by Jack Yeovil
"Throw something heavy through the doors, please."
"Whatever you say, Ms Julie-rat." Stack picked up a barstool and slung it at the doors. Miss Unleaded's rifle cracked, hitting the stool in mid-air, and Shell stood up, a six-gun in his good hand. When the doors had swung back, Chantal fired low.
The gastank of the first cyke exploded in a brilliant blossom of flame. The whole row went down like dominoes, each tank exploding in turn. Shell was splashed with the burning liquid and ran off, screaming, waving his robobit like a firebrand.
"No wheels, Miss Unleaded," Stack shouted, "how'd you like that?"
A shot ploughed into the hardwood floor of the saloon by the doors.
The small 'chugger Stack had butt-thumped earlier came hurtling through the doors, screaming and firing wildly.
Stack drew his side-arm and plugged him under the right eye. He staggered backwards, his face on fire, already dead as the flames caught his gas-soaked hair and clothes.
"Darn," he said, "I guess I just lost me some life."
Outside, on the porch, the Gaschugger exploded.
"People who drink gasoline shouldn't smoke cigars," Stack said.
No one spoke for a minute. There were shouts outside, and people running away.
"It's clear," Chantal said.
Pedro rushed out from behind the bar with a bucket of sand and doused the burning corpse on his wooden porch, kicking the fire out and the 'chugger into the street. The cykes were still burning, and he had to call for someone called Pauncho to help him put that blaze out before it spread to the saloon.
Stack and Chantal left the saloon. Pedro swore at them in Spanish. Chantal was amused by the range of his imagery.
Federico was parked just across the street. When she had arrived in town, the Silver Byte was the only place lit up and she had gone there for directions to the church.
"Is this your car?" Stack asked.
She nodded. Stack whistled again.
Chantal tapped in the entry code, and Federico's driver's side door raised with a slight hiss.
"Federico."
"Yes," it said, switching to English for Stack's sake.
"Contact Fort Apache."
The automatic signal was sent out. There was a pause. Across the street, Pedro and Pauncho had the fire under control but were still swearing.
"Fort Apache does not respond."
"That's not possible," said Stack.
"Repeat: Fort Apache does not respond."
Chantal's hand went to her throat. She fiddled with the chain of her crucifix.
"Attempt to override. Try the personal channels for Brevet Major General Marshall Younger, Colonel Vladek Rintoon, and so on down the chain of command."
Federico worked in silence, a few lights on the dash going on and off.
"No response registered."
"Is Fort Apache down?" Stack asked.
"Fort Apache reads normal. It does not respond."
Chantal knew that this was what she had been sent to America to deal with. She had a moment of doubt. She tried to overcome it.
"We can't do anything until morning," she told Stack. "Let's get some sleep. Get in the car, and I'll drive you to the motel. You are staying at the motel?"
Stack was thinking five minutes behind. He shook his head.
"Yeah…uh…"
"Good. I'll take a room. We can be at the church tomorrow."
She got behind the wheel, and opened the passenger door. Bewildered, Stack got in. By the time they reached the motel, he was asleep—unconscious?—in his seat, head hanging against the safety belt.
She left him there and, unable to find a nightman, broke into a room.
III
Lauderdale was inspecting his androids. The whole troop stood to attention under the cellophane shrouds in the store-room. Seven-feet-tall, andiropomorphic and faceless under their helmets, they looked a little like the robot in the movie The Day the Earth Stood Still, but slimmer and battleship grey. The only customised touch was the US Cav yellow stripe down their legs.
The Robo-Troopers were Captain Lauderdale's special field of expertise. The Cav didn't use them that often any more, following the wave of anti-android feeling that had swept the nation after the Governor of Los Angeles send them into the Watts NoGo to break up a peaceful demonstration against the USA's links with Greater Rhodesia. Some programmer's minor error had led to an override of the androids' prime directive and a massacre of 1594 people. Most Agencies had quietly scrapped their android programs after that, or diversified into different branches of robotics. Hammond Maninski Inc., out of the fortress city of Pittsburgh, was rumoured to be experimenting with the Donovan Treatment, putting human brains in android bodies—as in the British police teevee show, Dixon of Dock Green—and putting them in the field. Lauderdale knew that was a bad move. The human brain should be well removed from the field of combat, watching the action on all the monitors, playing God, not stuck inside a tin can waiting for the first lucky home-made frag to burst its eggshell.
He ran a systems check on the master control console. The androids hadn't moved since the last inspection. Really, Lauderdale ought to detail someone to dust them down more often. They hadn't been used in action for eighteen months, and had only been trotted out for parades and display inspections after much nudging. Lauderdale resented the downplaying of his discipline. He felt like a spare man at Apache, assigned to odd jobs like looking after official visitors rather man performing the duties he had signed up for.
Colonel Rintoon had ordered everyone to double-check their own areas of the fort. He believed there was a murderer loose somewhere, and that he had gained access to and exit from Younger's kitchen by some as-yet unknown means. Everyone was supposed to be searching for clues. Lauderdale agreed with Captain Finney's diagnosis. Younger had been killed by his own kitchen equipment. The physical presence of a killer hadn't been necessary. Finney had explained that a murderer could tamper with the kitchen by tapping into the central system of the fort, but Rintoon insisted on believing the evidence of the power outages and the thats and maintaining that Apache was inviolate. Rintoon was near the edge. Problems were popping up beyond the parameters of his programming.
None of the androids had bloody fingers. Then again, Lauderdale hadn't expected them to.
He took one last look around the store-room, turned off the lights, and stepped outside into the corridor.
Lieutenant Rexroth was running by, a print-out streaming from his hand.
They bumped together. Rexroth saluted.
"Sorry, Captain."
Lauderdale was irritated. "What's the hurry, Rex?"
"Major Faulcon has to see this."
They walked, almost jogging, along together.
"What's important?"
"Younger's orders. They were sealed in his own terminal files. Captain Finney gave me the codes and told me to access them. They're germane."
"Shouldn't you be taking them to Colonel Rintoon then?"
Rexroth stopped short. Lauderdale could tell the cmer officer was conflicted about something. He wanted to talk, but thought he shouldn't.
"What is it, Rex?"
Rexroth looked at the print-out, and over his shoulder. There was no one else in the corridor.
"What did Younger say?"
"I…I can't follow it…it's about chain of command."
Lauderdale took the print-out. Rexroth didn't fight him for it. Lauderdale started reading from the top.
"Directive Five, sir."
Lauderdale looked down for it. It was triple-starred.
"It was scrambled three times. And marked MOST URGENT."
Lauderdale read. "IN THE EVENT OF MY DEATH OR INCAPACITY," Younger had written, "COMMAND OF FORT APACHE IS TO DEVOLVE TO MAJOR HENDRY FAULCON. UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES IS COLONEL VLADEK RINTOON TO ASSUME TEMPORARY OR PERMANENT CONTROL OF THE OUTPOST."
"I don't understand," Lauderdale said. "This is against all procedures."
"Loo
k down again. It's in the notations at the bottom."
Here it was. "COLONEL RINTOON'S LATEST PSYCHIATRIC PROFILE SUGGESTS HE IS SUFFERING FROM EXTREME STRESS. HE IS NOT TO BE ADVANCED IN RANK. HE IS TO BE REMOVED FROM ACTIVE DUTY AS SOON AS AN OFFICER OF EQUIVALENT RANK CAN BE BROUGHT IN FROM FORT COMANCHE. A PRELIMINARY DIAGNOSIS SUGGESTS INCIPIENT PARANOIA, COMPULSIVE HOSTILITY, FRACTURED PSYCHE. COPIES OF THIS REPORT HAVE BEEN DESPATCHED TO GENERAL ERNEST HAYCOX, STATE GOVERNOR TOLLIVER." It was dated two days ago. So much for timing.
Rexroth was fidgeting with his lip. "We have to do something, sir."
"Colonel Rintoon has assumed command. There was nothing to suggest that he shouldn't. Younger should have suspended him from active duty immediately if he believed this."
"But he didn't. We have to talk to Major Faulcon. You, me and Finney. Rintoon has to be relieved of his command before something goes seriously wrong."
The corridor was still empty. .
"Something already is seriously wrong, Rexroth."
"Yes sir, I'm sorry sir."
Lauderdale drew his sidearm, pressed the barrel to the fleshy part under Rexroth's jaw, and fired, twice.
"The Rath of Joseph is thorny," he whispered.
Then, he raised the alarm.
IV
They were having real coffee on the balcony of their hotel, overlooking the pleasant central square of Managua. It was the flower festival, and the square was multi-coloured with the heaps of blossom placed at the foot of the equestrian statue of Augusto Cesar Sandino almost up to his saddle. The smiling faces of Daniel Ortega and Archbishop Romero shone down from a three-storey poster. It was the middle of the morning, but they had only just had their breakfast sent up. A band was playing the songs of the Revolution, and a young girl was singing about wheat, love and her thirty-thirty ammunition.
"Trente-trente?" said Leona, the slight breeze shifting her shining hair as she dissected her grapefruit with a serrated spoon. "I got guns, you got guns…"
A flight of birds shot up from the square. Stack sipped his coffee, sacriligiously despoiled with Sweet 'n' Lo.
"…all God's chillun got guns."
Leona wasn't really bitter, he knew, but back in the States there were duties waiting for both of them. Both felt guilty about snatching this downtime for themselves.
He set his cup down and walked round to her side of the table. He smoothed her hair down, and kissed the top of her head. She relaxed and stroked his wrists, and he massaged her neck.
The girl was singing only of love now, of the children she was expecting from her soldier boyfriend, of the bright future tfieir struggle had won for the country. She sang of their defiance of the Yankee tyrants and the multinat octopus. Everybody down here had been friendly, but the papers, the teevee shows and the songs painted all Americans as villains. After years of recaff, Stack, with the rich taste of coffee in his mouth, could see why some thought the CAC a paradise on earth.
Stack slipped his hand into Leona's dress, and rubbed his thumb over a nipple. He bent down and kissed her grapefruit-flavoured lips.
She sucked hungrily at his tongue.
A cheer went up from the crowds outside as Oscar Romero appeared on his own, much grander, balcony, arm-in-arm with the new Pope of Rome, Georgi. Stack and Leona ignored the speeches.
Leona stood up, and pressed her body to his. They danced together, to the National Anthem of the Central American Confederacy, their bodies responding warmly.
He smelled the traces of perfume in her hair, and the soft female musk of her body.
Stack wasn't sure whether he had manoeuvered Leona back into their room and pushed her down on their bed, or whether she had done it to him. They were on the bed now, gently pressing against each other.
Their dressing gowns were getting in the way. They broke apart, unknotted their belts, and threw the gowns away. Naked, they embraced again. He kissed her neck and chin. She stroked his back, and sides.
She slid under him, and he looked into her eyes as he lowered his face to hers.
They kissed…
Stack's heart leaped as he started awake. His neck ached where the seatbelt had cut into it, and his entire face throbbed. His head was still bruised from Exxon's fists. Hardly an inch of his body wasn't in one kind of pain or another.
Chantal was shaking him. It was her subtly different scent he had smelled, not Leona's.
"Time to wake up, Trooper Stack."
His wounds came back to him. His body felt like a baggy diving suit. He would have liked to go to Doc Zarathustra and traded it in for a new, more durable model. Hearts, he remembered the Wizard of Oz saying, will never be a practical proposition until they can be made unbreakable.
He rubbed the grit from his eyes, and looked at the woman. "I was dreaming."
Chantal stood up, and backed away from the car. "I thought so. I'm sorry for disturbing you. You were REMming."
He tried to stretch, to lift the imaginary weight from his shoulders.
"You were smiling."
Stack sighed. "It was a nice dream."
"So I noticed."
Chantal was almost smirking. Embarassed, Stack realized he had a generous erection straining the crotch of his Cav britches. He adjusted his position to de-emphasize his bulge, and waited for his arousal to die down.
Chantal slipped into the driving seat, and flicked switches. Federico reacted with lights and instrument evaluations.
In the light of day, Chantal wasn't the woman she had seemed last night. Appearing in the Silver Byte with her cannon and steely determination in her eyes, she had looked to Stack like Redd Harvest on steroids with a touch of Clint Eastwood and Annie Oakley thrown in. This morning, in the same outfit, she seemed more demure. Passive, restful, even. There was something kittenish about her unconscious pout, and a certain unassailable balance in her disposition. She was younger than he had thought, too. Maybe twenty-four, twenty-five. She gave the impression that she could hardly lift the heavy side-iron she was packing, let alone squeeze off a ScumStopper and hole the target dead centre. Stack knew better.
Quite apart from the fact that she had saved him twice from certain death, there was something very attractive about Chantal Juillerat.
"Good morning to you, Ms Julie-Rat."
"Everybody calls me Ms here in America. I am not used to it."
"Would you prefer to answer to Madam-weasel?"
"Chantal, please."
She pressed the auto-ignition.
"Nathan."
"Thank you, Trooper Stack."
Federico rolled forwards. This was a righteous piece of rolling stock. Its elegant curves made the typical US Cav cruiser look like a dray horse next to a she-panther.
"Do we get breakfast?"
"There are some N-R-G candies in the glove compartment. Oh, and some cherries."
Stack pulled the bag of fruit out, and chain-popped cherries until his mouth was full of stones.
"You must be loaded, sister."
She shifted her shoulders. "I'm on generous expenses. Fruit is essential to a balanced diet."
"Essential it may be, but that doesn't make it cheap."
She shrugged again. That was a characteristic European gesture, Stack thought, the famous ca va shrug.
He spat the stones into his hand, and threw them out of the window. Maybe they would seed the desert.
"Now," she said, "where's the Church of St Werburgh's?"
"You see that half-destroyed building over there?"
"Yes."
"Well, like they told me, follow the trail of death and destruction through town and you can't miss it."
"This may be boring for you, I'm sorry. I shall take you back to the fort when I've finished."
"I'll come along for the ride. I don't mind."
"That's good then."
They drove slowly over the bumpy, wreckage-strewn ground.
"Federico," she said to a voice-activated console.
"Buon giorno, sorella."
>
"Good morning. Could you book me a satellite channel, please. I'm going to want to talk to Rome. If you can raise DeAngelis, I would be especially pleased. If not, Edwina will do."
Federico beeped an affirmative, and got working on it. Stack realized he was flying in very high circles. He doubted if Brevet Major General Younger could as casually get airtime on a satellite link.
Chantal gasped, as if someone had slapped her across the face with a rope-end. Stack followed her eyeline.
She was looking at the raped ruin of the church.
V
Rintoon had doubled the guards, but that hadn't stopped the murderer or murderers from striking nine more times during the night. Cat Finney had retired with an automatic pistol under her pillow, her cubicle lock scrambled and a desk against it. She hadn't slept much. No one who had got a good look at Younger's kitchen would sleep well for months.
At the morning briefing, Rintoon gave a report.
"Rexroth is an unconfirmed kill. It is possible, indeed probable, that we should count him as a suicide…"
"In that case, sir, where's his gun?"
"Good question…er…Badalamenti. His weapon may have been…er…appropriated by personnel unknown prior to Captain Lauderdale's discovery of the body."
Finney was in yesterday's uniform. It was still discoloured from her climb up the liftshaft. Slung over the back of a chair, it had been the easiest thing to find this morning. She didn't want to admit to it, but her childhood fear of the closet might just have come creeping back. All through the night, she had been waking up and looking at the slats of the closet door, wondering absurdly if the killer might not be lurking within. Her clean uniforms were in the closet, and they would probably stay there until the crisis was over. Rintoon hadn't slept at all, and was looking wilder by the minute. She found it difficult to connect the hypertense, unshaven, neon-eyed c-i-c of this morning with yesterday's smug, complacent, new-pin-neat Number Two. There was something increasingly familiar about him, though, as if he were metamorphosing into a different, truer, more immediately recognizable shape.
