The Devil Delivered and Other Tales (3 page)

He headed up Main Street. The western horizon had come close, come to the town’s very edge, a curtain of nothingness behind which things moved, things paced, things stampeded, things watched. Every now and then their shadows brushed the curtain. And beyond them, out on the snow-laden prairie, dead earth was marked here and there by boulders, boulders set out in circles in which other rocks ran in narrow lines, inward like spokes, and a central pile marked the hub. Medicine Wheels, not yet launched skyward, remaining earth-anchored with a purpose sheathed in silence, locked in antiquity.

The wind reached through to sting his face. Flesh-clothed people had lived out there, once. When the sun was just the sun, the sky just sky, long before the poisons and volcanic ash burned holes in the air. They talked with stones, made places where they and the ghosts could meet, places where they could dance.

A figure slipped out from an alley ahead, stopped to wait for him. The snows spun through its body; the wind whipped unimpeded by its hide cloaks and beadwork.

“I wonder how much you anticipated, old fella?”

The figure shrugged, melted in a savage gust of wind.

A stranger. An other. Not his kind, not his blood, not what he was looking for. An emanation curious, maybe, enough so to come for a closer look. Not there for answering his questions. Not there for the civilized art of conversation. Hence, making a point.

“Thus did God, burned blind, reach down through the white, featureless void, and then did He touch the stones, and read them like Braille.” He walked past the spot where the ghost had been, then crossed Main Street, heading for the hotel. “And He spake, and He said, ‘Behold these instruments of the Devil, that would give voice to the lie of the firmament.’”

His vision preceded him into the hotel bar, plundering lives—a half-dozen regulars, old men and women whose farmland had withered and who now lived on government assistance, ignoring the resettlement incentives and urban start-up grants. The cities held nothing for them—nothing they wanted, anyway. And meeting every afternoon at their regular tables beside the frosted window that looked out on Main Street, they found the comfort of familiar faces and familiar stories, and the demons of loneliness stayed away for a while longer.

“Behold, I went out to withstand thee, because thy way is perverse before me.”

Net: The Swamp

CORBIE TWA:
Oops! Where dat come from?

JOHN JOHN:
More interestingly, where’d it go?

BOGQUEEN:
What are you talking about? The SFI file or the quasibiblical dart?

CORBIE TWA:
The quasiwhat? Those files show up alla time, Bogqueen.

BOGQUEEN:
What’s with the enunciation there, Corbie?

CORBIE TWA:
Colloquial program, girl.

JOHN JOHN:
Which helps the trackers fix you, Corbie.

CORBIE TWA:
Sure thing. I may sound like I gotta confederate flag in my bedroom, but it don mean I live in Ole Arkansas, do it?

JOHN JOHN:
Where were we? We were here, I think. I’ve caught whispers about this Restitution thing. It’s not easy breaking into those SFIs, you know.

BOGQUEEN:
It’s the Track .12 entries that interest me, John John. It’s a mobile, isn’t it? Not easy to hide with one of those. But he’s managing.

CORBIE TWA:
For how much longer, though? Anyway, there’s no end of foo-stuff out there. Why pay attention?

JOHN JOHN:
Because the boy’s playing in the Midwest Hole, right, Bogqueen?

BOGQUEEN:
It all comes with what you put together. Try paying attention to the shivers on the vine, Corbie Twa. There’s weird things going on.

CORBIE TWA:
T’ain’t nothing new with dat, girl. My weird meter’s set very high, you know.

JOHN JOHN:
Extinctions. Anyone tallied the count lately?

CORBIE TWA:
I hate atavistic bastards—didn’t know I knew big words, did you? Anyway, who tallies anymore? Who keeps lists? Pictures in books, as far as my kids are concerned. Stuffed carcasses in museums, test tubes in freezers. Jus like the dinosaurs, John John.

BOGQUEEN:
Extinction’s a fact of life, right Corbie? Hail the official line.

JOHN JOHN:
So, coyote ghosts and ancient buffalo. Curious.

CORBIE TWA:
Probbly some effed-up terrorist mystic with a fieldbook and too much peyote.

BOGQUEEN:
But he’s slipping the trackers. That takes some doing.

CORBIE TWA:
Or an inside line. Some kind of NOAC counter-culture creepy.

BOGQUEEN:
Seems clunky. Too obtuse. Likely he’s running loose.

CORBIE TWA:
Lil good it’ll do im. Who’s listening?

JOHN JOHN:
Picked up a squiggly from someone named Bound for Ur. Wasn’t tethered. Seems there was a spetznaz inc. incursion somewhere in Lapland. Went sour and nobody came back out. Any shivers?

CORBIE TWA:
Don’t mess with the Lappies. Not a sniff. Sounds bizarre. A run on radioactive reindeer meat in Con-Russia. Those mafiboys like their meat.

BOGQUEEN:
News to me, too, John John. I’ll check my sinkholes, though.

JOHN JOHN:
My tally list includes coyotes.

CORBIE TWA:
Make the roadrunners happy.

JOHN JOHN:
No, they’re extinct, too.

CORBIE TWA:
Bummer.

William entered on a gust of wind, the snow swirling around him as he turned and pushed shut the heavy door. He removed his goggles and blinked, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the gloom. Pool balls cracked and rolled, followed by voices off to his right. He untied the hood’s drawstrings, unzipped his bootsuit.

A gravelly voice called out from behind the bar to his left. “What did I tell you, College Boy?”

William shrugged. “Seemed the genuine thing,” he said, heading over to the counter.

“Damn right,” Stel said, lighting a cigarette. Tall, heavy, late thirties, the hotel’s owner leaned on the counter and blew a lazy stream of smoke in William’s direction. She grinned, cleared her throat. “Didn’t Old Jim tell it?”

“Yep.”

Stel set a bottle of filtered water in front of William. “See, my memory’s none too bad, eh?” She glanced over at the regulars and nodded. “Sitting Bull’s rifle, sure as my ass is fat.”

Laughter exploded in the room, forced, too loud.

William took a mouthful of water and swung his gaze to the pool table. A local boy was having his hands full playing a tall man in expensive clothes, a man even more out of place than William.

Stel bantered with the regulars, the old Indian jokes making tired rounds.

“My twenty-third Sitting Bull rifle,” William softly sighed.

“What’s that, College Boy?”

“Nothing.” He watched the tall man circle the table once before dropping the eight ball on a called shot. Game over.

Behind the bar a phone buzzed. Stel snatched it up. “Yeah?”

A fingertip stroked William’s shoulder. He turned.

“For you, College Boy,” Stel said, leaning close. “Been thinking of closing up early,” she added in a low voice.

“Sounds bad for business,” William replied, “but good for the soul,” he added as he took the antiquated phone. “Hello?”

Through an electrostatic crackle came Administrator Jenine MacAlister’s voice. “William? Glad you’re still in the town. The storm’s supposed to last another two days—I didn’t think you were that crazy, but I couldn’t be sure.”

“I am research incarnate, Dr. MacAlister.”

“You didn’t need to apply for an independent grant, you know that, don’t you? I mean, we would’ve funded you, of course.”

“What’s up?”

She hesitated. “Something. Maybe serious.”

William walked away from the bar, taking the phone and the water bottle with him. He sat down at a table tucked into a secluded corner of the room. “Go ahead.”

“Well, I’ll make it simple. Here’s what I’m looking for, William. There may be some, uh, activity down there.”

“In Val Marie?”

“No, no. Out under the Hole.”

MacAlister’s voice was pitched low. Excitement and conspiracy. Used to be a good anthropologist. Used to be. Now, just one more social engineer in an army of social engineers. Now it was games, cloak and dagger.

“What kind of activity?”

“The Lakota. They haven’t been in dialogue with us since the Autonomy Settlement, of course, but we’ve picked up a hint of something.”

Us and we. Defined exactly how? Us whites? We the Feds? The good guys, the cavalry? William’s gaze fixed on the tall man at the pool table. “Haven’t seen any around. Last I heard, Jack Tree was paying a state visit to Argentina.”

MacAlister laughed. “It’s not him we’re worried about, William. He’s had his fifteen minutes at the Supreme Court, and that was seven years ago. Come on, we both know who’s about to take over the Lakota Nation.”

“Daniel Horn?”

“That bastard is up to something. And it has to do with the Hole.”

“Well,” William said, “they own the land under it—”

“That’s not the point. Hell, they’ve never forgiven us for that. As if we knew the Hole would open up when we gave them the land.”

William’s eyebrows rose. Gave? Jack Tree stood up against the Supreme Court of North America and tore that piece of ground right out of Fed hands. William massaged his temples. Medicine Wheels in the sky.

“In any case,” MacAlister continued. “Have you seen Horn around?”

“Nope.”

“Well, he’s supposed to be in the area. Keep an eye out for me, will you?”

“My journal entries are available on the Net.”

“Yes, William, but no one can understand them. I’d like something more direct, more responsive. One more thing, could be connected. There’s rumors going around that the Lakota are about to close their borders. If you run into Horn, see what you can suss out. But carefully, okay? Don’t push it. We’ll talk soon, then. Bye, and good luck.”

William climbed to his feet and drained his bottle of water. He walked back to the counter and set the phone down.

“Still planning on heading out tomorrow?” Stel asked.

“Yep.”

“Well”—she smiled—“I think I’ll keep your room clean and ready, just in case you come to your senses.”

William smiled back, then headed over to the pool table. The tall, well-dressed man was racking the balls for a solo game. The local boy sat at a distant table, looking glum. William leaned on the table and picked up the cue ball. “Finally,” he said, “some competition.”

“I’ll break,” the man said.

William dropped the cue ball into the man’s hand. “Mother wants me to do some spying for her,” he said.

Daniel Horn nodded. He walked around the table and set down the cue ball. “It’s a hard life, William, and you’re harder than most.”

William found a cue stick. He raised one end and sighted down it, pointing the tip at Daniel, as if holding a rifle.

Leaning on the table for his opening shot, Daniel paused. Their eyes locked. “Careful,” the young Lakota said, “that once belonged to Sitting Bull.”

William lowered the cue stick. “She wants me to follow up a rumor about you closing the borders.”

“You want me to tell you? I will.”

“Nope. All I want to know is, open or closed, will you let me do my research?”

“That what you call it?”

“That’s what I call it.”

Daniel’s eyes narrowed as he prepared to break. “Don’t see why not,” he said. A moment later the cue ball was a white blur; then a loud crack scattered the balls. Two thumped into pockets. Daniel looked up and grinned. “Better get out of that bootsuit, William, you’re in for a hot one.”

William shook his head. “I live in my bootsuit. It lives on me. We are one.”

“Sometimes you scare me, William.”

“Sometimes I mean to, Daniel.”

TWO

Entry: American NW, July 1,
A.C
. 14

Something heavier than an angel, something more like a witch, a woman of earth and stone—only this could have made her so tenuous to his touch. It is now an age of angels, gauze-thin and adolescent. But when he’d looked upon her face, something elder had been visible, a time abandoned in despair; he’d seen the solid anguish lining her face, and he made his smile soft as he let her into the room.

Sweat of the land between them, a smell of moss and cobble-cool flesh that he imagined alabaster and serene. Stel had left him with a gift, a warmth like sun-brushed wood taking root into what had been virgin soil. Not virginity of the flesh, but of the spirit.

Days since his last meal. Things out there crowding ever closer, eager to know this new stranger in the dreamtimes. What made the night important: he was already almost gone, wind-tugged away from civilized life. It could have been easy, to have just simply left, without a backward touch or glance.

One last time crawling out of his thermal-controlled rad-shielding skin, once more unto the mortal coil. He thought then that a ghost stepped into him, a presence that understood the value of certain gestures to humanity—the one she’d give to him, the one he’d give to her.

A young man crafted by the tools of progress.

An aging woman tired of sleeping alone.

Touched human.

Touched young.

“That wasn’t pity,” he said afterwards.

“That wasn’t bad,” she replied.

Net

CORBIE TWA:
Somethin’s cooking at Boxwell Plateau. Any shivers on the vine?

STONECASTER:
Just this, Corbie Twa, the Argentinians made an official call to the Lady at Ladon Inc. NOAC got to them, goes the very soft twang. So maybe Boxwell’s dead. And Ladon’s homeless one more time. The last time.

CORBIE TWA:
What about Saudi?

STONECASTER:
You’ve been in the Swamp too long, mucker. Saudi was knifed a week ago. Now NOAC’s got the embargo sewed up tight. Ladon can’t even buy a scrap heap and a hamburger.