by Victor Koman
Several of the holy men began squirming about. Their dull, low moans were the sounds you'd hear from the depths of any mental hospital. Their pelvic motions increased in speed. The Mahatma and The Ayatollah slid jerkingly to the carpet, their sight turned inward.
Isadora shook with fury or pain or terror. Tears started to run. She cried out once and fell to the hearthstones, trembling. When I knelt at her side, she reached up to grasp my neck.
"Let's get out. Please." Her words barely made it from her to me.
I picked her up. I had no experience in calming a wounded child, so I did the only thing I knew how to do-I let her cry.
"It was awful. Awful. They hated me for being a girl and they told me they wouldn't fuck me because I was a girl and unclean and I had filthy thoughts and I wasn't a virgin in my heart so they-they c-cut me up..."
She buried her face in the nook of my arm just as before and sobbed. The wet heat of her breath and tears soaked right through my jacket.
Ann fumbled in her purse. She stepped over to the esteemed members of the Ecclesia, who lay there with closed eyes and twisted, peaceful smiles.
"Let's go," I said. The place felt like a charnel house. A musky stench ambushed my nostrils.
She ignored me and the thirty kilos of kid I was trying to keep from dropping. She drew her pigsticker from its sheath and advanced on the man in red.
"In this sign," she said, "be conquered." She carved a five-pointed star in his forehead. Deep. The knife edged down to cut off the tip of his nose.
I hadn't thought her the vengeful sort. I really would have stopped her if I hadn't had my hands full. I resorted to the sternest form of moral persuasion.
"Why not just shoot them in the crotch and be done with it?"
She reached up under The Rabbi's curly hair to nick off a slice of his ear. "For your
Abodah Zarah
," she said to his sleeping visage. A trickle of blood snaked though his dark locks.
On The Ayatollah's cheekbone she inscribed something in swirling Arabic. "In the name of
Al Lat!
" She nearly hissed the words.
"Let's
go!
" I wasn't interested in skin decoration.
She turned to join me at the door. Her gaze was as blank and distant as theirs had been. She wiped her blade on Beathan's frock and returned it to her bag without looking. Her hand reached out to touch Isadora's head.
I waited for her to say something symbolic and important. Maybe even something comforting.
Her hand slid away silently, wearily, to drop at her side. She followed me out without a word.
21
Yuletide
The promotional campaign was causing a riot among the press. Speculative articles spread through the tabloids like mold through Roquefort. Editorials canted about the decaying morality that could culminate in such a mockery of All Things Sacred. Some of the more apocalyptic magazines and TV programs nailed our plan dead on. Hallelujah House was particularly unkind in their characterization of whomever was behind it all.
All of which only helped circulate the awareness of the plan. The new Zeitgeist spread almost without our help.
Kathleen intensified the program to include computerized telephone spotcalls, bulk-rate mailings, and skytyped messages over football games. The one above Notre Dame nearly instigated a riot.
Christmas approached with all the pleasantness of a funeral procession. Priests and ministers implicated our campaign with the international Satanist/Communist/Corporate/Secular Humanist conspiracy. Rabbis, imams, and assorted shamans hinted that only the Christian God would die on the Christian New Year. The Brahmans sat quietly knowing-or pretending to. The nut cults came farther out of the woodwork.
I asked Kathleen to stick an ad in newspapers and magazines soliciting funds "to halt the God-killer's campaign of lies and deceit". The money it brought in went right out again for ads for both sides.
I spent most of my time in the library. If I could have injected the books into a vein, I would have been mainlining religious philosophy. The current stack of books included Kant, Spinoza, Nietzsche, C. S. Lewis, Ayn Rand, and Thomas Paine. I had Paine's
Age of Reason
in hand. He detested organized religions on the grounds that revelation could not be received secondhand. On that basis, he denounced the Bible as mere hearsay. That he promoted his own deistic, disorganized religion didn't prevent me from unearthing information that I found generally useful.
Ann wandered into the library at close to midnight. The official closing time was nine, but nobody really cared about books or libraries anymore. It was more of an underfunded warehouse than anything else.
She looked as if someone had crumpled her up, put her in a back pocket, and gone horseback riding. She plopped down into the chair next to mine and dropped her head upon a pile of notes.
"Happy Birthday," she muttered, looking down at the papers touching her cheek, staring blearily through the desk to the floor.
"Thanks, doll, but you're off by nearly half a year."
"Mmm," she groaned, gazing through the papers to the other side of the planet. "I just finished speaking to Canfield. The crew's installed the Theta Wave Amplifier onboard
Starfinder
. Canfield's personally integrating the neural interruptors into the amplifier. And Bridget has submitted her altar design for the payload section. It looks good. It can work. Dr. La Vecque says that her heart's in prime condition-no circulatory problems. He thinks she can survive the flight." She sighed.
"What's wrong?"
She shrugged. "I thought that keeping the books at Bautista Corporation was a chore. This campaign of yours is so diversified that I'm shotgunning all over the place just trying to keep the finances straight." She raised her head from the table and rested it on one arm. "Working with Zacharias's money doesn't simplify things. He's being audited, so I've got to save his ass to cover ours."
I ran my hand gently through her golden hair. "He should be thankful for all the work you're doing for him."
She laughed in a peculiarly weak fashion. "One thing alone is keeping all of this from blowing us up into the public eye." She rolled her head to one side in order to gaze up at me. "Whenever I have to deal with people who might have an interest in tracking us down, they barely notice me and don't remember me five minutes after I'm gone."
"You make a great front man," I said.
She didn't take the comment well. "It's tough," she said. "It's tough knowing that you're moving through life like a phantom. Knowing that you drift through the memories of the people you meet like a faint breeze. Feeling that sometime-late at night-they'll remember you in a dream and wake with a shudder or a scream, only to forget again." She turned her face back down. "It's like not really being alive at all."
"How long have you been like this?"
She sat up and sighed. "All my life. There were times when even my...
parents
couldn't see me." She stared at the bookcases in silence.
I sat there watching her. Even though tired, she radiated a glow of life that warmed me to my soul-assuming that I still possessed one.
I quit dreaming and returned to my book.
After a moment, Ann said, "Dell?"
"Yeah?"
"I guess my point is that-with every other man-I have to exert a lot of mental power to hold their attention. That's one reason I put so much effort into my clothes and makeup."
"You certainly catch
my
eye, sister." It was obvious she was heading toward a point. I let her take her own route.
"That's the point," she said. Bingo for me. "I don't have to do anything. You
see
me."
She stood up with what the poets call "feline grace"-a lovely flowing motion. For an exhausted person, she stored an astonishing reserve of energy.
"You can see me because you are the man who doesn't believe lies
."
I snorted. That was a laugh. "Tell that to the Reverend Zacharias."
She dismissed the gag with a flip of her hand. "You don't believe lies, and you seek to uncover the truth. You don't take the easy way out if it involves belief in things false."
"`What is truth?'" I asked, mostly to show her I'd been doing my reading. "Look where it's taken me-to a life of murder. That's the truth for you." I closed the book to gaze at her. I felt tired. "How's this for a lie-telling myself that the world is wrong and that the generals and kings and politicians I killed were evil men who deserved to die. Have I made the world any better?"
Her earth-red nails tapped at the tabletop. "I seem to recall asking you a similar question a few weeks ago. You've apparently changed your mind. You told me you only killed tyrants."
"Everyone else called them `leaders.' It'd be pretty presumptuous of me to put my opinion above everyone else's."
"Stop playing devil's advocate, Dell."
My laughter echoed through the library. It took me awhile to calm down. All of three seconds.
She hit me with that gaze of hers.
"I don't really care what you
think
you believe. Do you know what it's like being unable to hold a man's full attention for more than a few moments? The closer he gets, the harder I have to concentrate. Usually the effort is too taxing, and he snaps away. He stands there wondering where he is and what he's doing there."
"Must make shopping difficult."
She didn't even hear me.
"I don't know," she said. "Maybe I just didn't want any of them."
"But we want each other." I figured it was my place to state the obvious. They must have been the magic words, because she suddenly fell silent and gazed dreamily at me with those piercingly blue eyes.
"And I wasn't even trying," she murmured. "You truly want me?"
I nodded.
"Then," she said with a luscious smile, "take me."
I looked around me. "Here?"
"Of course not," she said, reaching to take my hand. "In the philosophy section!"
She was the sea; I, a mighty rider sailing upon the crests of her waves. She moaned like the wind through hidden forests; I bent like a tree beneath her. She burned-a fiery essence; I was consumed utterly. She covered me like soft, warm earth; I lay buried in ecstasy.
I had run out of metaphors.
I had also run out of cigarettes. Somehow, though, I had no craving for smoke. I just lay there gazing at her, a golden treasure.
I was having a difficult time finding the right words to say. Despite the reputation my profession has received as lusty villains in popular thrillers, an assassin almost never gets involved with women. Except perhaps as tools. My affairs had always been just that-affairs. A short farewell, if any.
I'd never made love to a friend before.
Tough guys aren't supposed to think about such things as love and warmth and worship and forever. Dell Ammo was a tough guy. Dell Ammo never worshipped a woman. Or a man. Or a God.
What did I worship, then? Anything? Could I fool myself into thinking I worshipped justice? Yeah-I could sprain my arm patting my back over that. Dell Ammo, assassin. Crusader for justice. It had a cozy counterfeit ring to it.
Ann interrupted my thoughts by pulling me closer.
"Do you still see me?" she asked.
"Like a dream I carried over into waking."
"You're no thug," she said, stroking my hair. It had grown out jet black again, as it had been years ago. "You're a sensitive, brilliant man."
"Rats, doll, you've blown my cover. All these scars are fake. I'm actually John Donne."
"That was no island," she said. "That was a continen-"
The air rumbled around us. Ann stared at me. A dull, stunned expression spread across my face. The library swirled about me and snapped like wet silk.
I floated in a totally black realm. From somewhere in the darkness, Isadora screamed out a warning. The library returned to my vision, her words reverberating in my head.
"
Run, Dell!
" she cried. "
The Ecclesia's attacking!
"
22
Blastoff
"Let's go!" I shouted to Ann. The throbbing sound around the library grew louder as we threw on our clothes. I grabbed my Colt from beneath a pile of abstracts and pounded down the stairs, Ann seizing her handbag and following inches behind.
Something
whumped
against the side of the building. The subsequent concussion knocked us against the wall.
"Ecclesia!" I yelled in answer to a look from Ann. We scrambled over scattered books and shattered bookcases toward the northern exit.
Instead of the door, though, we clambered out of one of the windows-I figured the bushes outside would serve as cover.
Six unmarked blue Hughes Cayuse helicopters roared over Old Downtown like movie Indians around a wagon train. The tenement capping Auberge flared savagely-a blazing funeral pyre. Thick columns of smoke rose overhead, chopped apart by the copters' propwash. The crowds pouring from the Auberge exits were greeted by machinegun and air-cannon fire.
One of the air-cannon rounds burst a section of the hill away to reveal the crumbling interior of the Auberge Hilton. Bodies lay sickeningly still inside the ruins.
A chopper roared above us, too swift for it to have seen us. It closed in on Bunker Hill. From somewhere within Auberge, the defense systems were retaliating.
Fifteen-millimeter machine guns opened fire on the aircraft. A couple of brave souls crawled to the surface armed with TOW missiles.
"Can't they use their interruptors?" Ann asked.
"Not enough range for the power. Too strong a field would knock out everyone on the fringes." I edged toward the west end of the building, Ann's hand in mine, keeping behind the bushes.
A thunderous explosion shook through us. I looked past Auberge to see the Union Bank building lose its top thirty stories. I had a feeling my office wouldn't be in great shape after that. The chopper that fired the missile landed atop the Bonaventure Hotel to hide from the action below.
"Where are the police?" Ann shouted over the battle's roar. "The army?"
One of the copters disintegrated in midair. The guard who fired the killing shot jumped up triumphantly, only to be blown from his perch by a cannon round from another attacker. His body whirled and danced through the air before tumbling down Bunker Hill and out of sight.
"Why should the cops or the feds get involved?" I said, looking down Fifth Street for a safe escape route. "They figure anyone in Auberge is a criminal of some sort. It'll give them an excuse to crack down on all the undergrounds."
Another copter fell flaming into the World Trade Center.
"Someone high up may even have approved the attack. They'll call it a gangland massacre."
"Dell-over there."
I turned to see pickup trucks racing toward Auberge, the beds loaded with scores of young men-healthy, well-armed, and fit for a new crusade, another jihad.
The Hueys drew back to safety as the boys stormed the hills, firing at anything that moved.
"It touches my heart," I said, "to see how the world's different faiths can work together for a change."
Ann grabbed my arm with painful tightness. "Where's Isadora?"
"I don't know," I said. I was concentrating on the truck pulling up to the library.
"Go sensitive and find her."
"Go
what?
"
Ann crouched down to where I was peering out at the truck. "You can do it," she whispered. "Just calm yourself and concentrate lightly on her image. Conjure her up in your mind."
"Calm myself? During
this?
" I felt like a kid on stage with a hypnotist. I wanted it to work. I wanted everything to go fine, even though I knew it wouldn't. I tried as hard as I could to believe that it would work while inside me I felt it w
as impossible.
"The column of mirrors," I said as if I'd just remembered it.
"See? You're getting something."
I glanced back at the troops leaping out of the truck. Something shook the earth. I stared up in bewilderment as a sleek black Learjet screamed over the library, two Vulcan machine gun pods under its wings chattering like the Fourth of July.
The Lear knocked two of the remaining three copters out of the sky. The third turned to escape, the jet pursuing in an uncontested race. Twin Vulcans blazed for an instant. The Huey's pilot bubble shattered. An instant later, the machine wheeled about, twisting crazily toward the Music Center. It crumpled into the Second Street overpass and hung there unburning-a dragonfly pinned to a rail.
The jet vanished to the northwest. I watched it depart, glancing at the fires of Auberge reflected in the mirrored windows of the Bonaventure.
"She's in the hotel." I whispered.
"Let's go."
I shook my head and pointed toward the young troops. "Wait until they're inside."
It didn't take long. They rushed the building at a dead run, whooping and screaming like a phalanx of John Waynes.
I led her through the bushes to where the walkway turned to block us. We paralleled the steps and hotfooted it into the parking lot, using what weeds grew there for cover. I kept my automatic ready.
The Auberge guards, in control of the high ground, seemed to be turning back the assault. The Wells Fargo building blocked our view as we ran past. We crossed Flower toward the hotel entrance.
Two kids sped around a corner, saw us, and whipped their rifles up to aim. They were too slow. I had already dropped to a kneeling, twohanded shooting stance. Ann crouched behind me. I had a sneaking suspicion she was fumbling for her knife.
I sighted in on the boy to my left-a sandy-haired teenager who looked like the lead in a high school production of
The Idiot.
The other-a lanky Panarabian-divided his aim between my head and Ann's.
"Neither of you wants to shoot us!" I yelled. "One of you will be dead before I drop!"
"Th-that w-would just mean one m-more soul for Y-Yahveh," the sandy one said. He stuttered like a motorboat, and it wasn't from fear: the hands holding his rifle never wavered.
