Terrible Swift Sword
by
David Pascal
Part Two: 'Broken' (chapters 10-12)
(Note: Part Two is long, so I�m posting it on the FFML day by day in
smaller sections. Interested readers who would like to read or download
the whole of Part Two can find it at the SMJ Fanfiction Page at
http://www.geocities.com/~davidpascal/smj and get the whole piece there
� and really ought to, since it�s much more readably formatted.
Technically, none of the characters appearing in the original Saber
Marionette J series appear in TSS, though a few are referred to. Nor
(offhand) do I think there are any spoilers.
Saber Marionette J is owned and copyrighted by AnimeVillage.com * Satoru
Akahori * Hiroshi Negishi * Tsukasa Kotobuki * Kadokawa Shoten * Bandai
Visual * Sotsu Agency * TV Tokyo.)
Comments should be directed to: davidpascal@juno.com.)
10
After Billy closed the livery door, Belt looked at it a moment. Simply
looked at it. Then she walked over and reached out and locked the door.
As instructed. She looked at the lock for a moment, then swung her hand
into the nearest chevy�s head, which exploded immediately. It flopped
to its knees and keeled over, and she stepped over it, pacing, cursing
loudly, harshly, and viciously, smashing her hand into and through
anything luckless enough to be within punching distance. She stalked
around and cursed God, man, Fate, the world, Jacksonville, the human race
in general and Billy Truman in particular. She completely ignored Fall,
as well as the rest of the chevies, who whinnied and shied away instantly
in horror whenever she came within ten feet of them.
Fall listened to her rant for a few minutes, then got up. She looked at
the little human lying where Belt had left him. She walked over to him
and knelt down and looked at him. She had never seen a little human like
that before. She thought humans were born grown-up, like marionettes.
She touched his little fingers with her big finger. As Belt raged on
about ripping someone or other�s guts out with her teeth, Fall picked up
Ephraim Levi and, cradling him, took him back of the buckboard and laid
him next to McCabe. McCabe�s bleeding leg had stopped bleeding, she
noticed. He was still breathing, though, so he was alive � right? She
accessed her database. Yes � breathing meant alive. She reached over
and pulled the blanket covering Gel�s body over to keep the boy warm.
�Belt!� she cried.
�And what the hell do you want?�
�Look!�
Belt turned. She walked over to the buckboard where Fall was pointing,
and saw � a young naked girl with short black hair, lying there sleeping.
The girl seemed to be fourteen years old, even younger than Fall, and
was phenomenally, symmetrically beautiful -- flawless, like a human gem.
She was so striking that that it took a two point six seconds for Fall to
deduce something. �It�s Gel,� said Fall.
Belt grinned, and leapt up onto the buckboard, sinking on her knees and
straddling the naked Gel. She pulled her up in a kind of hug. She
probed Gel�s back, pushing various spots on her back with her fingers.
�Come on, come on, come on,� she whispered.
�What are you doing?� said Fall.
�It�s suppertime,� she said, literally beginning to drool.
There was a click and a snap and five low evenly spaced beeps and Gel�s
right shoulder and upper bicep unit popped open like a gull�s wing,
slicing the soft pink perfectly human-appearing skin, and revealing a
tightly woven swatch of wiring and gadgetry. Belt opened her own mouth
and stuck her fingers inside and wrenched hard. Belt�s tongue, pink and
moist, came out of her head. The tongue�s root was attached to a surreal
silver snake of a tube about three feet long. Belt reached down and
snapped the pink stub end of her tongue off the gleaming silver cable,
then examined the end. It was a a six-mini-prong interface plug, and
Belt pulled Gel closer and tried to insert it somewhere inside the opened
shoulder. It didn�t seem to want to go, and Belt growled, frustrated.
Suddenly there was a deep hum and all three feet of cable slid deeply
into Gel, bringing Belt�s face into direct contact with Gel�s shoulder,
like a vampire drinking. Gel�s arms hung down limply as Belt hugged Gel
closer, very hard, and began to rock and groan. Suddenly her eyes popped
open, astonished, and jagged sprays of purple electricity burst out
intermittently around the connecting cable with loud crackling spits.
Belt screamed each time. But she didn�t let go. If anything she pressed
Gel close even harder than before , dragging her nails down Gel�s back,
and groaning and shuddering.
�Belt?� said Fall. �Um -- is that fun or something?�
Belt didn�t respond for two more minutes, at which point she let go of
Gel completely, who fell back, hanging from the metallic cable coming out
of Belt�s mouth. Belt closed her eyes and seemed to suck on it for
another minute. Then she reached a shaky hand out and pressed something
inside Gel�s shoulder. The cable snapped away. Gel fell back and her
shoulder closed, its pale gold flesh sealing quietly and flawlessly.
Belt sat opposite, half-slumped, panting and twitching, her knees draped
over Gel�s pelvis, the long cable hanging loosely from her mouth, and one
flat tear running down her cheek. She looked around and saw her tongue
and reached over and re-attached it to the end of the cable hanging out
of her mouth. She tossed back her head and sucked the entire thing back
down into her throat in a flash, like a frog tongue snapping back a
dragonfly.
�Or something,� she said, looking down at Gel.
Belt leaned over. She put her hand on Gel�s face for a moment, and then
put out her other hand and placed it on Gel�s chest. �Unbelievable,� she
said. �Unbelievable! What the hell is going on?� She turned her
exhausted-looking face to Fall. �This model�s got more power than
anything I�ve ever seen in my life. She could charge me up from zero a
hundred times over. What�s it for? And how can she regenerate like
this? Her feet were nothing but stumps. Metal doesn�t grow back. It
doesn�t grow, period. She -- .�
Belt�s face darkened. �You know � we really could have gotten away this
time. Back-up like this. We really could have made it.� She slashed
the back of her hand against the side of the buckboard. It exploded into
splinters, a few of which fluttered down onto Belt�s hair like crazy
snowflakes. �Except for that stupid son of a bitch, Billy��
Fall lowered her head. �Don�t talk that way about him, Belt��
�Don�t talk that way about him? Don�t talk that way about him? That
fucking lunatic�s going to get us all killed. Why the hell are we
sitting here? We ought to be heading like hell straight out for
unexplored territory. Instead we�re sitting on our asses waiting for the
New Texas military to turn up and blow us away. All so he can talk to
some Reverend about Jesus! Who the hell is Jesus? I hope this �Jesus�
of his packs a damned nuke --.�
�Billy�Billy �s scared. I understand��
�You �understand�?�
�He�s afraid� and� well, I ��
�I understand that he�s going to kill us all! That�s what I fucking
understand!�
Belt stared down at Gel, and then looking left she noticed McCabe. She
looked at him for a moment, and then grinned. She looked around. She
spotted a chevy lapping up water in a tin bucket. �Get me that,� she
said to Fall, and pointed.
Fall walked over to the bucket forlornly and picked it up and handed it
gently to Belt, who grabbed it and splashed the contents into McCabe�s
face
Belt rose up and stepped astride McCabe�s hips and squatted down and
grabbed his ears and pulled his sputtering face up till it was nose to
nose with hers. The charge was beginning to flow through her now; her
skin seemed flushed, her eyes sparkled. She grinned.
�Hi, monkey,� she said. �It�s party time.�
11
Forty years earlier, when William Ahab Pierce was twenty-one years old,
he stood in the Badlands desert in front of row of twelve telephone poles
spaced ten feet apart stretching out in front of him. Six feet behind
the last pole was a wall of two-inch think armor plate held up from
behind by two iron rods stuck into the ground at a forty-five degree
angle. Pierce needed glasses by then. He removed them and rubbed them
with an immaculate white handkerchief and put them back on. He judged
the angle and stepped aside. �Stopwatch ready?� he said.
The government attache, holding a stopwatch, grunted.
Gel stood directly in front of the poles in the black skin-tight rubber
equivalent of a one-piece swim suit. Her hair was short, black, cropped.
The bones and muscles and sinews on her body were not large, exactly,
but almost exaggeratedly defined, like an oiled Olympic athlete. She
wore long shiny black rubber gloves like evening gloves and black
military jackboots. Her arms were at her sides, her face was
expressionless, her body motionless.
�Begin,� he said.
In a tenth of a second the flat sword of her hand chopped through the
first pole like a diagonal guillotine. By three-tenths of the same
second her other arm had slashed into through the second pole. In
seven-tenths the first arm had sliced the third pole through like a
matchstick. It took three seconds for Gel to get through all ten poles,
by which time the first had yet to hit the ground. When it did, it
failed to drown out the singing clang of the armor plate as Gel jumped,
twisted, and struck both feet into it, cracking through it like a
baseball through glass. She hit the ground, tumbled, and instantly stood
up, resuming her previous immobile standing position. Her upper biceps
cracked open, like a dragonfly�s wings, and sprays of steam and a deep
loud hum emanated from them. A trace of white dust from the shattered
concrete began to settle in grey streaks onto her hair.
The attache stared at her, his mouth open.
�The point of the test is lost if you fail to stop the watch after it�s
over,� noted Pierce with irritation.
The attache looked at the watch. He began to click it, but then just
looked at Pierce. �Who cares what the time is! My God, sir, don�t you
realize what you�ve accomplished?�
Pierce ignored him. He nodded to Gel. She cartwheeled over to him, like
a gymnast, to the government observer�s astonishment. She stopped
between the two of them, looking at neither. �Extraordinary, sir!� said
the observer. He reached out a hand toward her. �Most extraord -- .�
�Don�t touch her!� shouted Pierce.
�I beg your pardo -- .�
�Keep your hands off her! She�s an �experimental�, you stupid son of a
bitch! Don�t you know what that means? She could tear you down the
middle like a sheet of paper. You goddamned brainless military types �
act first, think later. Just keep away from her! Got that?�
Gritting his teeth, the attache said, �There�s no need to -- .�
Pierce stalked past him, shoving him out of the way, and strode up to a
table that had been set up outside to view the demonstration. He slammed
his palms down on the top and glared into the eyes of the man on the
other side and said, �Funding. Give me the funding and I can produce a
dozen models like her. A hundred -- an army that can decimate any human
army in existence. That�s what you�re after, isn�t it?�
The man on the other side slowly withdrew a Meerschaum pipe from between
his rather small lips, and held it in an immaculately white-gloved hand.
He was extremely fat, all the fat in question wedged cleanly and with
sartorial wizardry into the splendid dark blue uniform, complete with
braided gold epaulets, of a commanding General of the Army of New Texas.
He tapped the bowl of his pipe on the table.
�I never could keep these things lit out here in the Badlands,� he said
to the young man behind him.
�The arid nature of these distant lands, no doubt, sir,� replied the
young Lieutenant.
�God!� cursed Pierce. �Is everybody here incapable of getting to the
point? -- Gel,� he cried, over his shoulder.
Gel turned. She walked directly toward Pierce with an unhurried pace
that was both mathematical and cougar-like. When she got within twenty
feet of the General, Lieutenant Josiah Pericles Royce immediately placed
his white-gloved hand on his saber. Pierce�s glance saw it; he laughed
out loud with contempt, and raised his hand. Gel stopped.
�You think your toy sword can repel my marionette, �Lieutenant�?� said
Pierce. �You�re welcome to try!�
�I have no desire to raise my sword against the image of any lady, sir,�
said Lieutenant Royce.
�Really? My, what gentlemen you Texans are,� said Pierce, with pure
ferocity.
He positioned himself about six feet in front of Royce, and stood midway
between the Lieutenant and Gel.
�Perhaps you�d care to �raise your sword� against me then?� said Pierce.
�It is a soldier�s duty to protect unarmed civilians, not hurt them.
Doctor.�
�Your sword is a joke. Like you are. Like your entire military soon
will be. Come on. We�re here to run tests, aren�t we? Try it. Try to
cut me down. Skip the crap about �duty� and �gallantry� and just try
it.�
�I see no reason to put that to the test, sir.�
Royce slid his sword back into the scabbard. But General Beaureguard
behind him said, �Doctor Pierce is quite right, Lieutenant. We are
indeed here to witness tests. Try to cut him down, Lieutenant.�
�Sir -- !�
�I don�t believe Doctor Pierce is indulging in a death wish. Are you,
Doctor? I also don�t believe this demonstration is going to injure my
Lieutenant, either � correct?�
Pierce snorted. �Nothing him or anyone like him could do even put a
scratch on me. As for me,� Pierce smiled, �I wouldn�t harm a hair on
Baby�s head.�
�Cut him down, Lieutenant,� said the General.
Royce nodded. �Yes sir,� he said. He frowned, and looked toward Pierce.
Royce was the very image of the heroic young soldier. Spotless in dress
uniform, tall and slim and blond, twenty-one, just like Pierce, with a
small pony tail, a blond goatee, and the eyes of an falcon. He not only
looked the part, he was the part: a superb swordsman, one of Texas�
finest, to whom striking down an unarmed man was the acme of cowardice;
the thought of it even by accident grieved him. On the other hand, to
disobey one�s General was equally unthinkable. Royce looked at Pierce�s
cold smile. Clearly, it was all a sort of trap. But � all the
alternatives to stepping into it were dishonorable. And as they say in
Japoness: one must always do one�s best. Royce set his jaw, and pulled
the sword from his scabbard, drawing small circles beside his boot with
it, limbering up his wrist, calculating the most death-dealing stroke.
He shouted and brought his terrible sword down in a lightning arc full
strength at Pierce�s face.
It stopped cold, singing like a tuning fork against Gel�s black-clad
forearm.
She�d flipped forward over Ahab instantly and landed directly in front of
him, covering him completely. Royce looked into her lovely
expressionless eyes. He pulled the blade away. It snapped. The silver
length tottered and fell away broken into the desert dust between Gel�s
and Lieutenant Royce�s. Barely four inches of shining steel remained
past the hilt.
�Swords and swashbucklers,� said Pierce with contempt. �What a joke.�
Pierce walked past Royce, ignoring him, and walked up to the General. He
nodded to Gel. She followed and stood beside and somewhat behind Pierce.
�Well, General? Don�t you think it�s time the government had
something�swifter than swords?� said Pierce.
The General put the stem of the pipe back in his mouth and examined her.
Most impressive, he thought. Most impressive indeed. This was like no
marionette he had ever seen. She radiated inhuman power and inhuman
stillness. Her very body was extraordinary � small, a fourteen-year-old
girl�s, yet it had the carved vivid muscular outlines of an professional
boxer. Not the imitation of a human: the perfection of one. Pierce had
lavished not just science on her but art. The now short black hair
lilted hauntingly like blades on inky grass in the desert breeze. And
the eyes. They were not only huge, but Pierce had for some reason
expanded the irises and pupils so much that the whites could barely be
seen. They were deep onyx pools, darknesses one could drown in, and
worse of all they seemed to � look back at you. Then � to Beaureguard�s
horror -- she smiled. Beauregard rubbed his eyes, and when he glanced
again the smile was gone. �Yes, Pierce had crossed a line with this
one. The General could not define that line. But he had to acknowledge
it. �Extraordinary indeed,� he said.
Pierce snorted. �The only �extraordinary� thing is how much I�ve managed
to accomplish with the pathetic amounts you paper-pushers in Washington
target for research. Fine, wonderful, I�ve built you a effective way to
chop down trees. So what. You think the Garts will line up and stand
still for us? For complex, shifting situations involving mass combat, I
simply have to do more research into artificial intelligence. Research
and development! Without it we�ll fall behind.�
General Beaureguard nodded. Pierce was correct. Unfortunately.
Placing his hands on the extra-wide director�s chair set up especially
for his visit, General Beaureguard rose to his feet. �I have a film I
think you�d be interested in seeing, Doctor Pierce,� he said. �Do come
with us, if you would. You too, Lieutenant.�
Pierce looked around at the soldiers. �Stay here,� he said to Gel. He
turned to go, then stopped and turned and spoke to her again. �Don�t let
them touch you.�
Beauregard, Royce, and Pierce walked some thirty feet back into the
silver rectangle of one of six ground ramp openings that led down into
the main complex of what had come to be known as the Enclosure. It had
originally been a research laboratory converted from two adjoining
one-story buildings that had been a private military-bullet manufacturing
factory � until the day Ahab Pierce had arrived at age seventeen, with
his doctorates in physics, engineering, computer science, and information
theory. The barbed wire went up the same day, along with the armed
guards, the surveillance cameras, the hidden microphones. All for
security reasons, it was said, to keep spies and saboteurs out. Its main
purpose of course was to close Ahab Pierce in, and keep him under
round-the-clock observation. And so the term �Enclosure� came about.
Pierce preferred his own description -- �my cage�.
There were six one-story buildings up now. A barracks for guards and
military personnel, sleeping quarters for fellow scientists and
researchers, one dedicated to assault weapons and armaments research, one
building for aerodynamics and rocketry, one for communications and
surveillance technology, and the experimental robotics section. �All
incredibly crude and medieval,� according to Pierce�s relentless
complaints to New Washington.
Beneath it all was a four-room bomb underground shelter which Pierce had
converted into his own personal quarters. It was spartan and bizarre: a
small room of white walls and a few wooden chairs, with blackboards and
chalk instead of windows or paintings, where Pierce would pace and brood
and scrawl and erase and scrawl and erase mathematical formulae; next, a
large room with a desk, a chair, and four walls entirely covered with
shelves crammed with books and papers and a few of the bare handful of
computers not legally restricted to Washington; a room with four blank
walls and and several chairs where Pierce saw films, gave presentations
and lectures to research assistants, and granted audiences to visitors
from New Washington; and, strangest of all, a room for his �assistant�
and chief experimental project � Gel.
Gel�s room was meticulously Japanese, pure Heian period, with paper
walls, low-slung tables, floor cushions to sit on, a Go board, a closet
rich with exquisite silken kimonos, an artificial pond stocked with
silver fish, bonsai and cherry blossoms, and a koto on which assistants
passing outside in the corridor might hear Gel playing ancient melodies
of Japanese classical music � the theme from �Sailor Moon S� or
�Gekiganger 3�. In the center of the room was an exact small-scale
replica of something beside an temple in ancient Kyoto called Ryoan-ji --
a �Zen garden� made of stone and gravel, with carefully raked and
culivated radiating lines. Ahab had one day flatly refused to do any
work whatsoever till it was built for Gel according to his exact
ridiculous specifications, and he went on a hunger strike, fasting for 11
days till his request was granted. He invited no one there, ever, though
military personnel regularly investigated every inch when he was out.
Even the cleaning was done by squat box-like robots he�d devised.
Pierce strode past it now to the room beyond, the presentations room,
where Pierce met with visitors or lectured to lab assistants or watched
films. He entered and took the center front chair, sitting there
impatiently with his arms crossed. General Beaureguard and Lieutenant
Royce followed, the General wedging himself into place to the left of
Pierce with noticeable difficulty. At length the General turned his head
to the projector and said, �Run it�.
The room darkened.
A rectangle of light appeared on the wall. An unfocused blur was
followed by a series of black-and-white digitized stills of a forest
scene, each succeeding one another rapidly, like a series of rapid photos
striving to be a silent movie. The scene shown was oddly Gothic:
moonlight, a brook, brooding trees. Suddenly a animal appeared. It was
what Texans called a bonerunner � a dangerous skeletal animal that tasted
delicious broiled and that resembled a five-eared leopard, except that
it�s razor-like claws were in its palms, and in that it often stood on
its hind legs, like a man, when not running. When it ran, it was
lightning-like, capable of hitting a hundred miles an hour within
seconds. It ran now: the snapshots tracked its panicked flight.
�Now. Watch,� said the General.
A figure appeared to the far right of the screen. A blur. It stopped.
It was a marionette. She wore a German uniform and high black leather
riding boots. A military hat with a shining black brim sat on a head of
ripe brown, almost red, hair. A tight white blouse exaggerated the
breasts. The marionette swerved, and spotted the bonerunner. In a
combination of six exquisite leaps, mid-air twirls, and pounces, she was
on top of it her prey, catching it by the throat. She casually snapped
its head back to a ninety-degree angle. The startled creature coughed
sputum and died instantly. Watching closely, but not terribly impressed,
Pierce nodded. Then the camera zoomed in. It caught the marionette�s
face. It was laughing!
Pierce pitched forward instantly, his eyes boring into the screen. The
marionette expression shifted � she seemed to be regarding the creature
almost � philosophically. The laugh of triumph was now a look of �
respect? For a well-designed predator? And then � was that pity? The
marionette�s face turned toward the camera, and suddenly froze. One of
her irises widened, then contracted. She tossed the carcass aside and �
angrily! � hurtled toward the camera. In less than a second, she was
atop it. A picture of her approaching fist filled the screen. Then
blackness.
�Roll it back,� said the General. The film went into reverse till it
reached the expression of pity on the marionette�s features. �Freeze it
there. That�s fine. Lights?� The lights came on.
�That�s a marionette from Gartlant on a training exercise,� said
Beaureguard, replacing the stem of the pipe in his mouth. �I believe
it�s a prototype. I believe its name is Tiger. Or perhaps I should say
� her name.�
�I want all the data you have on her immediately,� said Pierce, staring
at the picture on the wall with rabid intensity.
�You�ve just seen it,� said the General.
�Are you joking? What kind of an intelligence service do you idiots --
.� He caught himself, with obvious difficulty. �Get more,� he said.
�We intend to,� said the General. �But first, Mister Pierce, I�d like
you to tell me something. Do you think your android could beat that one
in combat?�
�Combat?� said Pierce, transfixed by the expression on the marionette�s
face. �Who cares about -- .� But again, he caught himself. He caught
himself -- when you play with children, you have to play children�s
games. He said, �No, General. I do not. In terms of pure combat
strength and speed, I expect I could match or exceed that � marionette �
but, independent combat capability involves multiple decision-making,
adaptability, pattern recognition�unpredictability. Intelligence.
Emotional intelligence. The marionette on that screen could outdo any
Saber model we have, period. Our forces would be worthless.�
Lieutenant Royce watched Pierce�s features as he stared at the screen.
Pierce was not dismayed in the least. He was fascinated, exalted. Royce
turned his head and looked at the saddened marionette and the dead beast.
�She�s leagues beyond anything I�ve done,� said Pierce. Adding: �Yet.�
� �Yet�. Quite right. Which is why, on behalf of our illustrious
President, I�d like you to know officially that your request for funding
for a military research project into increased artificial intelligence
capabilities for saber marionette applications has been granted. We want
you to give us something equal to or better than -- that,� he said,
pointing at the picture on the wall, �as rapidly as possible. The
government believes that Gartlant�s technology and territorial ambitions
might very well be a threat to New Texas some day. We want to equal
their technology. And beat it. To that end, this research installation,
and your responsibilities, are going to be expanded greatly, starting at
once.�
�It�s about goddamn time,� muttered Pierce, still transfixed at the image
on the screen.
�You can log into the plans and allocations through your computer
terminal. Lieutenant Royce here will serve as intermediate liason, and
release the appropriate passwords to you for the more classified
material.�
Pierce glanced over at Royce, seeming to notice him as an individual for
the first time. Royce�s eyes looked at the marionette on the screen with
palpable regret and sadness. He noticed Pierce�s gaze, and looked at
Pierce too with the same expression. It was almost � pity.
�You have a comment to make? �Lieutenant�?� said Pierce, infuriated. He
had a way of making almost any term sound contemptuous.
�Speak freely, Lieutenant,� said General Beaureguard. �You two may be
working closely together the next few weeks. Plain spoken honesty is
best.�
�Your research must be quite fascinating, Doctor,� said Royce. �Yet, I
regret the necessity for it.�
�And why is that?�
�War should not be conducted by machines.�
�Wars have always been fought by machines. War and technologies march
hand in hand. Every weapon is an extension of the sword.�
�The sword is wielded by the hand, sir, and the hand by the heart. The
human heart isn�t only destructive. Indeed i�s only through the human
heart � through man -- that charity has ever manifested itself. You wish
to give these machines you�re making independence of thought and action.
I understand the military value of such innovation. But I fear that if
we place the decisive conduct of battle in the hands of creatures for
whom human life has no value or meaning, we may start a fire we shall
only with great difficulty put out.�
�You couldn�t be more wrong, Lieutenant,� said Pierce. �Man is the whole
problem. It isn�t that the antimatter bomb is merely a more
sophisticated form of the ape�s club. That�s not the problem. The
problem is that it�s still wielded by apes.�
�On the contrary, sir,� said Royce, politely. �Man differs from the ape
and the machine.�
�How so?�
�Man is capable of mercy and honor. Machines and apes are not.�
Ahab laughed. �Mercy and honor,� he said. � �Mercy� and �honor�.� His
brittle metallic laugh reverberated in the box-like room.
�Without mercy and honor, sir,� said Royce, �we are nothing.�
�We are nothing,� said Pierce. �That�s why we have to come up with
something better.�
Royce frowned. �I don�t understand what you mean, sir,� he said.
�Join the crowd,� said Pierce. He stood up. �I�m going to get Gel.
I�ll be in another part of my cage, �gentlemen�, logging on and making
arrangements. -- I�ll want those passwords in ten minutes, Royce.�
Pierce left.
General Beaureguard put down his pipe and reached into his tunic and
extracted a flask of rum. He took a good long slurp, and coughed. He
looked at the flask. �That young man is more abrasive than a ferret with
a hot poker up its hind quarters,� he observed. �I regret having to put
you in charge of him during this transition, Josiah.�
�Not at all, sir. Duty is duty. I�ll execute mine to the best of my
ability.�
�As always.� Beaureguard tapped the edge of the flask lightly on the
table. He stood it on the table and looked at it. �I pity you, Josiah.
I have the good fortune of being old. Thank God, I won�t live to see the
kind of world that arrogant young fool and those behind him are bringing
about. You will.�
Royce smiled. �Don�t underestimate your staying ability, General.�
Beaureguard snorted. �I have very little desire to stay,� he said,
looking at the walls around him and ruminating. He took a good solid
swig, and looked at Royce, spangled with gold and handsome, and smiled.
�You know why I selected you as my personal adjutant, Lieutenant?�
�No, sir.�
�Because you�re so damned old-fashioned! A thousand years behind the
times. �Mercy and honor�. My God. When the last time I heard that?
New Texas actually believed in those words like that once, didn�t it?
Liberty. Equality. Freedom.� He shook his head. �I look at my nation
these days and sometimes I don�t recognize it. All this scrambling for
money and guns and weapons. Arbitrary directives coming out of
Washington��
�Sir�� said Royce carefully.
�Oh, I don�t give a damn if they�re listening to us or not! My heart
can�t hold this fat carcass of mine up forever. I�ve lived as a free man
too long to change my ways now! Listening devices � God. Have we
reached the point
where a Texan can�t speak his own mind? I swear � we built these damned
machines to use against enemies and aggression. And now they�re being
used on our own people. No wonder they�re heading South and leaving the
country in droves. I�m half tempted to join them myself.�
�It hasn�t gotten that bad yet, sir,� said Royce. �I know our nation�s
not perfect. Maybe it�s even ill. But you don�t abandon someone you
love who�s ill. You stand by them and do all that you can to cure them
and make them well again.�
�Sometimes a cancer needs to be amputated,� said Beaureguard. He looked
up at Royce through slightly drunken eyes. �Do you know what I�m saying,
Royce?�
�Those jokes of yours. I think you�ve had too much of that Old Red Eye,
General!� said Royce, without the trace of a smile, purely for the sake
of any microphones.
General Beaureguard looked up at the screen, and the still shot of
Tiger�s plaintive face. �Damn Gartlant,� he said. �That�s what�s giving
those idiots in Washington the excuse to pass all these rules and laws
and �executive directives�. We�re behind. We�re behind militarily,
we�re behind technologically, and thanks to all these taxes and rules and
regulations, our population�s heading for the hills. We�re facing a
disaster.�
�Need we be so pessimistic, General?� said young Royce, smiling. �We do
have the great Ahab Pierce on our side.�
Beaureguard grunted. �He�s a conceited young popinjay. But � but he�s
also a genius. We wouldn�t even have had that photograph of the Gartlant
marionette without him. He worked out some mini-camera that could turn a
photo into electronic signals and send it to a nearby receiving point.
Otherwise we wouldn�t even know what little we do know about Gartlant�s
saber marionette capabilities. You know, Royce, the last border skirmish
we had with the Romanans, our men fought with flintlocks and stones. Now
in eight years Pierce has come up with thirty-seven military-related
technological patents. He�s going to change the face of war. And
peace. He already has.�
�Weapons are no more nor less than the men who wield them,� said Royce.
�So long as such men hold true to Christian ideals, our nation will
survive. And flourish.�
�Royce the White Knight,� said Beaureguard, smiling but shaking his head.
You�re certainly the eternal optimist.�
�Not at all, General. I�m a realist. People want to live good lives,
not bad ones. How did that old Earth politician put it? �A shining city
on a hill�. That�s what people want. When enough people want
something, they work for it, and eventually they get it. It may be a
long and bumpy ride to get there, but � we�ll get there. Eventually.�
Beaureguard smiled. �Lieutenant, you�re even a bigger fool than Pierce.�
�Yes, sir,� said Royce. �Thank you, sir.�
�It wasn�t meant as a compliment.�
�I know, sir,� said Royce. He looked at the door through which Pierce
had left. �We shouldn�t be too harsh on Mr. Pierce. It�s a miserable
life, chained up inside here like a criminal, being under guard and
observation day after day. I can�t understand it. What crime has he
done?�
�That�s classified, Lieutenant,� said Beauregauard
Royce shook his head. �In his own way, he�s benefiting our nation, and
our nation is re-paying him with imprisonment and distrust. That�s a
shameful and � frankly, sir, a dishonorable -- error. Kick a dog enough
times, and sooner or later it runs away, or it bites back. And rightly
so.� Royce�s frown deepened. �I confess to you, General, I�m�rather
ashamed of this assignment.�
Beauregard tapped his fingers on the arm of his chair. He sighed, and
with some difficulty he pushed himself up. Royce was there at once,
taking him by the arm, and helping. Beaureguard acknowledged it with a
kindly smile. Beaureguard looked over at the still of the marionette for
the last time. Royce noticed, and looked as well. That expression on
her face. Pity�
�I�m with you, Josiah,� he said. �I have a bad feeling about this whole
thing.� He reached for his flask. �A bad feeling.�
12
When Billy closed the door of the livery stable behind him, he closed his
eyes also, and prayed. Not the Lord�s Prayer nor any of those he�d been
taught at the Home. He simply begged God, from the bottom of his heart,
please, please, let me wake up, make it all a dream, let it be a dream�.
And when he turned away, and looked into the streets of Jacksonville in
front of him, he thought for one wonderful heart-breaking moment that
that�s all that it had been, a dream, just a bad bad dream. He was home
now. Wasn�t he? This was his home. He�d walked up and down these
streets for the past eight years. He�d bought bread for the Home from
Sam Johnston the Baker there, and pork and fatback from Jeb Clayton�s,
and turned his face down when walking by marionettes with shameless
undergarments standing in the windows of the Doll House. He�d rassled
with the two Stewart boys who�d tried to get him to take Jesus� name in
vain in front of this very livery stable once. This very stable! He was
home! It had all been nothing but a bad -- .
Behind the door he heard a noise halfway between a scream and a growl,
and then the sound of impact, something splintering instantly and wetly,
and then Belt�s voice stream a torrent of passionate guttural obscenity.
No, he said to himself, walking instantly away from the door, walking
into the crowd, fast, no, I didn�t hear it. I didn�t hear it.
He walked across the store porches of Jacksonville and down the dusty
street. It hadn�t changed. How could he be different, when his whole
world was still the same? The rich folks� marionette ladies in their
Victorian finery, the drifters and the cowboys and the miners out for a
spree, the farmers bringing in livestock and grain, the schoolteachers on
the lookout for young slackers playing rookie or daring to chew genuine
tobacco in public. There was Zebediah Hopkins dragging a heavy sack of
grain into his Poppa Jonah Hopkins� emporium. �Howdy, Zeb!� called
Billy. �How you doin�?� But Zebediah Hopkins only looked up with a
puzzled expression and kept dragging the sack till he was inside, and
shut the door. Billy kept walking and he saw Ed Handy, the Barber man,
inside his window lazily flicking his razor on a long leather strap. He
knocked on the window and waved. But Ed only looked at him funny, and
nodded sort of reluctantly and returned to the mutton-chop sideburns of
his clientele.
Was something wrong with his clothes, was he dirty-looking or something?
He brushed his hand at his shirt and ran his fingers through his hair,
and � felt his hand against the neckerchief, and under the neckerchief,
something�sharp.
No! It�s not there! It -- I can�t be a --
He pulled his hand away instantly and then pressed it against his face,
steadying himself against a store post. And looking down he could see
dried brown stains of blood and specks of dust and plaster across his
pants and shirt, the brief scatterings of the remains of Red Hat still
clinging to his clothing.
He looked away and looked into the street, and there strolling across the
street were people he knew, people that knew him, and some of them even
looked suspiciously over at him standing there, but no one smiled or
waved or said, �Come on over, Billy,� or nothing. What was wrong with
them? What was wrong with everybody?
He began pushing his way through the people in front of him. His
crippled leg throbbed with pain, and his heart was beating hard, wildly;
and he thought, but how can my leg hurt if it�s -- how can my heart beat
if I ain�t got a � but he killed that thought too, like all the other
thoughts, extinguishing them one after the other like flames atop candles
till there was only blessed darkness. His feet started moving faster and
faster. The Home. He had to get to the Home. The Reverend, the boys.
It wasn�t far, not far, on the outskirts of town, only a ten-minute walk.
And Billy was running. Running.
The Church of Jesus Christ Home for the Poor and Distressed was a large
Edwardian-style house with room for thirty to forty boys on a small rise
covered with green grass. Behind it was a barn where they kept girl
chevies for milking, and webfoot chicken, and those blue-white things
that folks called sheep because they went �baaa� but that looked like
puzzled three-foot fuzzballs hopping around on short tripod hooves. It
all kept the boys fed and healthy, though, and it was all due to the
Reverend Pell. Nimrod Pell himself had raised every penny it took to get
it all of it bought or built, browbeating and shaming and cursing half
the rich folk in the County, and then going on to hammer in most of the
nails and boards personally. He didn�t live in it himself, though, but
in a small one-room attachment behind the Church proper, a plain wooden
structure with benches for fifty during Services, that doubled as the
schoolroom. The Church and the Home itself were white and immaculately
clean and had flowers in the gardens and in pots in the windows, and that
was because several of the boys were usually busy daily painting and
washing and trimming. Billy was usually out there himself helping too,
or over in the long yard past the barn playing baseball, or past it
planting corn. There were always boys running around outside, doing
things.
But not today. The yard was vacant. There were boys in the cornfield,
but one of the older ones � James � was carrying a rifle. In front of
the Home itself two boys were throwing a plywood Frisbee, but they kept
close to the stairs. Billy recognized them � it was the new boys, Jeb
and Robbie, who�d lost their Poppas in the mining accident at Deaf Mule.
He�d gone out of his way to look after them and cheer them up, even
breaking the rules to sneak them both a ride on the back of one of the
milking chevies, when the rest of the boys were in Church at choir
practice.
�Jeb! Robbie!� he called. �Hey fellas, it�s me! Boys, it�s me!�
They stopped playing and watched him as he ran up the trodden footpath.
Robbie, the smaller one, started taking steps backward almost at once and
turned and ran up the steps, and opened the door and slammed it. Jeb,
the older boy, about nine, adjusted his wire-rim glasses on his head to
get a better look. But the closer Billy came, the closer Jeb backed to
the steps too. Billy trotted till he was within twelve feet of Jeb, and
then Jeb shouted, �Don�t you get no closer, Mister.�
�Mister?� said Billy. �What�re you being so polite for, Jeb?�
�We ain�t s�posed to talk to strangers,� said the boy.
�Strangers? What�re you talking about, boy? It�s me. Billy!�
Jeb backed away, adjusting the glasses on his nose and squinting. �You
ain�t,� he said.
�Of course I am,� said Billy, taking a step forward.
�Keep away!�
�Jeb -- .� said Billy. �Jeb. It�s me, son. It�s me -- Billy Truman!�
His voice caught. �Son, doncha know me?�
He reached out and the boy screamed and ran up the stairs and shut the
door. Billy could hear the lock latch. He looked at the Home, and could
see fearful eyes watching him behind curtains. Sudden gold shone on the
windows � a rising wind lifted the gleaming tide in the corn fields,
where James, with his rifle in both hands, stood watching.
The Reverend, thought Billy. �Reverend!� he shouted. �Sir! Where are
you?� He ran down the easy slope to the Church, and stumbled, and picked
himself up, and ran, his shoes stamping loudly on the porch, to its wide
white front doors and threw them open.
The great bulk that was Reverend Nimrod Pell was on his knees before the
larger-than-life oaken crucifix that dominated the rear wall of the
Church. They couldn�t afford an actual carving of the Saviour to put on
it, so the local sign painter, a God-fearing man though of no
denomination, had painted the image of the dying Jesus on it. It was
crude, but the bleeding nailed hands and feet seemed to show genuine
agony, in contrast to the expression of serene understanding in Jesus�
open eyes, which seemed to look straight into the person viewing it. At
the foot of the cross were padded knee benches for prayer, and Reverend
Pell would pray there thrice daily without exception. He was there now.
Except that, though his massive hands were clasped in prayer, his eyes
were open. He didn�t seem to be praying so much as lost in a heavy
burden of thought.
�Reverend!� said Billy. �It�s me. I�m back!�
The Reverend Pell seemed to wake up out some sad trance. He turned his
head and looked at Billy. He said not a word.
�Reverend, it�s � it�s good to see you again!�
The Reverend Pell rose. It was like some prehistoric bison rising to its
feet. Pell was huge. Not merely tall, and not really fat, but just
extremely wide and stocky � mattress-like. The large square face seemed
like it would be too big to fit into the frame of a photograph or picture
frame, and the features on it seemed minute and small and lost in the
vast expanse of flesh. But, incongruously, it was a humane face,
reflective, generous, forgiving. Pell�s black hair was combed straight
back; rumor was, he had a bald spot, but no one was tall enough to look
down and see. His large starfish-shaped body was clad in preacherly
black too, except for a round white collar. But the bright brown eyes
were wrinkled with laugh lines, and more than enough laughter had put
them there. There was no laughter in them at the moment. He looked down
at Billy like a tragic giant in the middle part of a fairy tale.
�May I help you, young man?� he said.
�Help me?� said Billy. He wrung his hands; he didn�t know what to do
with them. �Sure you can, Reverend. Sure you can! You can � you can
say hello! You can stop this foolin� and say, �Well, Billy, where you
been so long?�.�
�Is that your name, son? Billy?�
�Is that my name? Why, �course it is. �Course it is! It�s me!�
Pell gave him a kind but puzzled look.
�What�s wrong with everybody? Are you all blind? Is the whole town gone
nuts? I�m Billy Truman. Billy Truman! Look at me. Don�t you see who I
am?�
The kindness drained from Pell�s broad features.
�I don�t know who you are, son,� said the Reverend Pell slowly and
evenly, �but I buried Billy Truman�s dead body in Ginger Field Cemetery
one week ago today, with these two hands. Billy Truman is dead.�
*