“Look, Starlitz,” Mr. Judy said, “were you ever in the U.S. Army?”
“No…”
“Then don’t talk like you were in the goddamn Army. Say something normal. Say something like ‘maybe we can overhear what they say.’” Mr. Judy fetched a pad of Post-It notes and a pencil-stub from the glove compartment.
“I think our fax just blew a chip,” Vanna announced mournfully from the back. “All its little red lights are blinking.”
“Small wonder! Mr. Zen Intuition here was driving like a fucking maniac,” Mr. Judy said. She groaned. “Remind me to wrap some padding on those goddamned metal uprights. I feel like I’ve been nunchucked.”
An excited voice burst scratchily from the scanner. “Where is Big Fish? Repeat, where is Big Fish? What was their last heading? Ten-six, Salvation!”
“This is Salvation,” a second voice replied. “Calm the heck down, for pete’s sake! We’ve got the description now. We’ll pick ’em up on 101 South if we have to. Over.”
“Bingo,” Mr. Judy exulted. “Citizen’s Band channel 13.” She made a quick note on her Post-It pad.
Starlitz rubbed his stubbled chin. “Good thing we avoided Highway 101.”
“Don’t be smug, Leggy.”
The CB spoke up again. “This is Isaiah, everybody. On Tenth and, uh, Sherbrooke, okay? I don’t think they could have possibly come this far, over.”
“Heck no they couldn’t,” Salvation said angrily. “What in blazes are you doing over into Sector B? Get back to Sector A, over.”
“Ezekiel here,” said another voice. “We’re in A, but we surmise they must have parked somewhere. That sounds reasonable, doesn’t it? Uhm, over…”
“No air chatter, over,” Salvation commanded. His signal was fading.
“‘Salvation,’ ‘Ezekiel,’ and ‘Isaiah,’” Vanna said. “Wow, their handles really suck!”
“I know, I know,” Mr. Judy said. “Mother of God, the bastards are swarming like locusts. I can’t understand this!”
Starlitz sighed patiently. “Look, Jude. There’s nothing to understand, okay? Somebody must have finked. That little coven of yours has got an informer.”
“No way!” Vanna said.
“Yes way. One of your favorite backwoods mantra-chanters is a pro-life plant, okay? They knew we were coming here. Maybe they didn’t know everything, but they sure knew enough to stake us out.”
Mr. Judy clenched her small, gnarled fists and stared out the windshield, biting her lip. “Maybe it was Wolverine’s people that leaked! Ever think of that?”
“If it were Wolverine, they’d have hit us at the docks,” Starlitz said. “You’re being a sap, Jude. Your problem is, you don’t think there’s any pro-life woman smart enough to run a scam on the sisters. Come on, get real! It doesn’t take a genius to wear chi-pants and tattoo a yin-yang on your tit.”
Mr. Judy tugged at the front of her jersey. “Thanks a lot. Creep.”
Starlitz shrugged. “The underground-right are as smart as you are, easy. They know everything they wanna know about the ‘Liberal Humanist Movement.’ Hell, they’ve all got subscriptions to Utne Reader.”
“So what do you think we should do?”
Starlitz grinned. “This gig of yours is blown, so let’s forget it. Brand-new deal, okay? Let’s card us a big rental-car and call the New Caledonians.”
“No way,” Mr. Judy said. “No way we’re losing this van! Besides, I draw the line at credit-card theft. Unless the victim is Republican.”
“And no way we’re calling any Polynesians, anyway,” Vanna said.
Starlitz dug in his vest for a cigarette, lit it, and blew ochre smoke across the windshield. “I’ll trade you,” he said at last. “You tell me where the kid is. You can borrow my van for a while, and I’ll rent a V-8 and do the Utah run all by myself.”
“Fat chance!” Mr. Judy shouted. “Last time we trusted you with our stash, we didn’t see you for three fucking years!”
“And we’re not telling you anything more about the kid until this is all over,” Vanna said firmly.
Starlitz snorted smoke. “You think I got any use for a wimpy abortion drug? Hell, RU-486 isn’t even illegal in most other countries. Lemme deliver it—heck, I’ll even get you a receipt. And when I’m back, we all go meet the kid. Just like we agreed before. If that goes okay, I might even throw in the van later. Deal?”
“No deal,” Mr. Judy said.
“Think about it. It’s really a lot easier.”
Mr. Judy silently peeled the Post-It and slapped it on the scanner.
“Don’t you make trouble for us, Leggy,” Vanna spoke up. “You don’t know anything! You don’t know who we’re meeting. You don’t know the passwords. You don’t know the time or the place.” Vanna took a breath. “You don’t even know which one of us is the kid’s real mother.”
“You act like that’s my fault,” Starlitz said. “That’s not the way I remember it.” He grinned, a curl of ginseng smoke escaping his back molars. “Anyway, I can guess.”
“No you can’t!” Vanna said heatedly. “Don’t you dare guess!”
“Forget it,” Mr. Judy said. “We shouldn’t even talk about the kid. We shouldn’t have mentioned the kid. We won’t talk about the kid anymore. Not till the trip’s over and we’ve done the deal just like we agreed back at the commune.”
“Fine,” Starlitz sneered. “That’s real handy. For you, anyway.”
Mr. Judy cracked her knuckles. “Okay, call me stupid. Call me reckless. I admit that, okay? And if me and Vanna hadn’t both been incredibly stupid and reckless around you three years ago, pal, there wouldn’t even be any kid now.”
Starlitz said nothing.
Mr. Judy sniffed. “What happened that time—between the three of us—we never talk about it, I know that…And for God’s sake, after this, let’s not ever talk about it again.” She lowered her voice. “But privately—that thing we did—with the tequila and the benwa balls and the big rubber hammock—yeah, I remember it just as well as you do, and I blame myself for that. Completely. I take that entire karmic burden upon myself. I absorb all guilt trips, I take upon myself complete moral accountability. Okay, Leggy? I’m responsible, you’re not responsible. You happy now?”
“Sure thing,” Starlitz said sullenly, grinding out his cigarette.
They drove on then, in ominous silence, for two full hours: through Portland and up the Columbia River Valley. Vanna finally broke the ice again by passing out tofu-loaf, Ginseng Rush, and rice cakes.
“We’ve lost ’em good,” Mr. Judy decided.
“Maybe,” Starlitz said. There had been no traffic on Channel 13, except the usual truck farmers, speedballers and lot lizards. “But the situation’s changed some now…Why don’t you phone your friends back at the commune? Tell ’em to dig up my arsenal and Fed-Ex us three Mac-10s to Pocatello. With plenty of ammo.”
Mr. Judy frowned. “So we can risk dope and federal weapons charges? Forget it! We said no guns, remember? I don’t think you even ought to have that goddamn pistol.”
“Sure,” Starlitz sneered, “so when they pull up right next to us at sixty miles per, and cut loose on us with a repeating combat-shotgun…” Vanna flinched. “Yeah,” Starlitz continued, “Judy here is gonna do a Chuck Norris out the window and side-kick ’em right through their windshield!” He patted his holstered gun. “Fuckin’ black belts…I’ve seen acidheads with more sense!”
“And I’ve seen you with a loaded Ingram!” Vanna retorted. “I’d rather face a hundred right-to-lifers.”
“Oh stop it,” Mr. Judy said. “You’re both making trouble for nothing. We lost ’em, remember? They’re probably still hunting us on 101 South. We got a big lead now.” She munched her last rice cake. “If we had any sense, we’d take a couple hours and completely change this van’s appearance. Vanna’s pretty good with graphics. We can buy paint at an auto store and re-do our van like a diaper service. Something a lot less macho than white pearlized
paint with two big chrome TV logos.”
“It’s not your van,” Starlitz said angrily. “It’s my van, and you’re not putting any crappy paint on it. Anyway, we’ve got to look like a TV van. What if somebody looks in the window and sees all this equipment? You can’t get more suspicious and obvious than a van full of monitors that’s painted like some wimpy diaper service. Everybody’ll think we’re the goddamned FBI.”
“Okay, okay, have it your way,” Mr. Judy shrugged. She put on a pair of black drugstore Polaroids. “We’ll just take it easy. Keep a low profile. We’ll make it fine.”
They spent the night in a lot in a campground near a state park on the Oregon-Idaho border. The lots were a bargain for the TV van, for its demand for electrical power was enormous, and rental campgrounds offered cheap hookups. Judy and Vanna slept outside in a hemispherical, bright pink alpine tent. Starlitz slept inside the van.
Next morning they were enjoying three bowls of muesli when an open-faced young man in a lumberjack shirt and overalls meandered up, carrying a rubber-antennaed cellular phone.
“Good morning,” he said.
“Hi,” Mr. Judy said, pausing in mid-spoon.
“Spend a pleasant night?”
“Why don’t you guys install proper telephone hookups here?” Mr. Judy demanded. “We need copper-cable. You know, twisted-pair.”
“Oh I’m sorry, I don’t run this campground,” the young man apologized, propping one booted foot on the edge of their wooden picnic table. “You see, I just happen to live in this area.” He cleared his throat. “I thought we might counsel together about your activities.”
“Huh?” Vanna said.
“I got an alarm posted on my Christian BBS last night,” the young man told them. “Got up at five a.m., and spent the whole morning lookin’ for you and this van.” He pointed with his thumb. “You’re the people who import abortion pills.” He looked at them soberly. “Word’s out about you all over our network.”
Mr. Judy put down her muesli spoon with an unsteady hand. “You’ve made a mistake.”
“Don’t worry, I won’t hurt you,” the young man said. “I’m just a regular guy. My name’s Charles. That’s my car right over there.” Charles pointed to a rust-spotted station-wagon with Idaho plates. “My wife’s in there—Monica—and our little kid Jimmy.” He turned and waved. Monica, in the driver’s seat, waved back. She wore sunglasses and a head-kerchief. She looked very anxious.
Jimmy was asleep in the back in a toddler’s safety-seat. Apparently getting up early had been too much for the tyke.
“Our group is strictly nonviolent,” Charles said.
“Gosh, that’s swell,” Starlitz said, relaxing visibly. He splashed a little more bottled goat-milk into his muesli.
“Violence against the unborn is wrong,” Charles said steadily. “It’s not a ‘choice,’ it’s a child. You’re spreading a Frankenstein technology that lets women poison and murder their own unborn children. And they can do it in complete stealth.”
“You mean in complete privacy,” Vanna said.
Mr. Judy knocked her cheap plastic bowl aside and leapt to her feet. “Don’t even talk to him, Vanna! Leggy, start the van, let’s get out of here!”
Starlitz looked up in annoyance from his half-finished cereal. “Are you kidding? There’s only one of him. I’m not through eating yet. Kick his ass!”
Mr. Judy glanced from side to side, warily. She glared at Charles, then hitched up her pants and settled into a menacing kung-fu crouch. “Go away! We don’t want you here.”
“It’s my moral duty to bear witness to evil,” Charles told her mildly, showing her his open hands. “I’m not armed, and I mean you no harm. If you feel you must hit me, then I can’t prevent you. But you’re very wrong to answer words with blows.”
Birds sang in the pines above the campground.
“He’s right,” Vanna said in a small voice.
“‘He who diggeth a pit will fall in it,’” Charles quoted.
“Okay, okay,” Mr. Judy muttered. “I’m not going to hit you.”
“She who lives by the sword will die by it.”
Mr. Judy frowned darkly. “Don’t push me, asshole!”
“I know what you’re doing, even if you yourselves are too corrupt to recognize it,” Charles continued eagerly. “You’re trying to legitimize the mass poisoning of the unborn generation.” Charles seemed encouraged by their confusion, and waved his arms eloquently. “Your contempt for the sanctity of human life legitimizes murder! Today, you’re killing kids. Tomorrow, you’ll be renting wombs. Pretty soon you’ll be selling fetal tissue on the open market!”
“Hey, we’re not capitalists,” Vanna protested.
Charles was on a roll. “First comes abortion, then euthanasia! The suicide machines…The so-called right-to-die—it’s really the right-to-kill, isn’t it? Pretty soon you’ll be quietly poisoning not just unborn kids and old sick people, but everybody else who’s inconvenient to you! That’s just how the Holocaust started—with so-called euthanasia!”
“We’re not the Nazis in this situation,” Mr. Judy grated. “You’re the Nazis.”
“We’re pro-life. You’re making life cheap. You’re the pro-death secular forces!”
“Hey, don’t call us ‘secular,’” Vanna said, wounded. “We’re Goddess pagans.”
Starlitz was steadily munching his cereal.
“I think you should give me all those pills,” Charles said quietly. “It’s no use going on with this scheme of yours, now that we know, and you know that we know. Be reasonable. Just give all the pills to me, and I’ll burn them all. You can go back home quietly. Nobody will bother you. Don’t you have any sense of shame?”
Mr. Judy grated her teeth. “Look, buster. In a second, I’m gonna lose my temper and break your fucking arm. I’d sure as hell rather die by the sword than by the coathanger.”
“Sure, resort to repressive thuggish violence,” Charles shrugged. “But I promise you this: you won’t thrive by your crimes. We are everywhere!”
“Goddamn you, that’s our slogan!” Mr. Judy shouted.
Starlitz washed his muesli bowl under a rusty water-faucet, and belched. “Well, that’s that. Let’s get goin’.” He opened the door of the van.
“We know darned well what you’re up to!” Charles cried, as Vanna and Judy fled hastily into the van. “We’re going to videotape you, and photograph you, and speak about you in public!” Starlitz fired up the van and pumped the engine. “We’re gonna make dossiers about you and put you on our computer mailing lists!” Charles shouted, raising one callused hand in solemn imprecation. “We’ll call your Congressman and complain about you! We’ll start civil suits and take out injunctions!”
Starlitz drove away.
“We’ll call you at your home!” Charles bellowed, hands cupped at his lips. “And call your offices! All day and all night, hundreds of us! With automatic dialers! For years and years!” His voice faded in a final shout. “We’ll call your parents!”
“Mother of God,” Mr. Judy said, shaken, buckling herself into the passenger seat. “That was horrible! What are we going to do about that guy?”
“No problem,” Starlitz said, setting the scanner for cellular-phone frequencies. “I mean, my parents died in a tornado in a Florida trailer park.” He shrugged. “And besides, I never show up on videotape.”
Mr. Judy frowned suspiciously. “What do you mean?”
“It’s just this, uhm, thing that happens,” Starlitz said, shrugging. “I mean videos just never work when they’re pointed at me. Either the battery’s dead, or the tape jams, or the player blows a chip and just starts blinking twelve-o’clock, or the tape splits so there’s nothing but scratches and blur…I just don’t show up on videotape. Ever.”
Mr. Judy took a deep breath. “Leggy, that’s got to be just about the wildest, stupidest—”
“Hush!” Starlitz said. Charles’ voice was emerging from the scanner.
�
�I told you they wouldn’t hurt me,” he said.
“Well, we’re not gonna follow them,” said a woman’s voice—his wife Monica, presumably. “It’s too dangerous. I’m sure they have guns in that van.” She lowered her voice. “Charlie, were they lesbians?”
“Well, I dunno about the guy they had with them,” Charles replied, “but yeah, those girls were sexual deviants all right. It’s just like Salvation told us. Really makes your blood run cold!” He paused. “Is the car fax still working? Better dial him a report right away!”
“Typical,” Mr. Judy said. “We ought to go back there and slash his tires!”
“Let’s just get out of here,” Vanna sighed.
“I don’t have to take any gay-bashing lip out of that Norman Rockwell hayseed.”
“If you beat him up, they’ll know we’re listening to the cellular band,” Vanna pointed out wisely.
“Well, your pal Charlie was right about one thing,” Starlitz said cheerfully. “This whole scam of yours is totally fucked now! Time to lose the van and pick up some action with the Polynesians.”
“We’re going to Salt Lake City, Leggy.” Mr. Judy’s face was set stonily. “We’ll get there if we have to drive all day and all night. We’ll make the delivery, dammit. Now it’s a matter of political principle.”
They met their first roadblock in Gooding County, Idaho. A dozen placard-waving militants burst from the back of two pickups and threw a cardboard box of caltrops across Highway 84. Starlitz, suspecting land mines or blasting-caps, slowed drastically.
The sides of the van were hammered with blood-balloons, and glass Christmas-tree ornaments filled with skunk-stinking butyl mercaptan and rotten-egg hydrogen sulfide. An especially brave militant with a set of grappling hooks was yanked from his feet and road-burned for ten yards.
The trucks did not pursue them. Starlitz stopped at a carwash in Shoshone Falls. After the stomach-turning stink-liquids had been rinsed off with high-pressure soap, he yanked seven caltrops from the van’s tires. The caltrops were homemade devices—golf-balls, with half-a-dozen six-inch nails driven through them, the whole thing cunningly spray-painted black to match highway tarmac.
Ascendancies Page 37
