by John Shirley
“Genocide?”
“That’s the word. It seems a powerful revolutionary movement had finally gotten a foot-hold, and the Indians, in the eyes of the CIA, were the ones around which that movement grew—eliminate the core, and the structure collapses. So, as clandestinely as possible, they rounded up the Indians from cities and ranches and reservations and took them up in the mountains and gassed them dead. But you can’t kill that many people and hide it long. It got out. It sparked off the secession of California, which was the beginning of the civil war and the beginning of the end for the good ol’ US—”
“Stop talking for a while. Jeezus. My head hurts. Christ, my head hurts when I look at anything Ugh. Throbbing.” She sagged into the seat beside him, massaging her temples.
“These aren’t Indians. What few Indians survived went to hide in the Rockies and the deserts, and I hear they’ve got a sizeable army growing out there. Hard to say, they’re incredibly elusive these days. They may give us a fight for this continent yet. These––” he gestured at the savages by the lake–– “are regressed Caucasians.”
“Yeah, yeah, very interesting. Now shut up.”
He took the fly-car down.
He set down on a gravelly slope thirty feet from the nearest hut and a stride from the water’s edge. They had only one weapon between them, Ranger’s .45 automatic, and only eight cartridges left. Gloria stayed behind to guard the fly-car while Ben stepped into the generous sunshine to parley.
There was a ragged semicircle of twelve lean-tos, several smoking heaps of embers set about with promisingly bubbling pots. He smelled cooked meat. His mentor, Old Thorn, had referred to the scent of cooking meat as “the Devil’s perfume.” So it seemed now.
There were twenty-five men and women gathered in a nervous knot at the far end of the village. A primitive culture. Apparently, tasks were assigned according to gender, for the women carried babies, the men, weapons. They were nut-brown people, but many of them had long blonde or red hair; they wore leather loincloths, and sandals. Ben shivered. A tough folk; he was warmly dressed, and still shivered in the sharp early-morning mountain winds.
As he started forward the tribe edged backwards. Two of them fell to a heated debate, trying to decide whether to run or to fight.
They think the fly-car is a real fly, Ben decided.
He stopped short and called out, waving in the friendliest way he could manage. He smiled at the men with the spears.
They started forward, but the women remained behind. The advancing men exhibited no friendliness.
“So, it’s Rackey!” came a voice from the nearest lean-to. Ben spun around and crouched, whipping out the pistol. He was faced with a short, stocky, freckled man with a squirrely face. His cheeks were puffy, his teeth prominent, and his brown eyes shone at Ben from under his matted chestnut hair. His arms were dyed blue and there was a red $ on his forehead, between his eyes. His feet were stubby blocks caked in mud. He wore a shiny pair of cut-off dungarees and a necklace made of teeth.
“Chancey!” Ben exclaimed. “Chancey Chapin!” Ben laughed and put the gun away. “Your ‘suit’ is somewhat different from the last time we met, Chancey. You wore one of lights and shoes like ivory.”
Chancey grinned, and Ben noticed that most of the little man’s teeth had recently deserted his mouth. “I like this outfit better. These clothes are cheaper to keep up, Ben old boy.” His smile vanished more suddenly than it had come. “What brought you here, Rackey?”
“The basic human motivation. Food. We’ve run out. We need a chance to, refresh ourselves. We’ve got some tools we could trade—”
“No, we’ll feed you for free. I don’t want them relying on metal things. They might decide they need me less. I’m the only one here with any sophistication beyond wood-lore. I got a good thing goin’ here. First I came to hide out—my overland broke down not far from here and the ’Vegas cops were on my tail. These people weren’t too hard to impress. They took me in. And I’m Head-man, now. I’ve never been the Head-man of anything before. Always number three man in the mob at best. I got me three good women here and we get by. I don’t want nothin’ from outside to spoil it. Understand?”
Ben nodded. “I understand perfectly. Never fear.
We’ll eat and leave.”
“Just don’t hang around,”
The savages, seeing that their leader approved the stranger, had edged closer. Ben could see their tattoos, the ancient symbols of power: miniature octagonal Stop signs; No Left Turn; No Passing; Truck Route; Gas Food and Lodging Next Exit. . . all in crude black letters. A few were tattooed with other symbols on their foreheads, indicating their tribal rank and station. The man in charge of rationing the tribe’s food was tattooed with %. The seer wore a ?. The First Among Warriors sported a !. And each woman had one & for every child she had borne.
Ben was given a large steaming clay pot brimming with a savory stew of antelope and herbs. Sitting beside the lake, he and Gloria ate. She ate slowly, pausing to turn faintly green between each mouthful; but she kept it down and shortly the spirit returned to her eyes. She seemed to enjoy Ben’s attendance, however, and was careful not to seem completely recovered.
After eating, they bathed in the icy lake. They soaked their clothes and wrung and beat them on the rocks, then spread them out in the sun to dry.
Watching from a dozen yards away, a handful of the tribe muttered about the fly-children’s maggot-white skin. They watched the fly-car apprehensively as if they expected it to come alive.
The lake was bitter cold but it brought Ben awake like a cymbal crash beside his ear, and later he stretched out with a grunt of satisfaction beside Gloria, on the smooth round pebbles. The sun dried and warmed them.
They examined one another frankly. Ben watched Gloria’s face as she took stock of a naked Professional Irritant. Her expression was entirely impassive; he felt foolish, realizing he’d hoped to see approval in her eyes. Long and white, skin almost transparent. She seemed fragile, a wraith. Her breasts were wide apart and pointed; her damp collarbone shone like polished ivory. Against a gray pebbly beach her body, outstretched, gleamed like a vein of quartz in a cliff-face. Stiffened from the chill water, her wine-red nipples were hard and prominent.
“You’re lovely,” he said, the words hardly louder than a breath. But she heard.
“And you’re a jerk,” she replied. But she was smiling. Suddenly she stood and went into the fly-car. Perhaps she meant for him to follow her.
“When you leaving?” It was Chancey, hovering impatiently near. “This ain’t a resort, man. You running from somebody? I’ll bet you are, Rackey. I don’t want them to come here looking for you. Look, there’s two groups of people around here right now besides us. Few miles north there’s a caravan of Dis-lovers, pilgrims to ’Frisco, and about two hours before you got here I saw another weird insect flyer…”
Ben was up and getting dressed. The clothes were still damp. But suddenly he was in a hurry to leave. “What did the flyer look like?”
“Like a wasp. A big wasp, like yours is a big house-fly. Only it was a wasp. And the way it was circling, I figure it was looking for someone. Now I wonder who? So beat it. I got a helluva good thing here, see.”
But Ben had already scooped up Gloria’s clothes and was climbing up the ladder.
He closed the hatch behind him, tossed Gloria her clothes, and took the fly-car up.
He headed north.
Strung through the shallow valley between the scrubbed-topped hills, the pilgrims trudged in dismal procession, their heads muffled in their red cowls. Ben estimated there were about two hundred of them, marching in a disorderly parade half a mile long. They followed a sparse cart-track that wound up into the mountains ahead then disappeared in a forest of pines.
Beside the pilgrims crawled heavily burdened pack-animals; from this altitude Ben couldn’t make out exactly what they were, but he assumed they would be Genetic Manipulations’ flesh-tractors.
The sun was well up and the sky, solid blue, broken only by a few creamy clouds scudding near the eastern horizon.
Ben circled the caravan twice, wondering if it could be of use to him. He decided against contacting them, and turned the fly-car back to its northern course.
He didn’t get far.
Ten minutes later, something with glimmering crystalline wings and burning, multifaceted eyes shot out of the sun.
Ben swung down and right, trying to get under the wasp-car.
They were about a hundred feet over the crest of the nearest hill, which was spiny with tall pines. There was no running, now. But if he could get around the hill and come up behind, he could get a clear shot at them.
He heard a shudder and a whine, and he knew the fly-car had lost its right wing. Laser rifle? He peered out the side-window, the wasp-car was nowhere in sight. The loss of a wing had little effect on the mobility of the fly-car; nulgrav didn’t rely on such aerodynamics. But a shot through, the midriff would cut their power-spine, and down they’d go.
He handed the pistol to Gloria. She took it with a steady hand and shining eyes. “Crank that side window-slat open. There. Yes. Now, fire out the window, but only when you’re sure you’ve got a good bead on them—we’re short on bullets. They’ve got a laser rifle, at least. It looked to me like a passenger vehicle—not built for fighting, fortunately. So they’ll have to shoot out through their window, too. And they’ll be slower than us.” *
He took the fly-car down until it was scarcely ten feet above the tree-tops. The waves of tree-tops whipped past like a furry green sea as they cut down into the valley and rounded the hill.
The wasp-car shot abruptly into sight, at nearly the same altitude. Coming straight at them. They had ten seconds to look it over before it was upon them. Moving as rapidly as it was it seemed a real insect, monstrously inflated, its antennae bent back and vibrating in the wind, its wings nearly invisible as they blurred. So. It was using wings! Then it wasn’t a nulgrav car, it was an ornithopter upheld by air-pressure. That gave the fly-car an advantage in maneuverability. Perhaps they could run.
But the elongated, segmented yellow body grew. A gray-metal rectangle gleamed from its belly—an overland vehicle hooked to the thorax. Ben could make out two figures at the control panel, and a flare of crystal tubing as the laser rifle poked from the side-window. The wasp-car pilot approached from the left, thinking he had the edge, but Ben decided to chance moving closer to the hill. Gloria needed a clear shot.
He angled left, putting the fast-approaching wasp-car to the right. The tops of trees brushed the fly’s wiry legs.
Gloria propped the pistol, steadied it on the window-ledge. She drew a bead as the two vehicles closed. “I see that sumbitch Fuller at the wheel.” She muttered. Then the wasp was on them, its laser-stinger flashing from the window.
Gloria fired three times. Ben felt heat lightning crackle at his left cheek. For three seconds, he was blinded.
When his vision cleared the wasp-car was gone, behind them. Ben swung around, blinking, eyes still misty from the laser shot that had seared a rough hole through the fly’s left eye and scorched the left side of his face. He held his breath, watched the world whirling crazily as they U-turned. They would have the drop on the wasp-car; it would take an ornithopter longer to turn. But the wasp-car was wavering, and there was a man hanging half out the right eye, limp, arms swinging. “You got him!” Ben exclaimed.
“One of them. And I think I hit the control panel through the window.” Gloria said huskily. “Looks like they’re having problems staying up.”
The wasp-car ranged erratically, dipping excessively right, then left, writhing like a mad bee.
Suddenly, the wasp-car was far above them, and Ben knew the fly-car was dropping. He looked over his shoulder. The laser-shot had ripped through the deck and nicked the power-spine. The energy supplies were leaking. The crater in the metal deck gave out a violet glow. They were sinking to earth.
“We gonna crash?” asked Gloria off-handedly.
He shook his head. “No, but it’s going to be bumpy or maybe even—”
They hit the trees.
Thunder and crackles. He was thrown to the floor. Gloria was clawing at him. Both of them slid feet-first toward the tail as the fly-car wedged itself straight up between the trees.
It stopped moving. They pitched up against the concave aft bulkhead. All was still. They got their breath back and struggled upright; the eye-windows of the fly-car were pointed at the sun. The sun seemed trapped at the end of the black shaft formed by the interior of the vertical craft. They climbed laboriously up, gripping the frame-struts, and Ben cranked open the hatch. They climbed through and dropped ten feet to the fragrant pine needles covering the ground.
Brushing off, they assessed their situation. Bruised but unbroken. The fly-car was dead. They were in an uncrowded woods redolent of pitch and sage, and with very little underbrush. They heard the crackle of snapping tree limbs as the wasp-car crashed, far down the slope.
Gloria smiled.
Ben shook his head. “Didn’t sound to me like it struck hard enough to kill the pilot. Good chance Fuller’s alive. He’s a tenacious bastard. Let’s go. You got the gun?”
She nodded.
“Okay, then.”
They struck off up the hillside, northwest, hoping to intersect the pilgrims’ caravan.
In a flat-bottomed hollow between two hills, the track widened suddenly, from six yards to sixty, and they came upon an ancient campground pitted with the black scars of many campfires. A thin waterfall splashed down the hillside, formed a pool, then leaked into a creek which trickled around the flat area to fling itself down the hillside.
Here, beside the stream, sat Ben and Gloria, waiting in the shade of an overhanging boulder. They had reached the spot ahead of the pilgrims, and Ben assumed the cult would stop here to rest and refill their water bags.
“Why are they on foot?” Gloria asked.
“There are no roads between cities, except a few rough trails. Some of them might be rich enough to afford to fly to San Francisco, but they wouldn’t if they could. They are morbid ascetics. Something like the Penitati Monks or the worshippers of Ahura-Mazda in ancient Persia. The essence of life, to them, is suffering. The essence of virtue, contrition. According to Dis, we are placed on earth to do penance for the original sin of the conceit that led us to come into being—our mistake was in causing ourselves to be born. So we must suffer until we are paid up in the account book of pain-accrued, at which time we are rewarded. We are permitted, as a reward, to enter again the Sacred Halls of Non-being. Commonly known as death. The ultimate act of devotion for the Dis-cultist is suicide. I know them well. I used to work in the Suicide Parlors in San Francisco. Part of my cover--I had to learn their jargon and rituals. Nonbelievers call them ‘Dizzies’. I can get us in with them, I think, if you keep your mouth shut.”
“Don’t worry about me, hot-shot. What’s a suicide parlor? What it sounds like?”
“In a fancy way--yeah. Suicide is each Dis-cultist’s ultimate goal. So they try to make it as elaborate and dramatic and glorious as possible. There are Final Gift agencies, specialists who provide hundreds of shrieking mourners, slaves who seem to kill themselves at the feet of the suicide in worship. They produce the story of the suicide’s life on stage, and fireworks, displays of lightning bolts that spell out the suicide’s name. They unveil monuments to him or her—all depending on how much the suicide can pay. Naturally, there are a variety of devices for ending it all. Self-immolation by fire is the most impressive. But others prefer to be torn limb from limb by a crowd adoringly chanting their name. My parlor was cheap. We did a quick wailing, maybe a stock poem dedicated to the suicide, and gave the client a nice room with a view and a loaded pistol.”
“Same old San Francisco,” Gloria commented. “Actually, I sort of understand. I could go for it, I think.”
“Personally, I suspect my death would be a great i
nconvenience to me,” said Ben,
The first of the pilgrims rounded the bend, crashing hand-cymbals with every footstep.
All of them wore the same red cowls, except the man second in the procession, who wore a dusty white robe with a blood-red heart sewn on the chest. As they neared, Ben could see the man in white had bare feet, bleeding from the sharp stones.
Ben nudged Gloria, whispered instruction. As the trailing procession came abreast, they both fell to their knees. Ben crawled forward and prostrated himself before the man in white, who held up a hand to signal the procession would pause. The pilgrims, glancing dispassionately at Ben and Gloria, spread out onto the wide ground, filling water bags and breaking out rations, resting in the shade. The man in white regarded Ben stonily; his features were craggy, his nose a hatchet of flesh, his cheeks sunken, his pallid lips tight over his teeth. His eyes were hollows; a thin mask of flesh stretched over his skull.
“Speak, unclean.” said he in a high, nasal tone.
“Oh, Pristine and Burdened Mourner, we are stricken with adoration of Dis and would surrender to His Holy Will. ”
“Are you initiated?”
“I am. We are.”
“Speak the third invocation.”
Ben cleared his throat and began, kissing the ground after each so be it: “Where is the man who has cheated Death? No man or woman bests Death. So be it! Where is the final victor? Death and Death alone. So be it! Where is the joy in living a life doomed to pain in a body doomed to be the communion-bread of maggots? No joy is there. So be it!”
“Well spoken, and now speak your name and the fifth invocation.”
