"Yeah," agreed Mobil, "an' he's got a charge sheet as long as my dick."
"First offender, huh?" said the girl. Everyone except Mobil laughed. Mobil sniffed the air, his face reddening, and backhanded Stack across the mouth.
"Mr Persecution, Mr Persecution, I request that you respect the honour o' this court or else I shall be compelled to have you removed from here to a place of animal husbandry and forcibly washed until you are clean."
"I apologize, Mr Judge."
"Apology suss-stained. We will hear from the Council for the Fence. Miss Unleaded?"
The girl stepped forwards, tears starting from her eyes, and waved Stack's pumpgun dramatically in the air.
"The quality of mercy is not strained," Unleaded began. "It droppeth as the gentle rain from Heaven upon the place beneath: it is twice blessed…"
The 'chuggers quieted down. Shell kicked the jukebox, and it shut up too.
"…it blesseth him that gives and him that takes. Tis mightiest in the mightiest. It becomes the throned monarch better than his crown; his sceptre shows the force of temporal power, the attribute to awe and majesty wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings; but mercy is above the sceptred sway, it is enthroned in the hearts of kings, it is an attribute of God himself, and earthly power doth then show likest God's when mercy seasons justice. But, in this case, my client is guilty as a fatcat in a fish tank and it is the recommendation of the Fence that you shoot the freaker's head off tout de suite."
"Thank you for your eloquence, Miss Unleaded. Members of the Jury, have you reached a verdict?"
Everybody roared in the affirmative.
"And is it the verdict of you all?"
Another roar.
"How do you find the accused?"
"GUILTY!"
Exxon took a black handkerchief from his pocket, folded it into a sailboat, and perched it on his head. Then, he pulled a revolver out of his waistband. It was a Wildey, one of those class tools they made a lot bigger than they needed to.
"Looks like we're gonna have to execute you on the spot, Mr Accused. Sorry, chum, but that's the way it's gotta be. We don't have no choice in the matter. It's the laws that made this country great."
He pulled back the hammer and cocked the gun. If he fired it one-handed, he was going to break his wrist. If he fired it now, the ScumStopper—he just knew Exxon would be packing SS balls—would make an inch-wide hole going in below his nose and above his mouth, and take off the entire back of his head. The frags would probably kill Mobil and the 'chugger holding his arms.
But maybe Exxon didn't care. Whatever, it wouldn't make any difference to Stack.
Exxon shut one eye, and exerted pressure on the trigger. He was showing off, and didn't have the strength in one hand to apply the pull. He took a two-handed grip, and shimmied a little to get a good stance. The gunsight scraped Stack's bloody nose.
Mobil and the other 'chugger got out of the way.
"Do you have any last words, convict?"
Stack couldn't think of any, so he spat blood and said "freak you."
"Time will pass, Troopie, and seasons will come and go. Soon, summer with her shimmering heatwaves on the baked horizon. Then, fall with her yellow harvest moon and the irrigated hills growing golden under the sinking sun. Then winter with its biting, whining wind and the land mantled over white with snow…"
This had the feel of a learned-by-rote speech. Golden hills were a long time ago.
"…and finally, spring again with its waving green grass, and heaps of sweet-smelling flowers on every lull…"
The hammer went back. Exxon's fingers began to squeeze.
"…BUT YOU FREAKIN' WONT BE HERE TO SEE NONE OF THEM, PECKERWOOD!"
A gun went off. A skull exploded. A body stood for a moment, strangely relaxed, men fell like a bag of laundry, sprawling on the barroom floor.
Stack, still shaking, looked from Exxon's corpse to the saloon doors, and the most beautiful woman he had ever seen in his life walked through carrying a smoking gun.
If she had been three foot ten, weighed four hundred and ninety pounds and wore a goatee beard, she would still have been the most beautiful woman he had ever seen in his life.
Part Five: All God's Chillun Got Guns
I
The fort had changed. Nothing had exploded in flames. The consoles weren't spitting out showers of sparks. Blood was not running out of the shower-heads. Lauderdale's cadre of armoured android "pacifiers" had not turned on their masters and put every human being in sight to the electrosword. Apart from Younger's jammed elevator, nothing was obviously malfunctioning. But something had changed. Captain Cat Finney was running a complete systems check, and nothing irregular was showing up. The big input had apparently vanished.
Colonel Rintoon was still going around muttering "monitor error," but Finney wasn't swallowing that. If there were false readings, they were getting them now rather than earlier. What would the Mullah I Naseruddin do, she wondered? Probably give up until it went away.
"The corps still don't want to mix with us," Lieutenant Rexroth told her. "ITT won't even talk to us on the telephone, and GenTech just barred us from the fax machine."
"Looks like we have a dose of the computer clap."
Rexroth didn't smile.
Finney went along with it. She was a good sufi. This shouldn't bother her. What was that phrase her counsellor kept using? "It's all part of life's rich pattern." In everything, there is a harmony.
Yeah, right.
"How are we at home?" she asked.
"Hanging even. No anomalies."
"And what does that tell you?"
The young man looked baffled. “Er…that we're running steady?"
"Let me put it this way, when was the last time you can remember that this place was running steady, with no anomalies?"
"Er…"
"Never, that's when. We're here to watch for trouble. And, as this blighted century draws to its blessed close, there is always trouble."
“I'll run the checks again."
"You do that."
Finney tried a few rear-entries of her own into the system, and got the same predigested answers. Even the spyholes she had put in place for her exclusive personal use weren't showing up anything out of whack. She was the best programmer and analyst in Apache, but just now she thought what was needed to deal with the machines was an exorcist.
"You know," she said to nobody in particular, "sometimes I think that maybe brown rice isn't enough."
Captain Lauderdale came over. "Cat, the post office just pulled out. It's just us and the RCs."
"Great. Have you talked to the cardinal or whoever?"
"It's hard to establish territoriality. I never knew the Catholic church was so complicated. St Columba's in Phoenix keeps trying to refer us to some spick bigwig in Managua."
"Archbishop Oscar Romero?"
"Yeah, that's the guy."
"So, get Romero."
"But he's the former head of state of a confederation hostile to the United States of America. We don't take our troubles to guys like that."
"Give me the strength, Lauderdale. This isn't something much affected by lines on a map."
Lauderdale was annoyed. "Tell it to Colonel Rintoon, Cat. He wants to keep this an Arizona thing. He'd bust us to latrine orderlies if he thought we were going to Texas for help, let alone the freakin' CAC!"
"I'm sorry, Lauderdale."
"Yeah. Everybody's sorry."
Finney had noticed how on edge Lauderdale had been since this thing started. It was getting to everyone. There had been more minor arguments in the Ops Centre than were usual. People were getting testy, locking horns, ruffling feathers. She hoped she was above and beyond that, but her nerves were fraying too.
It would be nice if she could see what was wrong, rather than just feel it.
"Maybe the place is haunted?"
Lauderdale raised a lip.
"No, really. We're slap next to a chunk of ancient history, Lauderdale."