Necrom

Gibson blinked. This whole new assessment of the streamheat took a little digesting. "What did they really hope to achieve in Luxor by killing Lancer and pinning it on me?"

"They probably thought that they could install Raus as the head of a puppet government and have the UKR under their control, although I do wonder how they expected to control someone who kept Balg in his basement. Anyway, that's what the lower ranks seem to have believed, the ones you were dealing with like Smith and Klein. The fact that it now looks like the whole of the UKR is going to get dixie-fried as a result of the assassination puts a slightly different complexion on things."

"You actually think the streamheat engineered this nuclear attack that's coming?"

Slide nodded. "Sure do. They've got the UKR so heavily infiltrated it'd be kinda dumb not to assume that they've done much the same thing to the Hind-Mancu on the other side. They probably suggested the sneak attack in the first place."

Gibson was at a loss. "But why? What would they have to gain from nuclear devastation?"

Slide took his hand off the wheel and jerked a thumb in the direction of Nephredana. "Didn't she explain death-moment energy physics to you?"

"Sure, but…"

"So work it out for yourself. Think about all that death."

"A huge burst of energy?"

"Right on the money, a huge energy bonanza. Which, in light of recent reports that they have the means to catch and store DME, seems to make a lot of sense from their point of view. Plus they have the added bonus of a lot of random print-through in other dimensions that they probably think they can exploit to their own ends."

"And you figure that Smith and the others didn't know about this?"

"Never tell the minions what they don't need to know."

"I've been getting more than my fair share of that."

"What did you expect?"

"That's the problem. I didn't expect anything. I didn't ask to be a part of this in the first place. What is it with me?"

Slide laughed. "What is it with you? You want me to tell you?"

Gibson was becoming a little unnerved by the way that Slide kept turning his head away from the road to talk to him. At speeds around a hundred and a half, it seemed to verge on the suicidal unless Slide was driving by some kind of telepathy.

"I'd be delighted if you'd tell me."

Slide grinned. "You, Gibson? Hell, you're a very special person. You're a veritable crossroads of coincidence, a repository for untapped mischief, a catalyst for confusion."

"I am?"

Nephredana popped her gum. "Lighten up on him, Yancey. He's had a hard day."

"He asked."

Gibson nodded. "That's right, I asked."

Slide started counting off Gibson's problems on the five fingers of his free hand. "First there's all this business of your opposite number in Luxor being a potential presidential assassin."

"You believe that? Couldn't that have just been something else that the streamheat cooked up?"

Slide shook his head. "I tend to doubt that. I think it falls within the ten percent of truth. If it didn't, why would they mess with you at all?"

"You think they pointed Casillas and the Nine at me in the first place?"

"I'm sure they did. That's why I came to London to check you out."

"So what about this massive aura that I'm supposed to nave?"

"You could say that it kinda falls into chicken-and-egg territory, so to speak. Does shit happen to you because you've got the aura or do you have the aura because shit happens to you? There's also the point that the streamheat may well have been hedging their bets over your filling the Four Requirements of the Prophecy of Anu Enlil."

Gibson had the sinking feeling that the cosmic opener was busy on yet another can of worms. "What the hell is the Prophecy of Anu Enlil?"

"Nobody told you? I'd have thought Abigail Voud would have filled you in. She's big on stuff like that."

Gibson sadly shook his head. "No, nobody told me. So what else is new?"

Slide turned to Nephredana. "How does the text go?"

Nephredana recited from memoiy. " 'And a man shall come among them, a man who was a leader of men but who fell from the favor of his followers, a man who crossed the great divide and, arriving in the country beyond, took up arms and slew the king of that country.' Those are the Four Requirements, you want me to go on?"

Slide nodded. "Yeah, get on to the part about entering the Realm of Gods."

Nephredana picked up the thread. " 'And, taking flight, he came with companions to the place between worlds where the Portal was made known to him and he entered the Realm of Gods where the Sleeper lay and he spoke with the Sleeper of the time that He might wake.' "

Gibson frowned. "That's all very fancy, but how does it apply to me?"

"Leader of men, right?"

Gibson laughed in amazement. "The last thing that I've ever been is a leader of men. "

"Anyone one who can fill Madison Square Garden has to be a leader of some kind. Young men all over the world were copying your clothes and your walk, your haircut and your sneer, even your brand of sunglasses. Think you weren't a leader? And you certainly fell from favor, you can't deny that. You've moved from one dimension to another, and as for killing the king…"

At that moment, Yop Boy cut in with a warning. "Lights up ahead, boss."

Yop Boy must have had extraordinary eyes, because Gibson couldn't see a thing. Slide, too, who nodded in reply. "I got 'em."

Yop Boy was still peering into the darkness. "Looks like a cop roadblock. I guess they must have penetrated the whammy."

Slide grinned back at Gibson. "Watch this, kid."

Slide seemed to find an extra surge of power somewhere inside the car. Up ahead, four police cruisers were drawn across the highway, completely blocking the four lanes. Uniformed figures were clustered around the cars, and Gibson could imagine the tension and the weapons clutched tightly in their hands. The Hudson was charging straight at them. It no longer felt as though they were riding in a simulator. The car was vibrating wildly.

Slide glanced at Yop Boy. "We got a power window?"

Yop Boy nodded. "Anything we want. Full banshee halo if we need it."

Slide's grin was truly demonic. "Ha!"

He hit a number of buttons on the car's control panel, and the Hudson was immediately enveloped in orange flame. At the same time, there was a hideous howling from outside the car.

Gibson looked round in alarm. "Are we on fire?"

Nephredana shook her head. "Just scaring the hell out of these cops."

It was certainly working. Through the flame envelope in front of the windshield, Gibson could see the cops leaving the cars that were blocking the road and running for their lives. The cars remained, however, and it looked as though the Hudson was going to plow into them and total itself. Then, as Gibson watched in complete amazement, an unseen force lifted first one car and then a second clear into the air and threw them violently aside. It was as though they were the toys of a giant, invisible, and very petulant child who had hurled them away in a fit of pique. One landed on its roof about twenty yards on down the road while the other arced straight up, turned over, took a nosedive into the hard shoulder, and folded up like a concertina. The Hudson raced through the gap that had been left in the roadblock, and, as they flashed past the police cruiser that was lying on its crushed roof, its gas tank exploded and it burst into flame. The fire envelope that surrounded the Hudson was suddenly gone.