A Fistful of Strontium

by Jaspre Bark

  Johnny couldn't stand to hear any more. "Listen," he interrupted. "We don't want to hurt you. The Consoler sent us to find you."

  "I've nothing to say to him."

  "He's worried about you, Kit. He's your brother for drokk's sake!"

  "He's no brother of mine!"

  "He only wants to talk. He told us he wants to," Johnny thought furiously, "to console your differences."

  "I've told you people before, I only want to be left alone!" For the first time, Kit's composure was slipping. "I don't want to meet the Consoler, I don't want to join the Salvationists. I... I've been lied to too many times already and I need time to think."

  Johnny smiled grimly. His gamble was paying off, so far, at least. By his own admission, Kit had caught no more than a glimpse of his enemies. He obviously hadn't seen their S/D insignia. He had no real reason to want them dead.

  Then he looked at Middenface again and the smile faded. His partner's eyes were closed, his skin pale and his face puffy. His breath was coming in painful wheezes. Johnny gasped his name in alarm and Middenface's eyelids fluttered, but the effort of raising them defeated him. He tried to talk but his tongue was swollen and black, as Identi Kit had said, and it trapped the words in his throat.

  "Okay, you win," called Johnny hurriedly. "We'll back off. You let us go and we'll go back to the Consoler and tell him everything you said. He won't bother you again. Only you were right about my friend. He was hit. He's been poisoned. He won't last all the way back to base. If you can help him..."

  "How do I know I can trust you?" Kit asked suspiciously.

  "You're the one with the weapon."

  "You said I was surrounded. You demanded my surrender. Doesn't sound like the words of someone who just wants to talk. How do I know that you're Salvationists at all? How do I know you're not with the government?"

  "Kit, listen to me. My friend is dying. Can you save him?"

  "There's a cure, yes. But if I give it to you, if I let you go, you might tell your friends where to find me. I can't risk that. No, the only way for me to stay safe is to kill you both."

  Kit didn't sound like a killer. That surprised Johnny. It made him feel, not for the first time, that he had been misinformed, and that things weren't as they appeared to be. A real killer wouldn't have been as hesitant as Kit was now, nor would he have tried so hard to justify his actions. His words had sent a chill down the bounty hunter's spine, but they hadn't been a threat. It was more like a plea, thought Johnny. It was as if Kit wanted a way out of this, and wanted to be given an alternative to murder.

  The only problem was, he couldn't think of one.

  He only had one gambit left and it was the most dangerous one of all. He could tell the truth.

  "What if I told you," he called, "that we aren't from the Miltonian government, and we aren't Salvationists either?" He took a deep breath. "We're S/D agents!"

  There was no response from Kit. Johnny waited a moment before calling his name again. Still nothing.

  "You know why we're here," he continued, knowing his cause was probably lost already. "We have a warrant to bring you in, alive if possible. I figure that makes us your best friends right now, Kit. I don't know what's going on here, but it seems to me there's a war about to erupt on Miltonia and you've made enemies on both sides. At least in prison you were safe and you had three square meals a day. What are you doing now? Cowering in some cave, scavenging for lizards, just waiting for the day when they find you? We're the best chance you've got of getting off this world with your skull intact, Kit, but you've got to help us first."

  Silence.

  Middenface was trying to say something, but he was too incoherent. Still, Johnny knew him well enough to guess that he was urging his partner to forget him, to take down the enemy, and to save himself, in that order.

  "If my partner dies," he called, "you'll have to kill me too, and you know what'll happen then. They'll send more agents after you. It took us a few days to pick up your trail; how long do you think you can stay ahead of the entire Search and Destroy Agency? Because that's who you'll be running from, then: every bounty hunter in the cosmos. And you know what they'll do to you when they find you. We don't like it when one of our own gets taken down. We don't like it at all."

  Silence.

  "I'll make you a deal. Keep my partner alive and we'll let you go. We can fake your death and send a report back to the Doghouse. We'll get you to any world you choose and help you build a new identity. You'll be free, Kit. There'll be nobody after you."

  The echoes of his voice died away to nothing. That was it, thought Johnny. He was out of cards. He had blown it.

  Then, Kit's voice came again, quieter than before. "Who are you?" he asked.

  "I told you, we're S/D agents. It's the truth, Kit. I can prove it to you. I can throw you my badge."

  "I mean, what's your name?"

  "Johnny Alpha. And my partner is-"

  "Middenface! Middenface McNulty! I should have recognised the big lug!"

  "Um..." Johnny hadn't expected that response.

  "Listen to me," called Kit. "You don't have much time. I poisoned the arrowhead with sap from a plant that grows around here. The antidote is the plant's own leaves. They're purple and shaped like seven-pointed stars. Can you see any?"

  Johnny looked around and finally called back: "Yes. Yes, I can see them."

  He spotted a jagged streak of purple amid the grey. They looked more like weeds clinging tenaciously to life in an area where life had no right to exist. But in order to reach them, Johnny would have to show himself.

  He agonised over his decision. He knew he couldn't trust Kit, but what he had said made sense. Nature often saw to it that poisons grew in tandem with their own antidotes. He knew what Middenface would have said if he could talk, but this was his partner's only chance and Johnny had long since understood that he would give his life for him.

  He didn't give himself time to think about it. He leapt and rolled towards the vital leaves, making himself as small and hard a target as he could. Feverishly, he tore the four biggest ones from their stems. It took him only a second, but during this time he was a sitting duck. Still, no attack came.

  He hurried back to Middenface, leaping the last few feet to land beside him. The big man wasn't moving at all now, and his breathing was shallow. Kit called to Johnny again, instructing him to tear the leaves up into small squares and mix them with water. Johnny did so, stuffing them into the narrow neck of his bottle. He was still suspicious, but the medicine could hardly make his partner's condition any worse. He forced it past Middenface's swollen lips and urged him to swallow.

  For the next few long, tense minutes, he sat over his partner and watched intently for a sign of recovery. Compared to the onset of the poison, it came slowly, but finally, thankfully, Johnny was sure that the swelling was easing, and that Middenface's breathing was becoming more regular and less laboured.

  "I think we should talk."

  Johnny jumped. Kit's voice sounded much nearer. His attention had been focused on Middenface, but even so, it had taken some skill to creep up on him like this.

  He peered out over the outcrop and saw his enemy at last.

  Kit Jones, also known as Identi Kit, was standing there in the open. He had made no attempt to disguise himself; he was just as he had appeared in the video that Johnny had been shown at the Doghouse. He was slight of stature, and his skin was pale almost to the point of whiteness. The years in prison and the days on the run since had taken their toll on him, and his eyes were sunken and haunted. He looked weak and ill; hardly the wild, violent criminal after whom the bounty hunters had been sent. But then, Johnny reminded himself, Kit excelled at looking like something he wasn't.

  Kit saw that he had Johnny's attention, brandished his bow and made a show of tossing it to one side. He shrugged a makeshift quiver of arrows from his shoulders and discarded this too. It was quite an impressive gesture of trust, but of course, Kit knew he had noth
ing to fear. Since Johnny was so ill-equipped, he couldn't take advantage of the situation. Not unless he could get closer.

  His hand shifted reflexively to his knife, checking that it was still there. If it was a choice between a seven hundred thousand credit bounty and a deal made with an enemy under duress, he would just have to live with the stain on his conscience.

  Johnny looked at Middenface to see that his eyes were still closed, but the pain had drained out of his expression. Johnny stood slowly, showing Kit his empty hands. He stepped out from behind the outcrop.

  "I'm listening," he said.

  And he took one, two, three steps forward.

  "That's far enough!" warned Kit too soon. There were still several yards of uneven ground between them. The identity thief knew what he was doing. He was watching Johnny closely, alert for any threatening moves. If he was quick, he could still retrieve and use his weapons in the time it would take the bounty hunter to reach him.

  "I'm sorry about Middenface," said Kit. "I'm sorry it has to be this way, but I have something to tell you, Johnny. It's something I've been trying to tell people for five years and no one will believe me. And I think you're close enough now to use your alpha eyes and see into my mind. I invite you to do that. See for yourself if I'm lying, or if five years in that hellhole of a prison have driven me mad."

  Johnny would have suspected a ruse, but he didn't see what Kit had to gain by this request. If he'd wanted to kill his pursuers, he most certainly would have done so by now. Johnny nodded and fired up the alpha radiation in his system. A low dose to begin with... Kit wouldn't be compelled to tell him anything and he would feel no discomfort. But Johnny would see the electromagnetic patterns in Kit's brain and read them like the contour lines of a map. Even the smallest deception on his part would cause a spike in those patterns which Johnny would perceive.

  "Go ahead," he said.

  "I'm not the man you think I am," said Identi Kit. "I'm not the man who committed all those crimes. I'm not the man you're looking for. I'm not Kit Jones."

  Then, he said something that Johnny wouldn't have believed, had it not been for the fact that his eyes told him it was the truth.

  "It's me, Johnny. Your old friend. I'm Moosehead McGuffin."

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  BODY DOUBLE

  Moosehead could not believe his good fortune.

  He'd been down on his luck for so long that he had almost forgotten what it was like to catch a break. When he heard the perimeter alarm go off earlier, he thought his luck had gone from bad to worse. Now, he was beginning to think that things might finally be turning his way.

  Aside from Moosehead himself, there were only two, maybe three S/D agents who could have picked up his trail so quickly, but Moosehead was the best of them all. He had a nose for these things. If he'd had to put money on which one would trace him to this remote hideaway, he'd have bet on Johnny Alpha. The minute he realised who'd found him he knew his luck had changed. Johnny was probably the only agent who would believe his story. With those alpha eyes of his he could easily read the truth within someone's mind and even pluck individual thoughts right out of their brain.

  Moosehead had never forgotten his first encounter with Johnny. Back when he had been a scout for General Armz in the Mutant Army, he had helped catch a Kreeler spy who'd been watching their Salisbury camp. The man was tough and had stood up to interrogation until the general had brought in one of his lieutenants.

  Even at seventeen, Johnny Alpha looked formidable. There was a determined set to his features that said nothing short of death would stop him from doing what he had to, and he didn't look as though he'd die easily.

  Johnny had taken the spy's head in his hands and stared deep into his eyes, his own eyes lighting up like two glowing embers. The Kreeler began to writhe and tried to pull away, but Johnny had him fixed. At first, he told General Armz what he could read on the surface of the Kreeler's mind, and then he probed deeper until, sobbing and squirming with self-hatred, the spy had been forced to confess everything he knew.

  Johnny had impressed every mutant at the camp with his abilities. He had also scared them. Moosehead was twenty years old at the time. He had never forgotten his first encounter with Johnny Alpha.

  "I'm awright now, I'm okay," said Middenface. He pushed Johnny and Moosehead away, held up his hands to show that he could walk unaided, and took two steps before his legs gave out.

  Moosehead leaped to catch him and ended up flat on his back underneath him. He still wasn't used to the body he was in. Kit was shorter and slighter than he was, or rather than he had once been. Since he had broken out of prison, he kept attempting to do things that he previously wouldn't have thought twice about, only to find that he physically wasn't up to it anymore.

  Johnny lifted Middenface off Moosehead, and then they both helped the wounded mutant to his feet. Middenface was still feverish with the effects of the poison. Moosehead had never actually used it on anyone before, so although he was sure the antidote would work, he had no idea how long it would take or how painful the process of recovery would be.

  "Only a few more steps," Moosehead said encouragingly."Then you can lie down and get something to eat."

  "Ye've been sayin' that fer the past half hour," Middenface grunted. "If I have tae listen tae it one more time, I'll cut yer sneckin' heart out. I dinnae care how weak I am."

  Moosehead had set up several boltholes in the mountains, and had regularly moved between them. Johnny and Middenface had caught him just as he was clearing one camp in preparation for a move to another. This meant that they had to now trek across some inhospitable terrain to get to a place where there was food and water.

  They were standing now on the rim of a steep crater, and Moosehead explained how to reach the bottom by sitting and sliding down the thick dust and loose shale of the crater walls.

  "Och Johnny," groaned Middenface. "Can we no just kill him now and pretend he was the real Kit?"

  Moosehead had forgotten just how many swear words Middenface knew. He counted fourteen different ones, from languages he was pretty sure weren't even human, as the big guy bounced down the side of the crater on his backside.

  "Ye better have a sneckin' palace in there," said Middenface as his colleagues helped him to his feet.

  Moosehead pulled aside a sheet of parachute material that had small leafy branches stuck to it as camouflage. Behind it was a small cave into which he invited the others to follow him. It wasn't five-star accommodation, but after five years in a solitary cell, anything was, as Middenface had put it, "a sneckin' palace".

  He lit a torch from the embers of that morning's fire, and helped Middenface get comfortable on a pile of furs by the back wall. Then he rebuilt the fire, filled a canteen with water from a large clay pot, gave Middenface a drink, and put a pan of water on to boil.

  "Hope you gents like tree skeeters," he said, reaching into a bag, "'cos that's all we've got."

  "You said you were going to explain everything once we got under cover," said Johnny. "Now seems a pretty good time."

  "You know how I caught Kit in the first place?" asked Moosehead as he gutted a tree skeeter and squeezed its innards into a jar to use as gravy. "I got a nose for these things." Johnny nodded and helped Middenface take a little more water from the canteen.

  "You got them alpha eyes of yours that can see into a man's soul." Moosehead tapped his nose. "I got an acute sense of smell. Leastways, I used to have an acute sense of smell. You wouldn't believe what you can learn from the way a person smells. You can build a whole profile of them from the scents they leave behind in a single room, if you know what you're doing. And I knew what I was doing. I spent years training up my instinct, improving my knowledge, and honing my nose. Then I threw it all away in one stupid moment."

  He paused, thinking about the best way to tell a story that was almost impossible to believe. It was all so complicated, so utterly incredible, that he didn't know where to begin.

  M
oosehead's norm parents were unable to have a child by conventional means so they'd opted for in vitro fertilization. Unfortunately for them, something had gone terribly wrong with the process. The clinic they went to provided them with sperm that had been somehow contaminated with Stontium 90. They later claimed that they had taken every precaution, but life following a nuclear strike had its difficulties, to say the least, and you couldn't account for every bit of fallout, even in a hi-tech medical clinic. Their insurers agreed to stand by them in court, and Mr and Mrs McGuffin didn't want to expose themselves to the social stigma of publicly admitting that they had a mutated child, so they kept quiet.

  The McGuffins kept their offspring well hidden after that and strategically moved house so as not to arouse too much suspicion. When Moosehead was twelve they found an answer to their problems.

  "This really is for the best, son," his father had told him. "Your mother and I couldn't give you anything like the life he'll be able to. He's the king's brother, son. He's royalty."

  "He doesn't mind about your appearance, either," his mother had explained. "You won't have to hide anymore. The prince purposefully sought us out because you're a mutant."

  "He's offered us an awful lot of money, son. We'll be set up for life. All he asks is that we never see you again, and he'll make certain you're properly looked after. It's an opportunity to die for."

  Moosehead very nearly did die for it.

  He didn't want to go when the footmen came for him. He kicked and bawled and clung to his mother, begging her not to send him away. He had never known another life, and he didn't like the way the footmen smelled. His parents shed a few tears as they waved him goodbye, but Moosehead suspected they would soon dry them on the cheque the prince's men left for them.