[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
for a mad-dog last-stand showdown that can culminate only in a fireball of
glorious fuck-you-copper destruction. But there s only two of them here to
kill. Not enough to go to the chair for. Not yet, no matter how bad the M
comedown feels. Neal shoots lead arches over them until the gun goes to empty
clicks.
Slowly, black Jack opens the holey Buick door, feeling God it s so horrible to
be alive. He blows chunks on the meaningless asphalt. The two strange men in
the Cadillac give off the scent of anti-life evil, a taint buried deep in the
bone marrow, like strontium 90 in mother s milk. Bent down wiping his mouth
and stealing an outlaw look at them, Jack flashes that these new guys have
picked up their heavy death-aura from association with the very earth-frying,
retina-blasting all-bomb that he and Neal are being ineluctably drawn to by
cosmic forces that Jack can see, as a matter of fact, ziggy lines sketched out
against the sky as clear as any peyote mandala.
Everyone hates me but Jesus, says Neal, walking over to the Cadillac,
spinning the empty
Thompson around his callused thumb. Everyone is Jesus but me.
In, says Lernmore, I m sorry we wrecked your car.
Leda rises up from the floor between von Neumann s legs, a fact not lost on
Neal.
We re on our way to the bomb test, croaks Jack, lurching over.
Ve helped invent the bomb, says von Neumann. Ve re rich and important men.
Of course ve vill pay reparations and additionally offer you a ride to the
test, ezpecially since you didn t kill us.
The Cadillac is obediently idling in park, it s robot-brain having retracted
Page 153
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
the jacks and gone into standby mode after the oil-pan-scraping collision.
Neal mimes a wide-mouthed blow job of the hot tip of the Thompson, flashes
Leda an easy smile, slings the gun out into the desert, and then he and
shuddery Jack clamber into the Cad s front seat. Leda, with her trademark
practicality, climbs into the front seat with them and gives them a bottle of
champagne. She s got the feeling these two brawny drifters can take her faster
farther than science can.
Von Neumann flicks the RESET cyberswitch in the rear seat control panel, and
the Cad rockets forward, pressing them all back into the deep cushioned seats.
Neal fiddles with the steering wheel, fishtailing the Cad this way and that,
then observes, Seems like this tough short s got a mind of its own.
Zis car s brobably as smart as you are, von Neumann can t help observing.
Neal lets it slide: 7:49.
The Cad makes a hard squealing right turn onto the White Sands access road.
There s a checkpoint farther on; but the soldiers recognize von Neumann s
wheels and wave them right on through.
Neal fires up a last reefer and begins beating out a rhythm on the dash with
his hands, grooving to the pulse of the planet, his planet awaiting its
savior. Smoke trickles out of his mouth; he shotguns Leda, breathing the smoke
into her mouth, wearing the glazed eyes of a mundane gnostic messiah, hip to a
revelation of the righteous road to salvation. Jack s plugged in, too, sucking
his last champagne, telepathy-rapping with Neal. It s almost time, and Doctor
Miracle and Little Richard are too confused to stop it.
A tower rears on the horizon off to the left, and all at once the smart Cad
veers off the empty two lane road and rams its way through a chain-link fence.
Nerve-shattering scraping and lumbering thumps.
Blease step on za gas a bit, says von Neumann, unsurprised. He programmed
this shortcut in. I still vant to go under za tower, but is only three
minutes remaining. Za program is undercompensating for our unfortunate lost
time. It is indeed 7:57.
Neal drapes himself over the wheel now, stone committed to this last holy
folly. Feeling a wave of serene, yet exultant resignation, Jack says, Go.
It s almost all over now, he thinks, the endless roving and raging, brawling
and fucking, the mad flights back and forth across and up and down the
continent, the urge to get it all down on paper, every last feeling and vision
in master-sketch detail, because we re all gonna die one day, man, all of us
The Caddy, its sides raked of paint by the torn fence, hurtles on like God s
own thunderbolt messenger, over pebbles and weeds, across the desert and the
sloping glass craters of past tests.
The tower is ahead: 7:58.
Get ready, Uncle Sam, whispers Neal. We re coming to cut your balls off.
Hold the boys down, Jack.
Jack body-rolls over the seat back into the laps of Lemmore and von Neumann.
Can t have those mad scientists fiddle with the controls while Neal s pulling
his cool automotive move!
Leda still thinks she s on a joyride and cozies up to Neal s biceps, and for a
second it s just the way it s supposed to be, handsome hard-rapping Neal at
the wheel of big old bomb with a luscious brunette squeezed up against him
like gum.
And now, before the guys in back can do much of anything, Neal s clipped
through the tower s southern leg. As the tower starts to collapse, Neal,
flying utterly on extrasensory instincts, slows just enough to pick up the
bomb, which has been jarred prematurely off its release hook.
No Fat Boy, this gadget represents the ultimate to date in miniaturization:
it s only about as big as a fifty-gallon oil drum, and about as weighty. It
crunches down onto the Caddy s roof, bulging bent metal in just far enough to
brush the heads of the riders.
And no, it doesn t go off. Not yet: 7:59.
Page 154
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
Neal aims the mighty Cad at the squat concrete bunker half a mile off. This is
an important test, the last step before the H-bomb, and all the key assholes
are in there, every atomic brain in the free world, not to mention dignitaries
and politicians aplenty, all come to witness this proof of American military
superiority, all those shit-nasty fuckheads ready to kill the future.
King Neal floors it and does a cowboy yodel, Jack is laughing and elbowing the
scientists, Leda s screaming luridly, Dickie is talking too fast to
understand, and Johnny.
They impact the bunker at eighty mph, folding up accordian-style, but not
feeling it, as the mushroom blooms, and the atoms of them and the assembled
bigwigs commingle in the quantum instability of the reaction event. Time
forks.
Somewhere, somewhen, there now exists an Earth where there are no nuclear
arsenals, where nations do not waste their substance on missiles and bombs,
where no one wakes up thinking each morning might be the world s last an Earth
where two high, gone wigged cats wailed and grooved and ate up the road and
Holy Goofed the world off its course.
For you and me.
No Spot of Ground
WALTER JON WILLIAMS
The dead girl came as a shock to him. He had limped into the Starker house
from the firelit military camp outside, from a cacophony of wagons rattling,
men driving tent pegs, provost marshals setting up the perimeter, a battalion
of Ewell s Napoleon guns rolling past, their wheels lifting dust from the old
farm road, dust that drifted over the camp, turning the firelight red and the
scene into a pictured outpost of Hell. . . .
And here, to his surprise, was a dead girl in the parlor. She was perhaps
sixteen, with dark hair, translucent skin, and cheeks with high spots of
phthisis red. Her slim form was dressed in white. She lay in her coffin with
candles at her head and feet, and her long-faced relatives sat in a semicircle
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]