Desolation Road (51 page)

unner Johnston M'bote was one of those inevitable people whose lives are like steam trains, capable only of forward motion in a limited direction. Personifications of predestination, such people are doubly cursed with an utter ignorance of the inevitability of their lives and thunder past those countless other lives that stand by the side of the track and wave to the proud express train. Yet those standers by the track know exactly where it is that the train is going. They know where the tracks lead. The train lives merely hurtle onward, uncaring, unenlightened. Thus Mrs. January M'bote knew the instant the district midwife presented her with her ugly, nasty little seventh son that no matter what he made or did not make of his life he was destined to be a number two belly-gunner in a Parliamentarian fighting machine in the battle of Desolation Road. She saw where the tracks led.

As a child Johnston M'bote was small, and he remained small as an adolescent, just the perfect size to be rolled up into the belly turret slung beneath the insect body of the fighting machine like a misplaced testicle. His head was round and flat on top, just the perfect shape for an army helmet; his dispositon darting and nervous (labelled "hair-trigger" by the army psychologists), ten out of ten for suitability; his hands long and slender, almost feminine, and quite the best shape for the admittedly tricky firing controls of the new Mark 27 Tachyon equipment. And he possessed an I.Q. of such fence-post density that he was unemployable in any profession that demanded the slightest glimmer of creativity. One of Creation's natural belly-turret gunners, Johnston M'bote was doomed to begin with.

Little enough Johnston M'bote knew of this. He was having too much fun. Curled like a foetus in the clanking, swaying, oil-smelly metal blister, he peered down through the gunslits at the lurching desert beneath him and sent streamers of heavy machine-gun fire arching across the leprous sand. The effect pleased him greatly. He could not wait to see what it looked like when he used it on people. He squinted up at the views in the eye-level television monitors. A lot of a lot of red desert. Legs swung, the fighting machine heaved. Gunner Johnston M'bote spun round and round in his steel testicle and fought with the urge to press the little red trigger in front of him. That was the fire control for the big tachyon blaster. He had been warned against its indiscriminate use: it wasted energy, and the commander did not entirely trust him not to shoot the legs off the fighting machine by mistake. Stamp stamp, sway sway. His Uncle Asda had once owned a camel and the one ride he had taken on the bad-tempered thing had felt very much like the rolling gait of the fighting machine. Johnston M'bote strode to war in twenty-metre boots with the Big Swing Sound of Glenn Miller and his Orchestra blowing soul in both earphones. He rolled his shoulders and poked alternate forefingers into the air, up down, up down; the only kind of dancing possible in the belly turret of a Mark Four Fighting Machine. If this was war, thought Johnston M'bote, war was terrific.

A military issue boot, made by Hammond and Tew of New Merionedd, pounded heavily on the ceiling hatch three times; thump thump thump, accompanied by a muffled half-heard stream of abuse. Gunner Johnston M'bote thumbed at his radio channel selector. ". . . to Baby Bear, Daddy Bear to Baby Bear, what'n'hellyouplayingatdowntheredon'tyouknowthere'sawar-youdumbstupidsonofa ... target bearing zero point four degrees declination, fifteen degrees." Tongue protruding in unprecedented concentration, Gunner M'bote spun little brass wheels and verniers and aligned the big tachyon blaster on the unremarkable section of red cliff face.

"Baby Bear to Daddy Bear, I have the target all set; now what you want me should do?"

"Daddy Bear to Baby Bear, fire when ready. Holy God, how dumb ..."

"Okay Daddy Bear." Johnston M'bote gleefully pressed both thumbs to the much anticipated little red button.

"Zap!" he shouted. "Zap, you bastards!"

Sublieutenant Shannon Ysangani was withdrawing her combat group as per orders from Arnie Tenebrae from the perimeter positions (which smelled oppressively of urine and electricity) to the Blue Alley revetments, when the Parliamentarians vaporized the entire New Glasgow Brigade. She and her fifteen combat troops constituted the sole two percent that survived. Shannon Ysangani had been leading her section past the front of the jolly Presbyter Pilgrim Hostel, when an unusual brilliant light from an unusual angle threw an unusually black shadow against the adobe walls. She had just time to marvel at the shadow, and the way the red and blue neon jolly Presbyter suddenly lit up (a hitherto-undiscovered electromagnetic pulse side effect of the tachyon devices), when the blast picked up her body and soul and smashed her into the facade of the Pilgrim Hostel and, by means of a finale, brought walls, ceiling and fat neon Presbyter himself down on top of her.

But for her defence canopy Shannon Ysangani would have been smeared like potted meat. As it was, she was englobed within a black bubble of collapsed masonry. She explored the smooth perimeter of her prison with blind fingertips. The air smelled of energy and stale sweat. Two choices. She could remain under the jolly Presbyter until she was rescued or her air ran out. She could drop her defence canopy (possibly all that was keeping multitons of Jolly Presbyter from crushing her, like a boorish lover) and punch her way out with fieldinducers on offensive. Those were the choices. She had fought enough battles to know that they were not as simple as they appeared. The ground shuddered as if one of the ineffable footsteps of the Panarch had fallen on Desolation Road; there was another, and another, and another. The fighting machines were moving.

She could not believe the ease with which the Parliamentarians had broken through the perimeter defences. She could not believe so much death and annihilation could have been contained in such a short flash of light. The earth shook to a sustained concussion. Another flare of light, another annihilation. She found she could not believe in this new death either. War was too much like the Sunday night thriller on the radio to be credible for what it was. Another blast. The Jolly Presbyter settled with a heavy grunt on top of Shannon Ysangani. Someone must carry the news of the destruction back to headquarters. A voice she barely recognised as duty nagged at her. Do your duty ... do your duty ... do your duty ... Shock. Explosion, close by. Thud thud thud, the metal boots of a fighting machine close by, what if one comes down on top of me, will my defence canopy hold up? Duty, do your ...

"All right! All right!" She knelt in the darkness beneath the smothering corpulence of the jolly Presbyter, checking her fire controls by touch. She wanted to be sure, sure, and sure again. She would get only the one shot. Shannon Ysangani sighed a short, resigned puff of a sigh and collapsed her defence canopy. The debris groaned and settled. Creaking, crashing ... she brought the fieldinducer up and punched a full power burst through to the sunlight.

It might have been a different world she stepped out into. The entire southeast end of Desolation Road lay in tumbled smoking ruins. Glowing glass craters, nine-rayed like St. Catherine's starburst, gave testimony to the punishing effectiveness of the Parliamentarians' new weapon. They had passed this way in force, their behemoth fighting machines, creatures of childhood iron nightmares, stood astride streets and buildings, hissing steam from their joints and trading ponderous artillery barrages with crannies of Whole Earth Army resistance entrenched along First Street. The Parliamentarians' passage through the outer defences had flattened the town like a rice field before a whirlwind. Yet their advance had not gone totally unopposed. Like a dead spider beneath a boot, the command turret of a fighting machine lay smashed open in a tangle of metal legs. Shannon Ysangani flicked for her defence canopy, then paused. In this kind of war, perhaps invisibility would be a better tactic, operating on the principle of what can't be seen can't be shot at. She thumbed open her section's radio channel and called the survivors to her. The few were fewer. Twelve out of fifteen, crawling from the chaos in the wake of the battle. Sublieutenant Ysangani then thumbed the command channel and made a brief report of losses to Commander Tenebrae.

Arnie Tenebrae sat amid her war staff, fingertips touched together in the attitude of meditative serenity. Ninety-eight percent casualties in the initial engagement and now the Parliamentarians were kicking at the skirting boards of Steeltown. Once ninety-eight percent casualties would have outraged her military sense and sent her shouting brilliant, inspiring orders to her troops. Now she merely sat, fingertips touched together, nodding.

"Orders are revised," she said when the Sublieutenant had finished. "Under no circumstances are troops to use defence canopies. Employ lightscatter and high mobility. You are guerrillas. Be guerrillas." She cut commu nications with the defenders and turned her whole self to the complex machine-thing humming on the tile floor. "How much longer?"

"Ten, twenty more minutes before we get the power hooked up," said Dhavram Mantones. "And we'll have to defend the power source."

"Order it done." Arnie Tenebrae suddenly stood up and went to her room. She regarded her painted face in the mirror on the wall. Foolish vanity, she was Deathbird no longer, she was Timebird, the Chronal Phoenix. As she wiped the foolish paint from her face she reflected on the ninety-eight percent casualties on the perimeter dugouts. Meaningless. Plastic soldiers. The defence of the time winder was paramount now, and for it she would gladly embrace hundred percent casualties. Universal death. The concept began to appeal to her.

In best guerrilla fashion Shannon Ysangani's squad tippy-toed through the alleys of Desolation Road. Occasional glass craters commemorated those who had trusted too much in their defence canopies. On the corner of Blue Lane a fighting machine came smashing its way through Singh Singh Singh and Maclvor's Law Offices. As her troops faded into invisibility Shannon Ysangani found she and Trooper Murtagh Melintzakis separated from their comrades. Shannon Ysangani hid her invisible self in the porch of New Paradise Tea Rooms and watched the turrets swing left and right, left and right, searching out lives to extinguish. Evil machines. She thought she could even discern the helmeted crews at their battle stations. Her terror of the metal thing had paralyzed her military sense, she was no more capable of attacking it than of attacking a childhood iron nightmare. Not so Trooper Murtagh Melintzakis. His childhood sleep must have been untroubled, for he slipped out of invisibility, raised his field inducer to attack, and the turret muzzle which by sheer misfortune happened to be pointing at him spat point-blank subquantal fury over him. The novalight bleached every centimetre of exposed paintwork on the corner of Blue and Chrysanthemum. The neons on the empty hotels spasmed with brief luminescent rememberance and, lightscatter circuits temporarily overloaded, the remnants of Group Green appeared as vague translucent ghosts. Shannon Ysangani screamed a panicked order to split up and escaped down Blue Alley.

"Hey, nice shooting, Baby Bear! Like, nice shooting!"

Gunner Johnston M'bote grinned and spat simultaneously, a feat uniquely his by dint of no one wishing to duplicate it.

"Nothing really. Just pointing it the right way at the right time. Hey!" Wandering eyeballs registered movement on one of the tiny monochrome televisions. "Hey, there's a bogie getting away!"

"Oh, let her go ..."

"But she's an enemy! I want to shoot her."

"You go easy with the T.B., Baby Bear, you'll shoot one of our legs off if you're not careful."

"The hell I will!" said Johnston M'bote huffily.

He vented his ill feelings on the facade of the New Paradise Tea Rooms with a handful of rounds from his 88mm cannon before Daddy Bear (in reality Sub-commander Gabriel O'Byrne) jawed him over the waste of ammunition. So he treated himself to a good scratch deep inside his fetid underwear and Fighting Machine T27,
Eastern Enlightenment
, lurched off to support the big firefight around the gates of Steeltown, in the process accidentally and without malice cleaving away half the Stalin household and the whole of the Stalin wife with one careless swing of its two o'clock foot.

"Hey, there's a guy down there!" Johnston M'bote could see him through the gunslits in the belly-turret, a curiously foreshortened Mr. Stalin waving fists of impotent fury at the fighting machine that had just killed his wife of twenty years.

"A what?"

"A guy down there, Daddy Bear."

"Looks like he owned the house you just smashed through, Daddy Bear," chirped Mummy Bear from the glamour of the top turret. Johnston M'bote only knew Mummy Bear by his querulous voice on the interphone. He had never seen him, but suspected some kind of rivalry between number one bombardier and commander. Come to think of it, he'd never seen the commander either.

"A what?" said Daddy Bear again.

"A guy, down there, in a big big patch of beans," said Johnston M'bote, ideally poised to witness what happened next. "You know, I think we should be kind of like ... careful, you know, like you're always warning me to be.... Oh. Well."