by Jack Yeovil
No. There were too many other operators in the centre.
Finney had too many friends. Lauderdale's position as Rintoon's second-in-command was precarious. There was no telling who the old man would listen to in any given argument. He could as easily be persuaded that Lauderdale was a Maniak as Finney.
"Keep it up, Cat, keep it up," he said.
"Sir, yessir," she replied.
He left the Ops Centre, and hurried through the corridors. He hummed to himself, Neil Sedaka's "I Love, I Love, I Love My Little Calendar Girl". He reached into the tunic, and felt the switchblade snug in its harness under his arm. The next person to come along would do, he felt sure…
A Trooper rounded the corner. Lauderdale didn't know him. That was good. Personal feelings tainted the sacrifice. It was important to spill the blood without hate, without love, without emotion.
"Trooper."
"Lieutenant…Major, sir."
The Trooper stood to attention.
"Name?"
"Brecher, Michaeljohn T., Company B Smoke-Generating, sir."
Lauderdale prowled around the Trooper. There was no one in sight. He looked at Brecher's broad back.
"You're out of uniform, Trooper. Look, your shirttail is loose…"
Standing behind the man, he drew his knife. The blade silently appeared. With its point, he tugged at Brecher's shirt, pulling it free.
"And here, you have a button missing from your epaulette…"
"Sir?"
He cut the button off. It bounced on the floor and rolled away. There was a touch of perplexion in Brecher's eyes as Lauderdale pricked the side of his throat.
"You're a mess, Trooper," he whispered into the man's ear as he eased the knife in through his jugular vein, wiggled it into his windpipe, and scraped it against his vertebrae.
Lauderdale stood back to avoid the arterial spray.
The Maniax had struck again. He went to the wall and sounded the alarm.
The dead man's throat kept pumping a red tide onto the dirty white floor until the guards came.
III
As his prosthetic hand ground into Stack's neck Tiger Behr was babbling, "It's not me, mister, I ain't doin' this, it's not me, it's not me…"
Chantal brought her gun up, but there were too many people in the way. The Armindariz children had flown into a panic and were running, screaming, around the place like cats on fire.
Chantal made her way through them, gun still raised.
Stack was bent backwards at the waist, limp at the knees. He was feebly scrabbling at Behr's metal-ringed wrist.
Chantal had a good shot now. She took it.
The gun clicked. She remembered she had emptied it at the bell. There was no time to reload.
Through Behr's tattered shirt, she saw a patch of scrawny skin unprotected by fleshplate armour.
She braced herself against a tombstone, and vault-kicked with both feet.
Her kick landed hard, and gouged a gobbet from Behr's back. But she didn't knock him off his footing, and the jolt shocked through her feet and legs. The tombstone tipped over—the sandy ground was too loose to be an anchor—and she fell on top of it, hurting her hip.
Behr straightened, and turned robotically. He held Stack at arms' length, lifting him off the ground. His face was greyish now, and he was bleeding where Behr's fingers were sinking into the flesh.
"What'd ya do that fer, lady," he asked. "I tole you it weren't me. It's these damn doodads. I cain't control them all uv the time."
She tried a double karate chop, either side of his neck. Behr cried out, but didn't die.
His half face was crying, she saw. The pain and the frustration must be intense. But his electronic eye was glowing evilly.
"Tiger, did you have an optic burner implanted?"
The old Angel looked awesomely fed up. "Dad blast it, I did, lady. I wish it weren't so, but…"
The glow turned red, and Chantal cartwheeled out of its path. Behr's head wrenched around on his neck, soliciting a shout of pain from him, and the beam raked the graveyard. A stone crucifix exploded into shrapnel fragments, and weather-beaten 19th Century wooden markers burst into flames.
The mourners had mainly taken cover in the church. Those that were armed had their guns out.
Bullets rang against Behr's armoured chest.
"Careful," shouted Chantal, "you'll hit the Trooper."
No one seemed much to care about that. A long-haired old man in torn leathers jumped out of Father O'Pray's grave with a shotgun, and primed it. Before he could fire, the optic burn had caught him in the centre of his chest, and he tumbled backwards, dead.
Chantal danced around Behr, realizing that she could move faster than be could turn, and that his range with the burner was at best 120 degrees of his eyeline. She got in close, and struck wherever she saw Behr's original body.
He continued to complain. "Don't hurt me, sister. Hurt this thing!"
She had to do something about Stack.
"Shovel," she shouted. Armindariz was cringing between a pair of tombs, still clutching the spade. "Shovel," she repeated.
Armindariz stood up, and lobbed the spade to her. It spun end over end until she snatched it from the air. She got a good hold and swung it two-handed at Behr's flesh-and-bone elbow.
Behr screamed as the blade sliced through, breaking the brittle bone.
"Sorry, Tiger," she said.
Stack fell, gasping for bream, detaching the severed robo-arm from his throat. It continued to clutch automatically as he smashed it against the ground. Wires and transistors leaked from its stump.
Chantal took aim at Behr's head and swung again. The optic flashed, and the spadehead exploded into red-hot shards. She was left with a burning pole, which she shoved at the cyborg's torso. It splintered against his dented chestplate.
Through the glass, Chantal could see red blood leaking into Behr's mechanism, shorting out some of his electronics.
She ducked under the swing of his left arm, and threw herself against him, hoping to open a crack with her shoulder.
She felt as if she had tried to tackle Notre Dame. The cathedral, not the college football team.
She rolled away from the cyborg: The beam was getting too close.
A huge figure loomed up behind Behr, and a claw locked around his throat. Shell had stepped in. Sweat ran from his ebony-muscled arm and blocky face as he exerted pressure.
"Hold on there, sonny boy," Behr spluttered.
Shell had his real hand pressed against the back of Behr's head, to keep the cyborg's burner pointed away from him. Behr's head was still turning, inexorably. Chantal heard the old man's vertebrae straining inside his exoskeleton.
"This freakin' hurts, ya know," Behr shouted.
Shell was grunting now, losing his fight against Behr's neck. There was a sudden crack as Behr's spine snapped.
The Gaschugger relaxed, but Behr's head kept turning, until it was seeing backwards, his dead face against Shell's living one.
The optic burned, and Shell fell away from the cyborg, a ragged, smoking hole where his eyes and nose had been. Chantal glimpsed daylight through the headwound as the 'chugger fell. In the church, someone—Miss Unleaded?— howled with unfeigned grief.
What was left of Behr was unsteady on its feet. Chantal stood up, and waited for it to bring its face to bear again. Behr's tongue lolled from his mouth and his real eye was fogged. The optic was burned out, its solid cell used up on Shell. Inside all the bio-mechanics, he was dead, but the robot half of him was still going to kill her.
It raised its hand to its face, and pushed its tongue into its mouth. Then, using three fingers, it propped its jaw open. Behr had had a partially synthetic voice-box.
"Helllloooo, bayby-beach!" it said.
"The Big Bopper," she snapped. 'IP. Richardson, 'Chantilly Lace,' 1958."
"Highest chart position. Number Twelve." The mechanical voice grated. "Trust the Sister from Switzerland to have a photographic memory."
The dead man lurched forwards, arm out like Lon Chaney Jr as the Mummy. She realized the thing was blind, but guessed it would have some kind of sonar or heat pattern sensor inside it.
"Who are you?" she asked, stepping backwards a pace.
"My name is Legion…" it said.
"…for you are Many. That's an old joke."
"The oldies are the goodies, don't you think, mon petit choux."
It was using her father's voice.
"That's an old trick, too. It didn't work in California, and it's not going to work here."
It took a step, and changed voices. "Chantal, come back," it said in Italian, in Marcello's whine, "don't you like me any more?"
She kicked it in the throat. It was less steady now.
“I'm still dead, daughter," said her father. “I'm busy ducking rocks in Hell. And what have you done about it?"
Her foot hurt. That last kick had been rash.
"Ahh, the Sin of Pride," said Father O'Shaugnessy, "that was always your failing, Sister Chantal, always overreaching, always overconfident."
Someone rushed at the thing, screaming like a banshee, and was bent into broken halves in an instant. It hadn't been anyone Chantal had noticed before.
"Call me Georgi," said the Pope, "and come to bed."
She landed the heel of her hand on the glassex chest. It cracked.
The thing coughed mechanically, and she could see the wheels going round. She punched the crack, and it widened. Something was broken inside.
The people were creeping out of the church now. It must be obvious that the fight was between Chantal and the thing in Tiger Behr's body. The Behr creature wouldn't mimic life long after it had killed the nun. Stack was down and out of it, fallen in a swoon by the grave.
Chantal sucker-punched the thing, without any notable effect. Her hard knuckles were bleeding.
She pulled her bowie knife, and embedded its point in the crack in the demon thing's chest, working it back and forth. It laughed, and took her neck from the back, hugging her to him. The knife wedged into the chest cavity.
"Come to Papa," it cooed obscenely. She felt nails dig into her.
Then they were both falling into the grave, another active body pressed down on top of them, shrieking.
It was Miss Unleaded, a ladies' revolver in her little fist. Chantal pushed herself away from the Behr creature, and found herself bunched against Father O'Pray.
Miss Unleaded was pushing the cyborg's face into the grave earth. A band of peeling skin showed between the helmetlike exoskull and the slatted plates across Behr's clavicles. The Gaschugger shoved her gun against the gap and emptied it. Some of the bullets must have torn through to the mechanisms, because the creature jolted and jerked, sparks spitting from its wounds. Miss Unleaded cried out and stood up, electrical arcs sparking between the creature and her revolver, her earrings, her overall buckles, her dental fillings. She broke the connection and collapsed, her exposed skin blackened.
The creature stood up, smoke and flame belching from its ruptured torso. Chantal tried to get upright, but the gravewall behind her gave way as she tried to put her back against it.
"Come to Papa," its hand extended, fingerends turned to bloody spearpoints.
It took a step. Chantal could smell the melting plastic and putrefying flesh inside it.
Its fingers lightly brushed her throat. Site chopped at its wrist, but its claw kept coming for her.
"Come to Pa…"
There was an explosion, deafeningly loud in the confines of the grave, and the cyborg's helmetlike head burst like a dropped watermelon. The creature stood for a moment, then collapsed at Chantal's feet.
She looked up, and saw Trooper Nathan Stack, a newly-discharged shotgun smoking in his hands.
"The US Cav to the rescue," he said, priming his pumpgun again.
"Help me with the girl," Chantal said.
Miss Unleaded was whimpering. Chantal hugged her, and passed her up to Stack, who laid her out beside the grave.
Chantal pulled herself up. The headless cyborg kicked, a last mechanical reflex, and burned steadily.
She knelt by Miss Unleaded, feeling her pulses and her heartbeat.
"Well?" asked Stack.
Chantal snapped her fingers in the air. He was good. He knew what she wanted, and put it in her hand.
Miss Unleaded was gasping, trying to talk, but nothing was coming from her throat.
Chantal stuck the morph-plus hypo into the 'chugger's neck, and squeezed. The girl's eyelids fluttered.
"Water," Chantal said, "from the church."
"I don't think she'll be able to swallow. Look at those convulsions."
"Water," she said. "Not to drink."
"Oh," Stack said, running off.
Chantal held the writhing girl down, and tried to smooth her hair out of her eyes. Her heartbeat was irregular now. The discharges must have shocked her to the bone.
Stack came back with a leaky hatful of water. He put it down beside her. She dipped her fingers, and began the ritual—the familiar ritual—dabbing the girl.
Chantal gave Miss Unleaded the last rites.
The Gaschugger persisted in trying to talk.
Finally, when Chantal was finished, the girl got her last word out.
"Ma…maaaaa…"
Chantal crossed herself and stood up, beating the dust from her domes.
"Armindariz," she said, "dig some more graves."
IV
Quite apart from everything else, there was something badly twisted deep inside the system. Finney ran her checks again. Everything was responding perfectly. All the connections were solid. There were no apparent glitches. But there was still something wrong. It was working properly, but there was still something wrong.
The responses to her interrogation were a beat slower than they should have been. And too many files were refusing to open for her. The whole system was clamming up, keeping itself to itself. That was bad. She felt as if she were questioning a well-behaved child she knew was responsible for a series of atrocities. It was coming up with well-reasoned, plausible, rational excuses while sharpening a carving knife behind its back.
She had been sitting at her console for six straight hours now, testing everything. It was her way of keeping her head down and trying to live out the crisis.
Rintoon was stone crazy, and seemed to be taking Lauderdale along for the ride. All the people who had spoken up when there still might have been a way to end the craziness at Fort Apache were dead. It seemed that new corpses were felling out of the closet all the time. Finney hadn't expected to wake up alive for this shift.
Colosanto called the names of the units still out there. Almost everyone had returned to base by now. She listed Tyree and Stack as overdue, even though everybody had given up on them by now. They were dead, for sure.
Finney's screen lit up green, with four inch-high wavering letters picked out in black.
HELLO, it said.
HELLO, CATHERINE.
She started, and looked around. The other operators were absorbed in their own work, or staring disconsolately off into space.
IT'S JUST YOU AND ME, CATHERINE, the screen said.
"So?" she tapped.
SO, LETS PAAAARRTEEEE!
Sunbursts went off behind the writing. Skulls, bats and party hats danced in the comers. A deathshead blew a vibrating raspberry.
"Who are you?" she typed out.
THAT'S FOR ME TO KNOW, AND YOU TO FIND OUT.
"Jesus Christ," she breathed.
GOOD GUESS, BUT WRONG, WRONG, WRROONNNNGG!
"Please identify yourself."
FREAK OFF, RATSKAG!
"Lauderdale?"
KEEP SPINNING THE STRAW INTO GOLD, MY PRETTY. RUMPLESTILTSKIN'S NOT TELLING.
Site turned in her chair, and considered calling someone over. She decided against it. This weirdness was way off the scale. Colosanto finished her List, and sat down again. The Lieutenant was near the breaking
point, Finney knew. It was surprising that so few personnel had gone Section Eight.
She looked back at the screen. A dog like the one in the Tom and Jerry cartoons was battering a cartoon cat with a baseball bat. The cat's head was knocked shapeless with each blow.
HERE, KITTY, KITTY, KITTY!
The cat's head blew up like a helium balloon and floated off. The dog growled and vanished in an iris.
I TORT I TAW A PUTTY TAT!
"Why are you here?" she asked.
…TO PLAY THE DEVIL.
The printer started up, and Finney could have sworn she heard a mocking laugh in its noise. Or the "Th-th-that's All Folks!" tune from the end of the Warner Brothers cartoons.
It was printing out a complete listing, in alphabetical order, of all the personnel in the fort. It was mostly in regulation black, but certain names were printed red.
She recognized them. They were the dead ones.
I'LL SAVE YOU, the screen offered.
Finney furrowed her brow. Why was whatever was lurking in the machine offering to save her?
I'LL SAVE YOU TILL LAST.
V
"Fort Apache does not respond."
"That's not possible," Stack said.
Chantal accelerated as Federico hit the flat. They were out of the mountains now, back in the desert proper. The road ahead was clear. There was no traffic at all today. Even the road-rats were laid up somewhere. Not that any of them could have given Federico much of a chase.
"But it is so. I've tried all the frequencies. None of them are open."
"Let me try."
"You are welcome."
She handed him the laptop, and he punched in his Cav callsign. A code number flashed.
"It's acknowledging, but it's not putting me through. It's like we've been put on hold, at the back of a queue."
"Freak."
"I didn't think nuns used language like that."
"You've obviously never met one before."
"That's true."
Federico held the road superbly. Stack envied Chantal her vehicle.
"It is possible that all the fort's communications channels are in use to deal with some emergency," she said.
