Prophet Margin (25 page)

"Where have you been?" he asked, noting Bolster's oil-smeared hands. "We haven't seen you around for two days."

"Oh, you know. Meditating in my cell, awaiting the holy omens, that sort of thing."

Abrocabe's cynicism went unmentioned: at that moment a loud shriek rang out from outside, the believers seated at the table nearest the window fell off their chairs and a ruddy light filtered through the open door like a bloody haze.

"What the sneck...?" Abrocabe muttered.

The cabin emptied in a rush, gruel left to solidify. All across the city the faithful came tumbling from their meditation booths, struck dumb.

The sky was red. From horizon to horizon, pulsing with ruby tones, it was as if everything had been drowned in blood. For a minute, there was silence. Jaws hung open, eyes bulged.

And then the cheers began, and people danced and waved and prayed, frothing and wetting themselves.

"The first sign!" they shrieked, "the first holy omen!"

On Splut Mundi, an impromptu party broke out. It lasted well into the night.

Sven Dor Dow almost certainly didn't deserve what happened to him.

It was true that, prior to his Boddhist devotions, he'd been the CEO of a ruthless real-estate firm, but he had - where possible - maintained a careful distance from the lower echelon brutality of his employees. He'd never
formally
sanctioned a Squattersplat, made a habit of media noteworthy donations to charity, never fired anyone who didn't deserve it, hired PA's on the strength of their talent as well as their bust size, and kept an extensive menagerie of Mloopixx GrassBeetles for breeding and conservation purposes.

He had a lovely wife, a charming selection of homes, had raised his family in a largely squabble-free environment and was, if not entirely blameless, then at least not an evil man. He was just another face in the abundantly wealthy crowd.

You might therefore say he was chosen entirely at random.

Just as the celebration was dying down, as the first cases of holy wine were running out and the remixed ravehymns were petering away-

The shark struck.

It had grown. Strange lumps dappled its flanks like the tentacles of an anemone, waiting to snare any prey foolish enough to wander near. Its ultramarine flukes, swollen with spongy scales and ridges of bone, flashed and dilated in semi transparency, as if undecided on whether solidity was worth the bother. From its nose to the tip of its whiplike tail it reached some thirty feet, vast and sleek and terrible. It coalesced from nowhere, spinning in flickering light, dragging a net of psychedelic luminescence behind it.

Fracturing and reforming as it moved, it curled like a great worm, gnashing a single time, slicing Sven Dor Dow into two tattered halves.

The ferocity and speed of the attack had much the same effect on the remains of his body as a subdermal hand grenade.

Naturally enough, pandemonium ensued. A great concentric stampede began, bloody cassocks flapping damply, voices raised in panicky alarm. The shark didn't bother with pursuit: content to shred Sven's body with a toss of its great head; fizzling and sparking.

Even before the full horror of the beast's arrival had set in, before it had finished guzzling Sven's obliterated remains and turned its attentions elsewhere - snapping up a squealing woman with contemptuous ease and exploding a fat alien with a flick of its energised tail, the screams were mingled with joyous shouts:

"T-the star beast! The Swimmer-Beyond-The-Veil!"

Five assorted millionaires had been ripped to shreds, and another six were lamenting the missing parts of their anatomy, when the prophet came forth.

Several dozen cameradrones wobbled around him as he strode from the courtyard outside the temple-villa, collecting a montage of images as they went: the rapturous crowd, the prophet's serenity, the shimmering gowns billowing around him, the pall of silence in his wake. Then, widening their views, they turned to record the savagery of the monster, its bizarre lurch of surprise as the prophet approached, its sudden fit of shivering and crackling, as if in fear, and, spectacularly, its smouldering destruction dissolving away in a haze of perfect light as the prophet reached out his glowing arms and touched its flanks.

It was great TV.

In a thrice it was gone, the prophet stood smiling benignly, face all but concealed behind the natural radiance of his body, and the crowd cheered so hard that throats all across the city were irrevocably damaged.

Within two hours edited footage of the prophet's defeat of the Swimmer-Beyond-The-Veil had found its way into just about every meditation cabin on Splut Mundi. It was titled, simply, The Second Sign.

Johnny checked the rope for the third time. Any looser, he decided, and a concerted bout of ankle wiggling could have resulted in escape. Any tighter, it might have severed the circulation of blood through the prisoner's leg. For the man in question, that sort of thing could prove fatal.

Kid Knee belched in his sleep. He'd conked out halfway through a flask of cherry flavoured omnigrog, much to Wulf's delight.

"I hate this," Johnny grumbled, staring down at the tightly-bound mutant with a shake of his head.

"Is der right thing to do," Wulf shrugged, loading cartridges into a shiny new Webley HandBlaster. "He will only be getting himself killed otherwise. Is not... is not fit for being in der big fightings."

"Hmph."

As reluctant as he might be, Johnny was forced to agree. He peered briefly through the ship's window at the dull little world below, trying to imagine Kid Knee coming in handy at any point during their planned attack. Without a reliance upon exotic vehicles, alcoholic expertise or heavy-weapons psychosis, nothing was forthcoming.

The group's journey to Splut Mundi had passed without calamity - to Johnny's astonishment. They'd paused only once en route, at a grim little frontier planet just outside the asteroid's path, where a colony of planktonic arms dealers had refitted them with the long list of weapons and supplies they'd requested, forwarding an ugly bill to the S/D agency. The crate of high-strength teleporter energycells alone had cost more than they'd earn from an average bounty.

If this hunt didn't end in success, Johnny knew, he and his companions were going to be in debt with the GCC for a long, long time. Which, incidentally, was something they didn't have much of. Even at its top speed, taking into account the brief stop-off, the
Peggy Sue
arrived at Splut just half a day ahead of the asteroid. It was going to be tight. The anxiety was taking its toll.

Except, that is, on Kid Knee. For him, the brief stopover had presented a brilliant opportunity to stock up on the one resource that was guaranteed to comfort him in a time of hardship. Johnny didn't have the heart to stop him, even when the drink vats outnumbered the weapons crates.

He tightened the strap around the Kid's shoulders. "It's for his own good," he said out loud, reassuring himself. Wulf nodded sagely, and Johnny reflected again upon the relief at having regained a partner he could rely upon.

Of course, using a Viking in the place of another mutant hadn't exactly endeared Johnny to the hard core of equal rights lobbyists, but that merely demonstrated that they didn't fully understand the intricacies of his profession, it wasn't about an agenda, it wasn't about mutant rights, it wasn't even about honour or nobility. Those were just things - important things, yes, but just things - that got mixed up with it from time to time.

No, what it was about was profit.

Focus on the finance, Johnny told himself. Ignore the enjoyment. It's not personal.

No deep-rooted psychoanalysis, no Freudian bullsneck, no socially incisive commentaries. Life was much, much simpler when the answer to every question was "Money".

"Is going to be one snecked-off-no-head-weirdo when is waking..." Wulf said, adeptly puncturing Johnny's thoughts.

"Yeah," He replied, chewing his lip. "Let's just hope we're here to see it."

"Meh," Wulf scowled, dismissive. "Religious dummies not be seeing us coming. Will be der walking in der park."

"Famous last words."

In the seat beside Kid Knee, equally as comatose and equally as restrained, Cheez breathed deeply on the fluffy cotton of inebriation. It seemed that even a lifetime of narcotic abuse hadn't prepared his system for the industrial-strength booze Kid Knee had stocked. Johnny had already had to stop Wulf from putting restraining cords around the youth's neck ("Just to make der sure he is not escaping...").

"Right," Johnny nodded, preoccupied, turning towards the bridge. Behind him, Wulf grinned nastily and began quietly divesting himself of his boots. Revenge was sweet.

Stepping into the
Peggy Sue'
s cockpit, Johnny found himself meeting a heavy sulk-o-rama. For someone who'd spent a lifetime prohibited from speaking, Roolán handled the silent treatment like a pro.

"Don't look at me like that," Johnny mumbled, snapping an energy cell into the teleporter on his wrist. "You know the score."

Roolán glared.

"I need someone reliable to stay onboard. I told you."

Roolán glared.

"Someone's got to watch those two. What if the AI snecks up?"

Roolán glared.

"Look. The revenge thing, I understand, but trust me, it doesn't work like that."

Roolán glared.

"Say you get your revenge, what then? It snecks with your brain, Roolán. It takes over."

Roolán glared.

"You want to be a Strontium Dog, right? Then you need to be professional. It's not personal. It's never personal."

Roolán glared.

"I know, I know, you handled yourself okay so far. You saved my snecking life, even. But that's not to say you should go looking for trouble."

Roolán glared.

"You're not ready, okay? And we've only got two teleporters. That's all there is to it."

Roolán
glared
.

"You're too young!"

Johnny stamped out, feeling as if he'd just lost an argument. Roolán, against all the odds, glared.

"Der boy sure told you," Wulf mumbled, standing in the doorway. Johnny shot him a disgusted look.

"Let's just get on with it."

"Cool as der cucumber."

Johnny's estimations had placed the full cost of the equipment he and Wulf carried inside the "frighteningly expensive" bracket. Given the various rental firms, votels, fuel agencies and vehicle licensers they also owed, the pursuit of a fat profit margin had never been so crucial.

"Is no pressure, then," Wulf mumbled when Johnny mentioned the financial crisis.

Standing in the ship's hold, each man wore a healthy complement of time grenades, beam polarisers, variable cartridge clips, phosphor flares, electronux, vibroknives, las-whips and strange pointy things. The weapons merchants had even been able to scratch-build a replacement for Wulf's happy-stick, based upon his careful specifications.
¹⁴
His huge beardy grin ever since had attested to the accuracy of the weapon's name.

^{14. "Is der big stick, und at one end is being der heavy for-hitting-things hammer, und at the other end is being der pointy for-stabbing-things dagger. Is simple!"}

"What is der plan?" he growled, hefting the mallet.

"Surprise," Johnny said, arming his blaster. "They're not expecting us. We go in, we find Grinn, we get out. End of story."

"Ah," Wulf sighed, happy at last. "Der shock und awe."

"Right. But shoot to stun."

"What? But-"

"No arguments. They're brainwashed god-botherers, not psychos. If we can get to Grinn without killing anyone, all the better."

Ignoring Wulf's muttering, Johnny depressed a series of controls on the teleporter strapped to his wrist. Wulf followed suit, grizzled fingers making heavy work of the tiny keys.

The ship's autopilot - an eccentric model at the best of times - shouted "weeeeeeee!" as it dipped low into the planet's atmosphere.

"Ready?" said Johnny. Wulf nodded.

"Ready."

Vzzzzzk.

NINETEEN

"My lord?"

"What is it?"

"I'm sorry to interrupt your r-relaxation, oh Great And Divine one, b-bu-"

"Get up, idiot. What do you want?"

"It's... it's the signal you told us to expect, my lord. Your prediction has been fulf-"

"Signal?"

"Y-yes. A-a tightbeamed energy pulse, my lord. Uh, oh, glory-be-unto-thy-prescient-magnificence."

"A signal? You... Then... Sneck! He's here! W-what happened to the signal? After it arrived? Quickly!"

"Th-the AI took over, my lord. A pre-arranged routine, it said. I, I don't understand what it-"

"Shut up! Fetch me a communicator! And spread the word! The third sign is upon us!"

Stanley Everyone felt, frankly, ridiculous.

"Green and yellow is
so
not my colour."

A thick ooze of polymorphic slime slithered from his chin, soiling the skintight kevlycra he'd spent an embarrassing ten minutes squeezing into. The shoulderguards kept poking him whenever he turned, the bandolier felt like he was being cut in half, the gizmos on his wrists kept bleeping, and the idea of drawing his gun from a holster hanging over his groin was simply too loaded with Freudian issues to consider.

Last time Stanley Everyone had met John Alpha the guy had been pointing a gun at him. Wearing a cheap facsimile of his clothes hadn't succeeded in raising the Strontium Dog in his estimation.

Clearing his mind, he kicked down the door of one of the city's many communal dining-cabins and casually shot a few squealing snobs. It was highly therapeutic.

A couple of camera drones circled the periphery of the room. It was all he could do not to wink at them.

WORDS FOR THE DEAD

#7 JOHNNY ALPHA (
née
JOHN KREELMAN)

I'm ready. I'm ready and something's gone wrong.

This would not be a good way to die.

(Not that I'm exactly wild about any other ways, either.)

The Finchleycorp
^TM
teleporter used to be top of the range. Now it's humdrum. Used on a million worlds - if you can afford it. Strictly short range, sight-to-sight, planetary movement corrected. It's basically infallible, as long as you aren't stupid enough to aim for a wall.