Henty gave him a cheery wave of the hand as she drove out of the yard and took the turning to town. She never once looked back, though the temptation corded the muscles in her neck. There was parking right opposite the bank.
Henty sat in the truck, cleaning the shotgun. Once a sheriff’s patrol car rolled past and a deputy shouted, “Hi there, Henty!” She raised a hand from her work to wave at them. She went to school with both of them. She finished cleaning the shotgun, loaded the repeater clip with shells, then opened the door of the truck.
CHAPTER 4
Nobody seemed to find it remarkable that she cradled a shotgun as she walked into the bank. In the main hall, she walked up to the desk with the sign, Chief Cashier.
“This is a stickup.” She pointed the shotgun at him.
“Don’t be silly, Henty,” he said. “You know we don’t keep any actual money here.”
She turned to be certain the Watcheyes in the corners of the room got a good picture. “Take me to the vault.”
“Is that thing loaded?”
“You better believe it.” Henty swung the shotgun around and fired one shell into the floor at her feet.
“Shit! You’re serious!”
“You’re catching on fast.” She swung the barrel to point at his stomach. The hubbub that arose when she attracted the attention of all the other square-eyed clerks by firing her shotgun now died down to an awed silence.
A white-haired clerk said. “Hey, I ain’t been held up since we carried real money. Don’t you know, Henty, we only keep credit cards in the vault?”
“Blank credit cards,” Henty said for the benefit of the silently recording Watcheyes. “Take me to the vault,” she repeated to the Chief Cashier, jabbing the shotgun at him. He scurried before her.
“You won’t get to use them with your face plastered all over network vidi,” the white-haired clerk said as Henty passed his desk. “Put that gun down and tell us it’s a joke, huh? We all love you.”
“And I love you, Frank. But this is business.”
“Jesus!” The Chief Cashier was shaking but not so frightened he couldn’t speak. “You're crazy. Here, take all the cards you want, just point that thing somewhere else.”
“Hand me a box.”
He reached inside the vault and gave Henty a box. She tucked it under her arm and started backing out. “Thanks.”
“It’s still not too late to call it a joke,” Frank called to her, running his hand distractedly through his white hair. “You don’t know the penalty for social hooliganism, do you?”
“I know.”
“It’s death, Henty. Think, goddammit!”
“I've thought, Frank, but thanks anyway. You got the alarm button?”
“Yeah. I got it.”
“Hit it.”
When he looked up from pressing the button, she was gone.
The patrol car caught up with her just over three miles from town. First Henty led them a bit of a chase on that narrow road, blocking them every time they tried to pass, by sashaying the tail of her truck across the snout of the patrol car. Then she heard the first shot. She looked in the mirror. The pistol was pointing skywards. It was the two deputies who greeted her in town. In high school, everybody called them Tom and Jerry because they were so unlike each other, yet inseparable. Another shot into the air. Henty decided it was time to pull over.
Jerry gunned the patrol car past her truck while she still slowed. Behind them came another car, this one with a Thompson threatening her from the passenger window, plus a riot gun from the rear seat. Behind the truck, two more sheriff’s cars screeched to a halt. Armed deputies piled out and fell flat on the road to aim riot guns, pistols, tommies, teargas grenade throwers at her. Also a scoped sharpshooter’s rifle from about ten feet away.
Henty sat tight, keeping her hands in clear view on the wheel, moving not a muscle, not even blinking. She didn’t want some nervous rookie deputy to drill her.
When everybody was in place, Sheriff Jenner — another fat man but, thank god, not a jolly one — waddled up to the door of the truck, shouting, “Now don’t shoot me in the back, you dumb mothers.” To Henty, he said, “You just keep your hands in sight when you get out, huh? We don’t want any accidents, do we?” He opened the truck door and stepped back.
“No. Sheriff,” Henty said dutifully. She climbed out slowly, without sudden movements, keeping her hands high and away from her body.
“Now why would a nice girl like you want to do a silly thing like holding up a bank?” Sheriff Jenner asked her sadly. “You tell me that.”
Henty didn’t answer. But she smiled brilliantly at him.
CHAPTER 5
The easiest paths to take all head into a slough of despond: recession, confusion, apathy.
As far as we can see, it will be very hard to get to the desirable future, called “exuberant democracy” and much easier to get to an authoritative form of state concentration on social control, called “ceasarism.” — Norman MacEachron
“Guilty as charged,” said the foreman of the jury.
The lawyer The Caring Society had appointed for Henty sighed melodramatically for the network vidis. He fancied himself something of a crusader but had a hard time reconciling the ideals he would prefer to defend with his ambitions for political office.
“Before I pass sentence,” the judge asked Henty, “do you have anything to say?”
Henty shook her head. “Let’s get it over with.”
The judge nodded but Henty’s lawyer was on his feet. He waited for all the cameras — the ones from local and network affiliates as well as The Caring Society in the corners of the courtroom - to turn to him before he spoke. “Your Honor. I have stated before that my client is obviously insane and should be given permanently into the keeping of The Caring Society.”
“Oh, sit down and shut up,” Henty told him. “You’re the one with the divided head. I know exactly what I’m doing”
The lawyer waited impatiently for Henty to finish.
The judge said. “Medical opinion tends to agree with the accused, Counsellor. She is sane. She knew what she was doing. She knows what she’s doing now, though you and 1 have so far failed to perceive what’s in her mind.”
Henty nodded. This terrifying old man was a lot smarter than the young lawyer: he knew how to wait.
The lawyer didn’t know when he was beaten. “Your Honor, I will let the record stand there on the subject of my client’s sanity for review by any superior court to which judgment may be appealed.”
The judge raised an eyebrow at Henty. “There will be no appeal,” said Henty firmly.
The lawyer shouted. The judge shouted louder. He also had a gavel. Finally the lawyer shut up. The judge told the stenographer, “Strike the accused’s remark about not appealing. All right. Counsellor, you have more on your mind.”
“Thank you, Your Honor. May I be permitted to enter a plea for mercy?”
“Counsellor, you know as well as I that once the accused is found guilty of social hooliganism, no mitigating circumstances are allowed for in law.”
“All the same, Your Honor, she attempted to rob that bank to raise money to take her dying son to the Arctic Circle for treatment that could save his life, one defenseless…
Henty whirled to face the lawyer. “This is demeaning. Sit down and wait, will you. Please!”
The lawyer subsided reluctantly, arranging his best long suffering profile to the cameras. Among other things, the judge said, “This is a clear cut case of social hooliganism. There was an attack on property, to wit a bank and, what is more, a bank guaranteed by the government and therefore part of The Caring Society. The accused confessed to the crime and that she knew the penalty when she committed the crime. We have seen film of the commission of the crime. None of the facts in this case are contested. The accused has been found guilty of the crime of social hooliganism. The law is clear. No mitigating pleas are permissible and the only admissible defense is that the accus
ed is of unsound mind, in which case the only option is lifetime confinement in one of the sanatoria of The Caring Society. Expert medical opinion has found her sane, so that avenue is not open to us. I shall now deliver the only sentence the law permits. The accused will stand to receive sentence.”
Henty stood. She looked around the courtroom without really listening. She had seen this popular entertainment many times on vidi.
When next she paid attention, the judge wore a black skullcap and was reading from a card the clerk held up for him. “...For which the penalty is death. You shall be taken from here to The Caring Society’s Place of Eternal Life where within three days you will communicate to the Administrator your preference for entering the eternal life by electrocution, lethal injection or downing with your own hand the pill of permanent sleep as atonement for your crime upon and against society.” The judge looked up. “Leave is given to appeal this sentence to the State Supreme Court.”
The lawyer beamed.
The wardress touched Henty’s sleeve. “Come along now.”
CHAPTER 6
“Hold it!” Henty said in a voice that rang through the courtroom. She shrugged off the tugging hand. “There’s a bit you didn’t read, Your Honor.” The judge, already on his way out, turned back to her.
“What?”
“You didn’t read the whole formula.”
“No, that’s true. You have a right to hear the whole formula and, if it will make you happy, I will read it.”
“It would make me happy.”
Henty’s lawyer put his face in his hands. He had finally caught on. The judge arranged himself, standing in front of his chair. The clerk came back from where he was already holding the door for the judge and picked up the card again. His finger pointed the place to the judge.
“In lieu of appealing this sentence, as final admission of your guilt, and to atone for your attack upon society by helping to assuage the bloodlust inherent in the upright ape in an overcrowded world, you may petition the President of the United States to allow you to run the gauntlet of the nation’s disapproval.”
Here the judge looked up. “You know, we don’t read this out when sentencing women.”
“Do I petition now or do I wait until you finish reading?” Henty enquired sweetly.
“Do you need any more proof she’s crazy?” the lawyer demanded without rising.
The judge nodded absently to the lawyer and found his place on the card. “If the President graciously permits, you will run, a marked person, hunted by all right-thinking men and women, across the nation from New York to San Francisco. Should you reach San Francisco, there at the Old United States Mint awaits you a fortune beyond imagination in cash plus that which is beyond all earthly value: a full and free Presidential Pardon. The same prize awaits whoever should take the mark from your body and present it at the Mint. The petition must be made within three days of sentencing.”
“I petition the President of the United States most humbly to let me become a Gauntlet Runner,” Henty said immediately. The judge nodded. “Your petition is noted. I can see your plan now.”
The judge sat down. “For the record, you are advised that no convicted criminal has ever reached the Mint in San Francisco to collect the ten million dollars and the Presidential Pardon. For myself, I will comment only that I consider the Gauntlet deplorable, a sickness of our society that turns us all into bounty hunters. That the running of the Gauntlet was instituted as a spectacle of entertainment rather than correction is signaled by the fact that the President also pardons all crimes committed by the convicted criminal en route to San Francisco and that courts in all States have precedents that the Gauntlet Runner under any and all circumstances has acted under provocation and attack and therefore in self-defense.”
The judge waited for the gasps of the audience and their angry murmuring at his daring heresy to die away. “The Gauntlet Run,” he continued inexorably. “is the gladiatorial Roman arena modernized. I condemn it as uncivilized and barbaric.” The judge turned to stalk out.
“But an opportunity of last resort for one dying boy,” Henty said as he came by her box.
“Good luck,” she thought she heard him say.
CHAPTER 7
They wouldn’t let her see Petey again: She was now a convicted, certified danger to society. But she had expected that. Petey would understand. Henty fretted through the ten days of tests the doctors required to decide whether she was fit to run the Gauntlet.
“We got to be sure you’ll give the viewers a good run for their money,” one young doctor told her.
“And the bounty hunters,” Henty said, making conversation.
“Nah, they don’t count.”
“Except to hunt me.”
“Sure, but they’re all solidly for the President. Therefore they don’t count. It’s all those millions of viewers who turn on every night between nine and ten that really count, see. The President needs them docile.”
“How? He’s already elected?”
“So was the last one until the mob killed him. And you know why the mob killed him?”
“He wasn’t winding down the war in Europe fast enough, they said.”
“They said, yeah.”
“Those rioters didn’t look to me to care one way or the other about the war.”
“Spot on! That was just the official excuse. What distinguished the reign of that particular President?”
“A lot of Gauntlet Runners who never made it out of New Jersey?”
“Yah. You learn right smart. He was unpopular because people were bored. Who was the most popular President we ever had?”
“Lyndon Milhaus Kennedy,” Henty said without hesitation. “The Sole Begetter of The Caring Society.”
“And of the Gauntlet Run,” said the young doctor. “In his time, a couple of Runners even made it as far as California.”
“Sure, when I was a little girl. But the bounty hunters weren’t so well organized then.”
“Never mind that. People don’t ask the reasons. They just remember that a lot Runners got all the way across the country instead of getting wiped out in Newark. People want to see the Runners run. They don’t want repeats of the Runners of the good old days filling in for Runners who didn’t even live past Monday night’s broadcast.”
“That’s show business.”
“If the show’s dull, people blame the producer. The President is the boss-producer of the Gauntlet Run. If the Runners lack guts, people get bored with the President and kill him.”
“And that’s your theory of why mobs storm the White House and kill Presidents?”
The young doctor grinned. “You got a better theory?”
“Aren’t you worried that kind of talk will go on your record?” Henty pointed to the Watcheye in the corner of the ceiling.
“I wish somebody would pay attention long enough to give me a grant to research the whole question.”
“You could try the Pentagon. They got to guard the White House, so maybe they’re interested in why people want to knock off Presidents. Especially since the last three were generals.”
“That’s treason.” The young doctor struck a pose, holding his profile to the camera.
“Vanity won’t get you any grants. Am I going to pass? I feel fit.”
“You’re fit.” He unstrapped the sonic probe from her arm. “You got a game plan?”
“If I had, I wouldn’t broadcast it.”
“You’re going to be on camera almost every inch of your Run.” He was scornful. “There’s nowhere public there isn’t a Public Safety Watcheye. So you lose nothing by telling.”
Henty merely smiled enigmatically.
CHAPTER 8
A succession of visitors came to see Henty.
The woman from Beverly True Loves said, “You run our vidibooks, don’t you?”
“Sorry. I don’t have much time left over from raising chickens and visiting Petey in hospital. But I know your company. Weepies.”<
br />
“We prefer to call it non-violent, life-affirming entertainment,” the woman said with a smile. “Your story is a real tear jerker. We’ll pay a quarter-million for the rights.”
“I haven’t time to film a vidibook.”
“Don’t worry, we’ll get a ghost writer and a lookalike actress.”
“You aren’t to bother Petey in hospital.”
“That’s all right. The public doesn’t like to see really sick people either. We’ll get a child actor who looks interestingly pale without specifying exactly the wasting disease etc.”
“Okay. It’ll help pay Petey’s hospital bills for a while.”
Next came a man from the Syndicate, who told Henty, “Numbers on the Runners is now the biggest biz in bigbiz.”
“So I've heard,” Henty agreed politely. This guy wore green alligator shoes, so he must be something important in the Mob. He had a matching briefcase and two flunkies to carry it; maybe, Henty thought, they took turns.
“Let me not bore you with statistics, let me just say categorically and without fear of contradiction that the Gauntlet Numbers is bigger biz than the Pentagon-Silicon Valley complex together.”
Henty whistled. She didn’t know it was that big.
“A biz that big needs protection. You still with me?”
“I think so. If you don’t fix it, you could lose your shirt.”
“For that kind of blunt speaking, I’m not surprised you’re in trouble.”
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you.”
“Okay. I’ll let it pass this time.” He waved his two strong arm men back to their positions against the wall of the interview room. “Now here’s the deal. You’re never going to make it to the Mint in San Francisco. So—”
“Oh, but I have every intention of collecting my ten million dollars and the Presidential Pardon right there at the Mint.”
“Don’t be stupid, woman. You can’t do better than real tough guys like Louie ‘Cement Shoes’ Albertone and Frankie ‘The Strangler’ Nocheiones. And they never made it past Nevada. You gotta taka fall and your best deal is to take it with us. That way your take to your heirs is guaranteed. Forty-nine out of the last fifty Runners took their fall where we told them. Their relatives are rich. We stay in biz by keeping our word. Like it says in our vidiverts. We get our dues or we get our man.” He stopped to give her time to digest this.
Gauntlet Run: Birth of a Superhero Page 2
