowframe came free this time, and a moment later Marbrye Sanger was wriggling past rough concrete. He grabbed her, felt the slide of lithe flesh, tasted the dusty, musty flavor of her mouth. Even in a jailbreak at midnight, he thought admiringly, Sanger gave award performances.

  The cable and beam stowed, Beasley gestured Quantrill into the open cargo section and waved Sanger into the cab with him. When Beasley gestured now, he did it with a gun barrel. The truck sped away, going to battery mode for stealth, the hum of terratires and windsong muffling the electrics. The break had taken all of three minutes.

  Alone, Quantrill spent the next ten minutes in an urgent dialogue with Control. “If Sanger acts too vulnerable to his religious doubletalk," he warned, "this Beasley character may decide to ice me and then sweet-talk her into showing him the stash. Tell her now, Control. He's quick; don't underestimate him."

  "We don't," was the impersonal reply. "Beasley's thumbprint was on Sabado's belt buckle. We will brief Sanger as soon as she can acknowledge transmission."

  Quantrill filed this for future reference. Sanger did not have to acknowledge a transmission, but inside that cab she was mostly surrounded by steel. Perhaps, after all, Control's own transmissions were more affected by a steel cage than T Section would like to admit. Quantrill reported that they were heading south on a secondary road, then cutting a trail to the east.

  Beasley's helmsmanship was savage but unerring, the treadless terratires making a smooth spoor hard to follow. In an hour the truck, low beams flashing on when necessary, had covered fifty klicks of open country showing few and distant lights.

  Quantrill roused himself as the truck stopped; saw the rhythmic flash of Beasley's lights, saw answering flashes from afar. Somewhere in the wild country on open range-land, T Section was about to enter the sacred sanctum of the Church of The Sacrificed Lamb.

  Chapter Seventy-Two

  By the last week in July, media broadcasts had done what SinoInd troops could not: US/RUS forces were pulling back on two fronts in fear of Chinese Plague. India's Parliament initiated a massive withdrawal of her expeditionary troops from Kazakhstan and repositioned them in an arc north of the Indian desert, on recommendation of the sly Kirpal. Everyone knew that a few of those troops had plague but, by isolating all transferred units, India kept ANZUS invaders guessing. China no longer needed those Indian reinforcements because the American Fifth Army had pulled out, taking up new positions in the Irkutsk region north of Mongolia. The Allies no longer feared a coordinated breakout from Mongolia but, perhaps inevitably, Russian troops had run short of antipersonnel mines and Frisbees before retreating.

  The Russians knew of Chinese Plague from their radios, and those who placed little faith in protective CBW gear (i.e., most RUS troops) feared that they faced an enemy more than human. A Siberian salient already bulged up across the Amur, chiefly of harmless tribesmen seeking abandoned riches, becoming less harmless as plague spread into the tribes. Our Fifth Army made good use of RUS railways, racing to new positions above the Siberian salient. Thanks to excellent medical aid and frequent injections of half-truths in briefings, the morale of US troops was still good.

  Keratophagic staph, our troops were told, depended largely on transmission from host to host, unlike windborne paranthrax. If you were young and well-fed, and if you stayed well clear of infiltrating locals, you might not be in danger. The CBW masks and envelopes would protect you in plague spots. The advance of the enemy — assuming he could rally for any advance — had been taken into account by the countless millions of antipersonnel minelets left by our re treating armies which we could trigger by microwave, or an enemy footfall could do it. The RUS still employed their interdicting Frisbees while backing away from the Sinkiang border. The westward retreat of our First and Third Armies was orderly.

  The US Sixth and Eighth Armies still protected sortie bases in India, devastating that country's efforts to harvest a crop—any crop. The Viets were clamoring to know the whereabouts of some twenty divisions of troops they had sent into Szechuan. Allied media were only too happy to suggest a numbing truth (which we did not for a moment believe), namely that entire Viet divisions littered the floor of the Pacific in small defunct submarines. All this, our officers made clear to our troops. From several quarters, Allied troops were repeating an old phrase: home by Christmas.

  In short, our troops got only the news.

  Non-news: neutral Mexico, though pro-Allies, permitted a few well-heeled SinoInd refugees to take refuge in the State of Nayarit in June before she identified at least one case of plague among them. Removed offshore to the Islas Marias, they posed no threat beyond that of rumor.

  Non-news: the rumor of Chinese Plague in Mexico was itself a news-vectored plague, gaining early credence through a few initial holo and radio broadcasts in our southern border cities. Our subsequent denials were fruitless appeals to frightened householders in Tucson and San Diego suburbs. While admitting that 'a few' Americans were needlessly evacuating, we did not add that in three days' time no US Customs people remained at Mexican border posts. Well-supplied by Pemex, Mexicans lost little time in streaming across the border. If gringos were fleeing from shadows, an enterprising campesino could help himself to what they left behind. Within a week, Pemex fuel was sloshing in Mexican trucks that plied the roads north of Mexicali, Nogales, Ciudad Juarez, in entrepreneurial support of this casual invasion. For the first time, America was learning what Germans had experienced in the final months of World Warn.

  Non-news: the US Fourth Army was thinly spread on the west coast and depended on Mexico for half of its refined fuel since most of our refineries were in ruins. When Mexican tankers began to produce passengers as well as diesel fuel from San Diego to San Pedro, we had the choice of accepting both or neither. The Mexicans would not listen to schemes that kept their citizens offshore. This disrespect for US law was directly proportional to our loss of clout in Mexican eyes. Since the 1980's, Mexico's petroleum traffic had expanded her wealth greatly, but the US had lost half her population and ninety per cent of her industrial potential in the first week of the war. We were still capable of defying Mexico, but running on our reserves. It was a forthright case of a healthy neighbor leaning on a sick one, and only the politically naive were surprised. We had done exactly the same to Mexico, twice upon a time.Power politics is the only kind there is.

  Non-news: our Second Army had all it could do to enforce the continental quarantine and to guard our eastern shores. It was a sympathetic army of occupation, committed to an endless fight against paranthrax in a battle that required great courage and stamina, but conferred little glory.

  Non-news: White House Central abandoned its Sandia Mountain warrens for a safer residence in the Wasatch Mountains east of Salt Lake City. White House Deseret was a phrase, and a concept, deeply satisfying to many men in the Collier administration. The citizens of Utah, largely Latter-Day Saints, were among the staunches! patriots and most unquestioning followers America had ever produced. In this climate of Mormon hope for a devout America, only one internal problem had grown larger: the guerrilla groups. Outlaw bands continued to borrow the trappings of Godliness to support their claims to plunder.

  Yale Collier's days were focused increasingly on items in the non-news — not a very encouraging sign. He could not afford to threaten Mexico, a major energy supplier, with force against her lackadaisical occupation of our soil. The Mexic
ans ignored our borders from the wild country of southwest Texas to the coast of central California. It had been a mistake to build tanker facilities at Lompoc and Monterey because Mexicans leaving those tankers triggered widespread evacuation in those coastal regions south of San Francisco. It did little good to broadcast subtle hints that a foreign pilgrim could not spread disease after his burial. It did no good at all to insist that Mexicans were not carriers of the plague that was blinding China.

  Collier studied holo maps with the commanding general of Fourth Army, and prayed for guidance. At bottom, Collier believed in the goodness of humankind, and mourned the necessity to wage an undeclared guerrilla war on Mexican emigrants. But already El Paso, Las Cruces, Tucson, and the California coast above San Francisco were ruins in which Mexicans, not US citizens, sifted the detritus and reclaimed the land. If it was to be war, it would have to be low-key, and defensive. We did not have the troops to pursue it far, and Canada rejected our suggestions that Canadian troops might help us. For that matter, we were none too keen to give Canada more influence on our soil than she already had.

  After a forty-eight-hour search of his soul, President Collier accepted the plan of Fourth Army strategists. Our fuel reserves would support redeployment of infantry on the western side of the San Joaquin Valley, thence in a thin khaki line south of the Mojave to Phoenix and Roswell. While giving up (temporarily, Collier told himself; only temporarily) valuable anchorages, we still had access to the Pacific from Point Arena northward. Our Navy still owned the continental shelf. Oil fields near Bakersfield and the fecund farms of the San Joaquin would still be ours, protected by the Fourth Army. In effect, we had leased some of our soil to Mexico in exchange for fuel.

  Unofficially, the Mexican Government was understanding. If by some miracle the SinoInds managed a west coast invasion, the Mexican fuel would help us reclaim what latinos now called Alta Mexico. Officially, we permitted Mexican squatters while warning that we could not assure their safety.