by Mick Farren
He realized that he himself was crouching in a dark room. It was time to go to work. He carefully closed the drapes before he turned on the light. The single unshaded bulb made him blink. The girl muttered something and turned over, but she did not wake. Speedboat watched her for a moment, then stooped down and removed his contraband from its hiding place. He had to distribute it around his body – carrying any kind of a bag was asking for trouble. The diskettes of pornosoft were no problem. They would fit into any of the dozen or so secret pockets of his old, stained military parka. The audio discs were a bit more of a problem. The only place where they would fit was in the large pocket just below his shoulder blades. Even then, they were. sufficiently bulky that there was a risk they might produce a telltale outline, even in the deliberately voluminous olive drab. He would have to chance it and try to walk with his shoulders back instead of up around his ears as he normally did.
He started down the stairs on silent Reeboks that had cost him an entire bag of yellow octagonals down on Delancey Street. He paused for a moment in front of the street door. He opened it a crack. Nothing on the street looked out of place. The box people were setting up their homes, and a couple of fires had been lit. That was usually a good sign that there was no law about. A couple of the streetlights were out. He ran a hand through his close-cropped suedecut and slipped out into the dark.
Winters
Deacon Winters put down the phone with a sigh. The sweep of the crime scene had given the lab boys exactly nothing. It was the third LP bomb in a month and it had gone off right on the corner of Broadway and Eighth, within walking distance of the Astor Place CCC complex where he was based. Three of the bomb squad were dead, and no one was even a fraction closer to identifying the terrorcult. There was bound to be another internal inquiry, and as one of the investigative team assigned to the case he would find himself being asked a lot of questions to which he had no answers.
He wanted to slam his fist into the desk, and it was only with the greatest of effort that he restrained himself. Any such display of temper would be picked up by the surveillance cameras and go down on his record. It would indicate that the Peace of the Lord was definitely not upon him. Being suspected of having a potential low-stress quotient was a black mark that he could do without. He had enough problems already. The very last thing he needed was to slip any farther down the ladder of departmental grace. Not even the long hours of visible public prayer at the Deacon Tabernacle on Seventy-third Street seemed to help. After all the kneetime for the cameras, it still had been a nightmare of a week, and it was only Wednesday. The efficiency ratings and devotion assessments had been released on Monday morning, and he had showed up well down in the pack.
When he had transferred from Cleveland to New York City, he had had the reputation of being a bright and promising young man with an equally bright future. The New York deacons had a policy of recruiting their young officers from the heartland, where youths supposedly were untainted by the Babylonian evils of the metropolis. Once they were in the city, though, they were expected to shine. Winters was not shining. In fact, he was floundering. The inquiry after this latest bombing might actually turn that floundering into a state of mil-scale drowning. He could not even see a way that he could pass some of the buck onto the NYPD task force. He had played that card twice already.
Back in Ohio, he had woven small-town, TV dreams about high-city law enforcement. While he had chased minor-league pornographers and teenagers fooling around with petty Satanism, he had played with romantic images. He pictured himself kicking down doors with a machine pistol clutched in his fist, smiting the ungodly, bringing the terrorists and heretics to justice, and generally making the world a safe place for decent, God-fearing people. Those comic-book scenarios had been destroyed in the first flaming crash of his innocence. In the eleven months that Winters had been in New York, he had not kicked down a single door. He had not even so much as drawn an automatic weapon from the armory. He had been buried in an avalanche of cross-referential data. He tracked and matched minor details and ran patterns looking for possible anomalies. The most drama that ever came his way was provided by the spying and backbiting of internal politics. It was a long way from the heady excitement of swashbuckling, more akin to the constant numbing fear of walking the edge of a razor or swimming in a tank of man-eating sharks.
The phone rang. It was Carlisle from the NYPD team. The debris from the explosion had gone to the deacons' lab, and he wanted to access the results. No doubt he was also looking for a clue to what, if anything, Winters or the other deacons might be planning to pull when the reports went in. Winters did not trust Carlisle. The way the man played the world-weary street cop only barely concealed a deep-seated contempt for the established religion. Winters inwardly toyed with an image of Carlisle in the pit. On the phone, he adopted a closed and neutral tone.
"They've come up with nothing so far," he told the cop.
On the other end of the phone, Carlisle sounded as if he did not believe him. Winters gave just a fraction. Carlisle was probably a closet heretic, but Winters had to do business with him.
"Of course, I'll let you know immediately if they do find anything."
Carlisle grunted and hung up. Winters silently vowed that one day he would get the NYPD officer. Making empty, unheard threats, though, did not help too much. He was still in a vise and he had no way that he could see to stop it from closing on him. He stared across the large open-plan squad room with its beige walls and bright panel lights that made it look like an aquarium. Orderly lines of dark-suited figures hunched over blue-gray computer terminals. Overhead, the small, black watch cameras with their glowing red LEDs swivelled from side to side, scanning the people below like inquisitive birds. The watch cameras were the electronic eyes of the Lord. All was seen and all was noted. Winters picked up a pencil, trying to give the appearance of doing something. Unfortunately, there was nothing that he could do except wait and pray for a break in the case. If that break failed to materialize, the case would undoubtedly break him.
Cynthia Kline walked by his desk carrying a sheaf of printouts. In her mid to late twenties, she kept her chestnut hair swept back into a tight bun and wore little or no makeup; her only jewelry was a pair of discreet gold earrings. Yet even in the severe and unflattering tailoring of her clerical auxiliary uniform, there was something about the way she moved, the way she carried her slim, athletic figure, that caused Winters to observe her covertly whenever she was in the junior deacons' squad room. She had never smiled at him or even given him any indication that she was aware of his existence. There was no way he could think that she was somehow encouraging him in the lusts of the flesh. The problem was that his interest was not limited to simple observation. Despite all his efforts, he could not stop his imagination, could not stop the dark thoughts and images that crept into his inner mind. The most vivid picture was straight out of a proscribed magazine: Cynthia Kline stripped down to scanty silk lingerie, standing on tiptoe, arms stretched above her head, wrists secured by leather thongs. He shook his head as if trying physically to dislodge the vision. He found that his palms were sweating. Get behind me, Satan. He realized that if anyone could read his thoughts, his career would be over.
After the first couple of times he had seen Cynthia Kline, he had accessed her departmental records. All he had gotten were prints and a picture and a few short paragraphs of background. He had attempted to go further, to get through to her personal file, home address, and recruitment investigation report, but he had run into a privacy block. The computer had demanded an AC-19 clearance and details of how the required data applied to an ongoing investigation. Not wanting to draw attention to himself, Winters had garbaged the request. Unfortunately the images of Cynthia Kline had not gone away. If anything, they had become more intense. If they did not go away soon, he would be forced to go to see one of those women on Fifteenth Street again.
Kline
Cynthia Kline walked quickly out of th
e junior deacons' squad room and headed for the elevators. She needed a cup of coffee and maybe an illicit cigarette in the women's rest room. She was certain that little bastard Bernie Winters had been staring at her again. There was something creepy about those large pale-blue eyes under the blond brushcut. He was so typical of the repressed, small-town kid who enlisted in the deacons. On one level, they believed that they were the wrath of God, but deeper down they were constantly at war with themselves, so constantly on the run from their perfectly normal impulses that they ended up being twisted out of shape by the conflict and the shame. There was probably nothing more sinister to Winters' stares than the usual banked-up horniness, but he still made her nervous. She kept reminding herself that she had encountered more than enough of it in the four months since the organization had planted her as a sleeper in the clerical auxiliary of the deacons. Her nervousness could probably be chalked up to the feet that Winters was part of the team that was actually hunting the Left-hand Path. The team appeared to be getting nowhere, but if it ever did get lucky and blow the organization apart, she would be one of the first to be arrested. If they did not hang her outright, she would certainly die slowly in Joshua or one of the other camps.
In the third-floor women's rest room, a burly, masculine directoress was inspecting her eyebrows in the mirror over the line of sinks. As Cynthia entered, the woman turned and gave her an unmistakably appraising look. She treated Cynthia to a half smile. "Praise the Lord, my dear."
Cynthia nodded absently and avoided the woman's eyes. "Yes… praise the Lord."
It was damn lucky that paranoia and prudery looked so much alike. The women in the female branch of the deacons seemed a good deal less repressed than their male counterparts.
The door closed behind the directoress, and Cynthia Kline allowed herself a silent sigh of relief. She let herself into a stall, dumped the pile of printouts that she was taking up to the twenty-third floor on the cistern, and rummaged for her pack of cigarettes. The twenty-third floor could wait. Policy frowned on the idea of deacons, directoresses, or even the clerical auxiliary smoking or drinking, but an official blind eye was turned to the odd smoke in the bathroom. No one could be perfect all the time.
When she was through, she dropped the butt in the toilet bowl and flushed, then emerged from the stall to find a senior clerical assistant sniffing the air with a disapproving expression.
"Your body is a temple of the Lord, my dear. It's a shame to pollute it with nicotine. "
Cynthia nodded. "I know, but it's been a rough day."
"Some days are like that. I'd pray about it if I was you." The woman started to vigorously wash her hands.
Cynthia wondered how much more she could take. It was very tempting to just give it all up and run for Canada. In the beginning, what she was doing had seemed like a noble mission – to actually go undercover, right into the very heart of the enemy, even maybe to turn key deacons. She had felt like a modern Mata Hari fighting for the return to sanity. The reality had turned out be something very different. She was on assignment at the heart of the disease. She was starting to believe that if she stayed around those people much longer she would finish up as crazy as they were.
There was commotion outside in the corridor. Uniformed NYPD in full riot gear were milling in front of the elevators waiting for a descending car. Another clerical auxiliary was standing back against the wall letting them go by. Cynthia did the same thing.
"What's the panic?" she asked.
"Bread riot at a supermarket."
"Where?"
"A&P at Twentieth and Eighth."
"Deliveries didn't happen?"
"Something like that."
Cynthia Kline cursed under her breath. It was uncomfortably close to where she lived on Ninth Avenue. She might well have problems getting home. Suddenly she caught herself. Something was happening to her attitude. There had been a time when she would have been overjoyed at a bombing and a riot in the same day. It would have been proof that the regime was really coming unglued. But events like this had become mere nuisances. She needed to watch herself.
1346408 Stone
1346408 Stone lay motionless on the hard plastic mattress and stared at the underside of the bunk above. Every fifteen seconds it was illuminated by the glare of the searchlight on the south gun tower. His body ached all over, and his stomach was cramping again. After the bosses had found the radio, the rations had been cut for everyone in D block. The evening meal was down to half a cup of the pink goop and three slices of Wonder Bread. 4321921 Gotti, who had actually had the radio hidden in his mattress, had been dragged off to the bunker for three weeks' intensified. There was a great deal of speculation as to whether he would make it back. Since the radio had gone, a deep gloom had settled over the block. The radio, on which Gotti had picked up the news out of Canada, had been more than just a lifeline to the world beyond the wire of the Joshua Redemption Center. It was also more than just an antidote to the pap of game shows and preachers and the constant claptrap about Jesus, punishment, and repentance that blared from the TV from the moment the working parties returned to the barrack block clear through until lights-out sounded. It was a small but defiant symbol of the fact that the system had not totally broken them. It was hard to accept that their symbol was gone.
Stone's mind felt numb. He was convinced that they were putting hexapan in the food again. He wriggled in a vain attempt to get comfortable on the mattress and immediately let out a groan. His ribs were bruised on the left side where Boss Carter had lashed out with his billy club. Stone had not even been doing anything wrong. Everyone knew that Carter was a psycho who got his jollies inflicting pain. There was a scream from over in the women's section. Someone else was getting their kicks. The women suffered more at the hands of the guards than the men did. For a penal system that put such emphasis on morality, it harbored an extraordinary number of deviants.
Despite the fact that he was exhausted, sleep would not come. A few bunks away, someone was muttering in the throes of a bad dream. Someone else was coughing. That was probably 8368728 Katz. The general opinion was that Katz did not have much longer to go. After fourteen days in the bunker, he had come back with damaged lungs that had been getting progressively worse.
Stone closed his eyes. He could feel the anger building inside of him. It was the anger that had sustained him through the nineteen months that he had been in Joshua. During that time, he had learned that anger was something that could not just be squandered. If a person let it run loose as an unchecked rage, it either slowly consumed him or built up until he exploded in some suicidal outburst, until he attacked a guard or walked into the electrified wire. Anger was a thing that had to be conserved. It could not be allowed to blaze bright; but, on the other hand, if the spark went out, then one was nothing but an obedient zombie. Above all anger had to be focused and directed. It was fatally easy just to hate the immediate instruments of oppression, to center a bitter loathing on the guards or the deacons, or to silently rail against big generalities. It was too simple to hate the Fundamentalists or a figurehead like Faithful, or to damn all Christians and their bloody religion.
Hating Christianity was an easy trap to fall into. It even defied logic. The number of Christians shut up in Joshua, the stubborn, passive resisters who had been among the first to challenge Faithful and his tyranny, were more than ample proof that the whole philosophy could not be held responsible for the few that used its trappings to cloak their evil. It made no more sense than cursing all Moslems for the acts of the few fanatics who had touched off the Gulf War. The second trap to avoid was the urge to hate oneself. In this one did not have much help from logic. It was easy for Stone to demonstrate to himself that, without his own unbelieving complacency and that of those like him, Faithful and his gang would never have been able to do what they did. He was one of the ones who had been too busy congratulating themselves for their sanity and liberalism to notice what was going on, the ones who had made the
mistake of assuming that, whatever happened, things would remain within the limits of civilized behavior. By the time they had discovered their error, it was far too late.
It had all started with the collapse of '98. The banks had run the economy to the edge in the hope that a threat of global currency panic would finally unseat the Democrats and kill off the Second Chance once and for all. Unfortunately, Rilker and his cronies, backed up by a generation of ex-Reagan yuppies panicked by early middle age, overestimated both their own strength and the monstrous inertia of the world's money system. They had managed to push the economy to the edge because that was easy – it had been drifting in that direction for half a century. When it got there, no power on Earth was capable of stopping it, and it plunged over. The crash of '98 was followed by the wide-eyed panic of '99, and the economic chaos became coupled with the superstitious upheavals that tended to erupt at the turn of any century. The country was paralyzed by fears, both real and imagined, and ready to follow anyone who offered a way out. Faithful did not even have to claim a vision with which he would lead them to the promised land. All he had to promise was to get Jesus to intervene and stop the rot. The election of the year 2000 was a landslide.
At first it had looked like business as usual. The quality of television had dropped markedly, but most of the smart set had put that down to the movement of the public into one of its infantile phases. Van Der Kamp had just had the big, summer, non-fiction bestseller with Cycle/Social The TV evangelists had been shucking and jiving all over the place, but that was also easy to dismiss. Everyone assumed that if they were allowed to run, they would eventually make themselves ridiculous just as they had before. The censorship battles that flared up on a number of fronts were so scattered and protracted that nobody was really able to focus on them as a single campaign. It was hard to equate Wet Bimbo Magazine with The Catcher in the Rye. When the anti-abortion amendment was pushed through a totally intimidated Congress, protesters took to the streets, but their efforts were largely negated by a total media blank. When the more militant pressed their point, the marches and sitdowns were broken up by police with clubs, tear gas, and water cannons. Many of them became a part of the first mass jailings.
