Terrible Swift Sword
By
David Pascal
*
Part One: Trinity
*
(Note: Terrible Swift Sword takes place roughly sixty years before the
events of Saber Marionette J Again. None of the characters in that series
appear in the story below, although one -- President Joy of New Texas --
is referred to. All the characters in Terrible Swift Sword are original,
and all of the settings in New Texas are also original; thus, there are
no spoilers, and familiarity with the SMJ series isn't necessary to
understand the story. Warning: part one is long -- about fifty-plus
pages of regular hard-copy text, roughly. A more readably formatted
version of all the parts (1-16) of part one are available on The Saber
Marionette J Fanfiction Page at www.geocities.com/~davidpascal/smj.
Saber Marionette J is owned and copyrighted by AnimeVillage.com * Satoru
Akahori * Hiroshi Negishi * Tsukasa Kotobuki * Kadokawa Shoten * Bandai
Visual * Sotsu Agency * TV Tokyo.)
1.
�Israel!� hollared Billy Truman. �Israel? Are you there?�
As a good member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Clones,
Billy could not of course say a profane word such as �damn�. But in his
heart he was coming awful close to it. The sun had come up just an hour
ago and it confirmed what he already knew: he was totally lost. He�d
come out to the Badlands on the outskirts of New Texas to go prospecting
with Israel Gilhooley, but the old coot had insisted on going galivanting
down river somewhere to pan, and Billy�d hitched up to prospect the hills
instead: he�d seen a sparkling in the hills beyond and he thought he�d
come across a plasma vein for a moment, he really did. But it turned out
to be fool�s plasma -- nothing. And when it began to get dark he turned
to go back down river, and he couldn�t find the river. And now � now he
was only the Good Lord knows where.
Billy was scared. The range was no place for a sixteen-year-old boy to
be. Drifters, bandits, strange animals, rebel raiders, escaped
prisoners, government military experiments -- you could run into anything
out here in the badlands. And Billy couldn�t run worth spit: his left
knee wasn�t quite right. He looked down at his leg in his moth-eaten
denim pants, and then out over the brush. Well, at least he wouldn�t
starve. The low sun-lit scene of sagebrush and hills stretched in every
direction, and most every hill had trees with those ripe pink and purple
cantaloupe things. Of course they weren�t real Earth cantaloupes, not
with those golf-ball size seeds, but they�d fill a prospector�s belly.
Still, if you ate nothing but that, sooner or later you�d get sick. Sick
or well, it was a long way back to Jacksonville, especially if you had
no idea which way to go. If he strayed and ended up in Gartlant he could
be put in jail or even shot. His large quiet blue eyes looked out at the
long empty silent plain, glowing with golden sun, and heard the low
whistle of the breeze. For the first time in his life he realized
something clearly, something amazing. He thought: I could die. Soon.
He felt it, an ice, in his hands and his chest. I could really and
actually die.
He ran his fingers through his reddish sandy hair. Like hell he would.
�Is-rael!� he bellowed.
Nothing.
�Lulu?� he called. �Lulu, c�mere girl.� He put his fingers in his mouth
and whistled.
His chevy stopped chewing at the rind of a fallen cantaloupe and turned
her head back to Billy. It wasn�t an actual Chevrolet, of course, like
the real Texans rode on old Earth. Creatures like Lulu had had a lot of
names. At first they called them �Spiders� because of those six to eight
long spindly legs coming out of those big bird-shape oval bodies, and the
way they scooted so fast down the trail with them. Then they called then
deer because when you got close to those heads they usually kept tucked
down when meeting strangers, they really did look like pictures of Earth
deer, with warm brown fur and big brown eyes and pointed silky ears, and
their sweet dispositions. Even the long thin legs started to look
deer-like after a while. But (so they said) when the the very first
President, Franklin D. Joy himself, the original, went out and put the
first saddle ever put on one and took it out personally for a mosey, he�d
called back, �Damn thing�s rides smoother than a Chevy.� Everyone called
them chevies after that. Which was better than the things they called
Joy.
Billy didn�t have anything against Joy. He just wanted himself and Lulu
get back home in one piece. �Lulu, darlin�. C�mere. C�mon.� She
scampered over him, and nuzzled his neck and licked his freckled cheek.
He laughed and looked at her face. They had the stupidest, smiling,
trusting faces. He hugged her around her neck, and then made the sign of
the cross over his forehead, and hers. �Lord Jesus,� he whispered,
�please don�t let us die out here. Help us, Lord.�
He rested his forehead on hers a moment, and then he grit his teeth, and
with a determined look rolled himself up onto Lulu�s saddle. He looked
up and thought: Lord, give me a Sign. The wind had started up and
kicked a dried red leaf in front of him. The tip pointed
north-northwest. He looked at it, and then up at the thin whirling
magenta traces of plasma cloud curling in the bright blue sky and pointed
Lulu�s stirrup north north-west, and shouted, �Giddyup. Hee-yaaa!�
The chevy delivered a flute-like whinny and reared on its hind legs,
wriggling its front six like antennae in the air, and scrambled north
north-west like an elegant mixture of a tarantula and an arrow.
Two hours later, Lulu�s dash had slowed down to a long weary stumble.
Nothin�. Worse than nothin�! They�d ended up in the most Godforsaken
part of the Badlands he�d ever seen. What sort of a place was this?
Nothing was growing at all. It was worse than a desert � at least Earth
deserts had cactuses and tumbleweeds, so his Sunday School teacher
Jedediah Quart had said. This place was stone dead � burned looking --
empty.
Almost.
�Look, Lulu,� he said, suddenly pulling the reins up. In the distance
was a flat hill. And � he shielded his eyes from the sun and squinted �
and what looked maybe like some trees on top. Might be cantaloupes,
maybe even them funny white apples. Apples! His stomach tightened just
thinking about it. �C�mon, darlin�,� he said, �Yaa!� Lulu shook her
head up in the air and made a dash for it. Billy bent low over her and
slapped the side of her belly to keep her moving. So low, he missed
spotting a badly burned sign she trotted over.
It had blown off a post several hundreds of yards away. Three
interconnected yellow triangles surrounded a death�s head in the center,
and under it was written in black: No Trespassing. Property of
Government of New Texas. Department of Advanced Weapons Development
Research. Underneath it in red was written: Plasma Bomb Nuclear Test
Site. You Have Been Warned.
�Come on, Lulu!� hollered Billy. �Heck, we�re gonna be fillin� our
bellies tonight after all, darlin�! How �bout that? We�re -- we --.�
He slowed down.
The trees were about a hundred yards away now. Only � they weren�t
trees. The tall dark shapes shook stark and cross-like against the low
red sun, because they had branches � didn�t they? � but, they weren�t
trees. They were -- people. People with�branches?
No. With wings.
With -- wings?
Billy got off Lulu when she got within twenty yards. There was the
charred stump of what looked like a post there, and Billy tethered her
reins to it. The people on top of the hill stood feet together, their
backs to Billy.
�Hello?� called Billy. �Folks? Uh, hi, folks! I�m Billy Truman, from
Jacksonville. Good afternoon, y�all! What � uh � what brings you out
here, folks?�
The figures on the hill neither turned nor replied. There were three of
them. They weren�t dead. They�d be slumped funny if they were dead.
>From the back they seemed sort of skinny, with curvy hips, partly dressed
up in some kind of skin-tight black plastic. And they had � they really
did have -- wings. No, that�s not right, not wings, exactly: thin
overlapping sheets of hard metal branching out fully from slots in each
of their backs (slots in each of their backs?). They were strong flat
metallic sheets made up of hundreds and hundreds of hexagons. The
branching sheets were only shaped like wings, gleaming white and chrome
and silver in the sun, reflecting the blue of the sky. All three of the
winged figures had long hair, one blue-black and wild, the one in the
center long solid black, and the last, hair a slightly blue white and
plaited into a off-center pony tail knot on the right side of the head.
A breeze lifted the black hair of the one in the center, like long grass
swaying in lake water.
Lord. Had Jesus heard him, he thought? Were they � angels?
Suddenly Billy noticed that the three figures were standing in front of
three tall wooden posts. In fact -- they were tied to them, with thick
rope. And chains.
�Folks?� he said.
Billy took another step forward. A plastic sound crumpled lightly below
his boot. He�d stepped on a charred part of a sign. He bent over and
picked it up and brushed the dirt off the words. The words said: No
Trespas / Prop / Advanced Weapons Dev / Researc / Plasma Bomb Nuc/ You
Have Been Warn -- .
He dropped it, and stared at it.
�Damn!�
He turned and ran to Lulu and his knee twisted and he cried out and fell
and scrambled back up and � stopped, and turned and looked back at the
three figures at the posts. He looked back at Lulu again, who looked up
at him, smiling. He looked back at the three figures. And then,
yelling, �Damn damn damn damn damn!� he hopped and hobbled all the way up
the hill to the three figures and pulled out his Bowie knife and started
to hack at their cords.
�Come on, come on, we got to get out of here, folks, we�ve got to run!
Don�t you know what�s going to happen?�
They stood there, completely motionless.
Billy�s knife slipped as he banged it on a link of chain, and he cut his
hand and the knife fell to the sand at their black plastic-clad feet, and
it all got to him and he stepped in front of them and shouted, �It�s
going to blow! Don�t you understand? We�re all going to get killed if
you don�t start -- .�
A high-pitched whine started coming out of the three people tied to the
posts. Their muscles atop their shoulders popped open! Some kind of
steam hissed out. All three of their heads rotated in perfect unison
and clicked and and focused directly on Billy�s terrified freckled face.
Their staring eyes opened � solid glossy black! � and suddenly began to
glow from inside with a greenish interior light. All three threw back
their heads and screamed. Billy screamed himself and fell backwards,
holding up his left arm to shield himself: �Sweet Jesus!� he hollered.
And then suddenly in the distance there was another sound, a siren, and
Billy�s head turned and he squinted and there in the far distance he saw
a flat metal pylon with a shining iron egg on it and from a megaphone he
could hear the far, faraway words �Ten � nine � eight � seven � six -- .�
Several wrenching pops and clangs broke behind him. He turned. The
angels had broken out of their ropes and the one with white hair in a
plait grabbed him by the collar and ran at a thousand miles an hour to a
spot behind a big rock where the one with blue-black hair threw a punch
into the ground and ripped out a yawning gaping hole the size of a
chevy�s grave, and the last thing Billy saw before being thrown in and
covered by the first angel and the second angel was a slanting glimpse of
the third angel, untied, unmoving, still standing by her post in the
distance, her long long black hair lifting slowly in the breeze, looking
at him quietly, intelligently, sadly, smiling. She turned to face the
egg.
� � two � one � .�
And then the whole world exploded.
2.
Dr. Ahab Pierce looked through his safety-treated government-issue
binoculars past the thick smoked glass panel of the Government Research
Installation containment barrier. Outside the purple mushroom cloud was
a corona of livid screaming white streaks of lightning, slashing and
whipping the trembling bunker. He stroked his short carefully-trimmed
white goatee and sighed and touched his hand to his forehead. He
thought: goodbye, darling. A brief erotic image came vividly to his
mind. He lingered on it, expressionlessly watching the purple clouds
bulging with expanding obliteration. Goodbye, darling.
�Damn!� said General Leftwell, biting into his cigar. He slapped his
meaty hand on top of his large bald head and laughed. �Wait�ll those
sausage-eating Gartlant sons of bitches get a bite of that one!�
�A quarter-megaton impact at minimum,� said Pierce. �Hardly at uranium
levels. Still, progress, I suppose.�
Happily envisioning fields full of charred Gartlanters, Leftwell blew a
large triumphant puff of smoke past of his thick lips. Like Pierce he
was sixty years of age, but unlike Pierce (who was slim and tall and
ethereal, like an idealized priest and martyr), Leftwell was a beach ball
of fat merry corruptions.
�Dr. Pierce?� said Tracy, his new marionette assistant. �We�ve got some
unexpected problems with incoming data on the subjects.�
Pierce�s eyes were very blue and rather tragic: he cocked them at the
marionette with mild irritation. They�d fitted �her� into a
military-looking uniform of sorts, but with a ridiculously short skirt
halfway up �her� bottom and an overly made-up face. �She� smiled at
Pierce, hesitantly. He restrained a mild disgust, and looked out again
at the expanding purple clouds. �Given conditions outside, I should
think you very well might have trouble picking transmissions up,� said
Pierce. General Leftwell laughed. Pierce was not amused. Pierce never
liked discussing �unexpected problems� in front of government people.
They were all morons, of course � military men, Congressmen, the
President. All cretins. Still. funding had a way of drying up unless
you handled them carefully.
�It�s the subjects. The recorders broke off a couple of seconds before
detonation.�
�Before?�
�That�s right, sir.�
�That�s not really a problem, is it, Tracy? We should still be able to
get any relevant data from the subjects� interior recorders,� said
Pierce. �What�s left of them.�
�I know, sir. It�s just � funny. All three of them going offline like
that at once. One failure, maybe. But three -- .�
Leftwell suddenly got interested. �You talking about tampering of some
kind, honey? Sabotage?�
�Don�t let�s get carried away, General,� said Pierce. �That aspect of
this test was merely an afterthought, after all. No government would
risk an incident by sending its people into a plasma bomb test area for
data on three ground force experimentals slated for termination.�
�Not Gartlant or Petersburg, maybe. But those damned leftover Rebels are
capable of anything.�
�Take a look out there, General. Anyone out there won�t be reporting
back.�
Leftwell looked. And smiled. Still�
�I didn�t get to be where I am by not worrying about glitches in
security, Pierce. Got a chopper available?�
�It�s a little early to send one out, General,� said Tracy, before Pierce
could reply. �The instruments could be affected by plasma radiation.�
Pierce's knuckles whitened as his fingers shut tightly on the head on his
cane. I do believe I�m going to have to have some words with this
over-eager young �lady�, thought Pierce.
�Send one out immediately. My authorization, � said Pierce.
�But sir -- .�
�Do it!� said Pierce and Leftwell simultaneously. Tracy�s eyes popped,
and, looking ready to wet her military shorts, �she� whimpered and
bounced off to give the order at once. Pierce�s disgust congealed to the
positively ice-like. Leftwell laughed and took a pull on his Mexicali
cigar. Pierce looked out at the clouds of plasma, now beginning to
dissipate at the edges into snarling claws of fog. He thought of his
previous assistant, Gel, and of Gel�s shoulders and arms and legs and
back. And smile.
Reports on conditions at expanding seven-hundred-foot circumferences from
ground zero began to come in. Total obliteration. Total obliteration.
Total obliteration. Total obliteration. He thought of a line from the
Bhagavag-Gita: �I am become Death, shatterer of worlds,� and he thought
of his hands, running along Gel�s throat, and of Gel�s mouth.
3.
Am I dead? thought Billy. The Reverend Nimrod Pell had been right.
Death wasn�t bad. Not at all. His eyes were closed, and yet he felt
warm � more, he felt enveloped in a kind of shining light. He lifted his
hand and it brushed against something warm and soft and he squeezed it
and he felt very good.
A voice went, �Mmmmm�.�
He half-opened his eyes. He looked into the shining face of the most
beautiful woman in existence. It must be the Virgin Mary herself, he
concluded. She was lying on top of him, her white hair braided on the
right side of her hand, and her white wings absolutely bursting with
sparkling light, like a Christmas tree. He was so moved he squeezed
whatever he�d been squeezing again. She went, ��mmMMmmm�� He realized it
was her breast. His eyes popped open and he jerked up like a shot and
smacked his head on her head as he did. Her head was very hard.
She opened her eyes. They were as blue as a brook. They looked at him.
They melted with adoration. Her lower lip trembled. She sniffled. Her
eyes grew huge and starry and tears appeared in them, and she said, �You
are�SO� CU-UTE!� and grabbed his face and kissed him so hard he thought
her lips would force his teeth out of his ears. �SO Cute!� Smack.
�Cute!� Smack. �Cute cute cute!� Smack smack smack.
She slithered a hand into his pants.
Billy�s scream jumped out of his mouth so fast, he nearly jumped out
along with it.
The ruckus shifted a dark heavy something on top of the white-haired
girl�s wings. She twisted her arm back around and gave it a casual
shove. It soared forty feet out and into the air and crashed nearby with
a loud clunk and a burst of dust. Billy could see sunlight now around
the winged girl on top of him, and he said, with awe, �Sunlight. Real
sunlight!� The girl stopped kissing him, said, �Sun-light?�, and sat up
on him. She was head and shoulders out of the hole now and looked up and
looked left and looked right and said, � � wow -- .� She stood up. She
looked at a tree way off in the distance and pointed at it. �Wow.� She
looked at a desert sprig growing out of the sand and pointed at it.
�Wow!� Then a bird flew overhead. �WOW!� She stood up and ran a few
steps to get a closer look at it as it winged away.
Billy crawled up out of the hole. Burning hot thick air blanketed him
like an excremental lava. He felt like a pie in an baker�s oven. But �
but he wasn�t dead. He wasn�t dead after all. Beat all to hell and
close to it, but not dead! He looked at the white-haired girl with her
off-center pony tail bobbing, running around staring at bugs and
scorpions and rocks and everything in the world and then clapping and
hopping up and down. She couldn�t be the Holy Virgin, he decided,
forgetting about the heat: the Holy Virgin wasn�t that goofy.
Forty feet away an arm and two long legs stretched out from a pile of
shattered hexagonal-patterned metal wing. Holding his bleeding knee with
one hand, Billy got over to her as best he could. It was a girl.
Another girl! One set of her wings was almost completely burned away. A
charred-black skeletal-like claw extended out from her right shoulder
blade, but over her left a punctured and darkly streaked but complete
wing still glowed and glistened. Her long wild almost metallic
blue-black hair was a tangled slightly smoking mess; her face, eyes shut,
was contorted in pain. She lay there going �Ggnnnnggg�� through grinding
teeth, and then all at once she pushed herself up sharply on one hand.
Billy took her arm to help. She slapped it away viciously and
automatically.
�Keep your stinking hand off me or I�ll bite it off!� she barked, and,
burning with hatred, looked up at Billy. And then froze � staring,
stunned, exalted, horrified. Billy put his fingers on his face � what
was wrong with it, what was she looking at? Had his nose got blown off
or something?
The blue-black-haired girl�s face all at once sank into grief, tears,
absolute hopelessness. She bowed her head down to the ground and cursed
with some of the foulest language Billy�d ever heard. �Not again,� she
said, shaking her head, voice choked. She closed her hand over a rock
under her hand, crushing it to splinters, and sobbed. �Not again...not
again��
�Ma�am?� said Billy.
�Look at this!� said the white-haired girl, sticking a big rust-colored
cockroach in front of Billy�s nose.
He jumped back and slipped and fell.
�It wriggles!�
A scorched smell made Billy�s hand reach automatically up toward his
nose. What now? He turned his head.
What was left of Lulu lay in a bloody lump a hundred feet West.
�Lulu!�
He scrambled to his feet and ran towards her, holding his knee and got
maybe twenty feet before falling into the dust with the pain. Dust stung
his brown eyes. He dragged himself forward and � out of nowhere � the
white-haired girl dropped straight in front of him from somewhere up
above his head. She was tall and slim and perfectly poised and nuts.
She waggled her thumb in the direction of Lulu. �You want to go to that
� smelly thing, right?� she said.
�Yeah,� he said.
She scooped him up in her arms. She looked at the remains of Lulu, and
sniffed. She smiled broadly. �It really stinks!� She jumped into the
air sixty feet. Billy screamed. She landed thirty feet from Lulu�s
carcass and jumped again and landed exactly beside it. She set Billy
down and held her hands behind her and tilted her head and tilted her
head and gave him a huge merry smile that made her eyes shut and crinkle.
Billy stepped away from her, his heart still hammering, and his foot
nearly slipped in something wet. He turned and looked into a charred
puddle of intestines that had slid out of Lulu�s belly once the blast
burned all the skin off of the part of Lulu that had faced it.
�Lulu��
Her legs had all been torn off, her bones all broken, her fur all
charred. Smoke curled up from patches of her that were still on fire.
Not that she could feel it anymore. Billy bent down to the part of her
that had probably been her skull and struggled not to break into tears.
The white-haired girl looked at a patch of brilliant red blood gleaming
wetly over a stub of exposed bone and pointed and said, �Pretty!�
In the distance the angel with blue-black hair stood erect and, with a
horrid sharp cry, contorted her body. Her one wing flared, shuddered,
and then folded itself compactly and mathematically and slid underneath
an area of shoulder blade that popped out like a vent, and shut after it.
Billy sank down next to Lulu, and sat on his heels, his hands in his lap.
His hair hung down over his eyes. The white-haired girl leaned her face
almost up to his and reached out a finger and picked up a tear that had
curved under his eye. She looked at it, quite amazed, and then she
licked it. �Salty!�
He looked away. And saw the remnants of the third angel. He stood up
and limped straight-legged over to her. Or rather to what was left of
her. She was virtually fused to the post, which had broken off behind
her in the blast. Both her wings had been torn off and totally
destroyed: blackened stumps were all that were left of them, and of her
hands and feet and face. She was like the charcoal remainders of a
mannequin, with spiders for hands and radio parts and some armature-like
pipes of bone and wire sticking out where leg and arm joints should have
been. He thought of the wonderful look in her face he had seen before
everything exploded. Her smile. She had been � aware; compassionate,
humane. For no reason he could understand that face had touched him
deeply. Now? There was just an intense sickening smell of burning metal
and plastic, and Billy did not want to vomit but he turned his head and
did.
The white-haired girl walked over and looked at the smouldering wiring of
the figure on the ground with the same fascination with which she looked
at everything.
�We got to go,� said the girl with blue-black hair, suddenly there,
standing behind him.
Billy turned his head and looked at her.
�You can�t stay here,� she said. �There�s radiation.� She looked up at
the sky. �We can�t either.�
Billy looked at the charred wired torso laying twisted in front of him.
�I thought you were angels.�
�What are �angels�?�
�Messengers of God.�
�Who?� said the white-haired girl. Billy, dumbfounded, didn't reply, so
she bent over to the head of the fallen figure and reached out a hand to
touch the charred eyeless face. She knelt and took it in her hands, and
a perplexed look came over her face. She looked at the other girl, who
looked at Billy and said, �We got to go. Now.�
Billy stood up and winced at the pain in his knee. �We ain�t going
nowhere. Not till we give my Lulu and this � this person here, a proper
burial.� He looked around for a flat rock, to begin digging. His eyes
glistened. �And � and say some appropriate words.� The girl with
blue-black hair watched him. The girl with white hair followed, merrily
picking up flat rocks too.
Then from the horizon loomed a distant, repeating, whipping sound: thwup
thwup thwup thwup thwup. Billy looked out and there, flying low in the
sky, he saw � a helicopter. A helicopter! Just like in the picture
books!
�Get down!� shouted the dark girl, and plunged her hand into Lulu�s
carcass. She grabbed the base of the spine from inside and lifted the
entire remains with one hand and spun the mass over her head. Bursts of
guts and bloody slime sprayed the ground with whip-like thrups, and she
hurled the mass into the air straight at the helicopter. It struck it
dead center, with a wet clang, the bones and nubs of spine catching in
the propellers. They buckled apart, and the interior cockpit exploded
into bright bursting massive black-and-red roses. It veered into the
prairie at a quick askew angle and hit the ground and exploded again.
Billy turned from staring at it to staring at the girl responsible for
it.
�Are you crazy?� he shouted. �There were people in there!�
�So what?�
�You killed them! You -- who are you to � you can�t -- .�
She slapped him.
�Get control of yourself,� she growled in her deep voice. �We�ve got to
go. Now. Understand?�
Billy just looked at her. She swore. She raised her hand again.
The girl with white hair caught her by the wrist. �Don�t do that,� she
said. �Never. Ever! If you do, I�ll have to pull your fingers and arms
off so you can�t. You�ll go �Ouch!�� She smiled a merry crinkly smile
that closed her eyes.
The dark-haired girl�s face shook, trembled with black building fury, and
with a scream she slashed down the other hand to shatter the white-haired
girl�s head to flying bits. The white-haired girl, smiling, caught that
one too, easily, though the impact drove her feet down into the rocky
ground a few inches. Whirring noises inside both waxed and rose to a
siren-like peak. The girl with the wild dark hair screamed with
murderous rage.
�Stop it,� said Billy. �Stop it. Stop! All right, we�ll go! We�re
going right now! Just both of you stop. Now!�
The white-haired girl twisted instantaneously and the dark-haired one
lost her balance and fell to the ground.
�OK, Billy dear,� said the girl with the white hair, smiling happily.
�You�re the boss!�
The dark-haired one swerved to leap back, but Billy put himself in front
of the other girl. �We�ve got to go? Isn�t that what you said? We
don�t have time.�
�I�m going to tear off your face and eat it,� she said to the
white-haired girl.
�You�re too slow!� She laughed and stuck out her tongue. �Too slow!
Too slow!�
�Both of you be quiet!�
�Yes, boss!� said the white-haired girl. She grinned.
The other one growled like a rabid dog, but, to his surprise, did exactly
as Billy said.
�OK. Then � let�s go.� He nodded. He stopped nodding and looked at the
dark-haired girl, on her knees, tensed and ready to pounce. �Go where?�
�Anywhere. Anywhere away from here.� She stood up, still staring at the
other. �How�d you get here? What direction?�
�I came north-northwest.�
�Want to go back?�
�I wish I�d never come.�
�Is that a �yes�?� she hissed.
�Yes.�
The blue-haired girl looked at the sky and the horizon. Calculation
indicators superimposed themselves on her span of vision. She pointed.
�That way.� She reached out at Billy.
The white-haired girl came between them instantaneously. �I�ve got him.�
She turned and held her arms out to Billy and scooped him up like a baby.
Then she kissed him on the nose. Twice. �I love you!� she said. She
turned to the other girl. �You first.�
The girl with the wild blue-black hair gave a surly turn with her
shoulders south south-east and half-crouched and sprang into a run �
faster than anything Billy had seen in his life. She moved faster than
a hawk! Billy looked up into the white-haired girl�s with open-jawed
astonishment. �Dear me! We haven�t been properly introduced, have we?�
she said. �I am Fall. How do you do? What is your name?�
�Billy.�
�How do you do, Billy? It�s very nice to meet you. Do you come here
often? Pleasant day, isn�t it?� She kissed him on the nose again. And
then on the lips. �Golly, you�re pretty!� she said, melting with
sincerity. She tilted her head and smiled her crinkly smile. Then her
shoulders veered the exact same way the other girl�s shoulders veered and
the prairie became a blur as two hundred mile an hour winds whipped at
Billy�s screaming face and ragged denim.
4.
Pierce washed his face with cold water in his apartment.
�We�ve lost contact with the helicopter, Doctor Pierce,� called Tracy,
his marionette, from the other room.
Pierce left the men�s room and walked over to his study, nodding, and not
looking at �her�. She was tall, fifteen or so, with wild blond hair and
bright red lipstick and black mascara and long eyelashes � the usual
heavy make-up and the usual long white arms and legs. During the test
she was dressed in an almost military tunic. Now it was night;
underneath the long military raincoat Tracy had gotten into her
after-hours �special services� gear -- namely, a sparkling Vegas Showgirl
corset and red high heels and built-up turreted chest. Which was
necessary. Despite the spectacular surface, Tracy was as flat-chested as
a boy. Which was not surprising. She was a boy � one of the New Texan
government�s unofficial perks for movers of such high-priority projects
as Doctor Pierce�s: actual flesh, as opposed to synthetic. Pierce
disliked the gift, and he disliked Tracy, just as he disliked falsity
generally. He preferred real marionettes. He admired them � their
dependability, their logic, their usual freedom from attachment and
emotion. Qualities he aspired to himself.
�Could radiation be interfering?�
�Current levels wouldn�t interfere with transmission, sir.�
Interesting. He wondered if that buffoon Leftwell was right � maybe the
Rebels did send someone out. But why take such a risk? For what?
Three SS experimental models obviously slated at the last-minute for
disposal? Their memories wouldn�t contain technical blueprints or
schematics. One barely had any memories at all. Pierce had given the
order to include the three experimentals as an additional test six hours
before ground impact. The Rebels couldn�t have gotten their people out
there that rapidly. He frowned. He sat down at the desk at his study
and got out his charts and his pencil and began to write calculations and
formulae relevant to today�s tests. He tried not to worry, not to think.
But � he did. There couldn�t be more than one chance in a thousand that
the plan � the plan -- could be endangered because of this � this trivial
little glitch. But�there was that one chance. Wasn�t there? Wasn�t
there? He felt a deep sudden stab of emotion which he could neither
define nor tolerate.
�Doctor?� said Tracy.
�Send out a recovery team. Have them remain in constant contact. I want
the remains of the experimental test subjects located, photographed, and
then sent to Decontamination immediately for positive identification.
Have them notify me the moment they�re located. -- That�s all.�
�Yes, sir.� Tracy walked through the door, hesitated, and turned. �Sir
-- would you -- like me to come back later on tonight?�
�No.�
�Isn�t there anything at all I can do for you, Doctor?�
�No.�
�I -- I�m here to do whatever you want.�
�Just get out.�
Pierce leaned over and pushed the door shut in Tracy�s face.
Tracy looked at the closed door through overly made-up eyes, and walked
away. Spangled, carefully sewn pink feathers rustled over his chest and
shoulders and behind, glittering coldly in the overhead complex lights.
Pierce drew a line through one of his calculations and paused and
thought: My God -- what if she � no; no it wasn't possible; it wasn't
possible. His fist tightened hard around the pencil in his hand. I have
loosed the fateful lightning, he whispered in his mind. Nothing would
stop it now, nothing. Nothing! The pencil snapped in his hand.
He looked at his palm, and at the merging drop of blood there, like a
stigmata.