Grand Junction (54 page)

The cosmodrome is also a key. A key to the sky. A key to escaping the Thing.

That is why the Thing is attacking the Territory so ferociously. It must
be acting the same way everywhere in the world where there are potentially usable astroport facilities.

One of the first goals he will apply himself to once he has confronted the Thing will be the cosmodrome—restoring the cosmodrome to working order.

Yes. The certainty is there, as perfectly implanted as if it were injected by one of Yuri’s hypodermic syringes.

One day he will turn the cosmodrome’s lights back on, but not to welcome men desirous of returning from the Ring. He will restore everything to working order, including the rockets stored in their hangars.

Of this museum half buried in sand, he will recreate a launch point toward the America of the sky.

The sun is low on the horizon as they near the Ridge. The sharp, fiery light causes points and lines of brilliance to glint on the metal of the police car. Campbell does not even turn his head.

“They’re expecting us.”

“Normal. The sheriff keeps a close eye on every damn Triad in Grand Junction.”

“Yeah, but I called Link and told him according to standard procedure, so Langlois knows about it, too.”

“That won’t stop them from monitoring our entry, Chrysler. That’s just how it is.”

Heavy Metal Valley is the Fortress of the Territory. Its sanctuary. Notifying the sheriff of your arrival doesn’t guarantee you automatic entry into the area; it just keeps you from finding yourself cornered by several patrol cars, with big, nasty cops holding electric billy clubs reminding you how to spell R-E-S-T-R-I-C-T-E-D A-R-E-A, idiot.

“The two French guys,” notes Campbell, stopping in front of the patrol car barring the road.

“Exactly,” replies Yuri, “and it’s going to be day and night.”

Lecerf shared the adventure of the Convoy with them; they have tested each other; the young sniper knows that Yuri and Campbell are capable of killing, and vice versa. He knows they are men, and vice versa. He knows they are ready to die for the Library because it is their mission, just as they know he would die where he stands to defend the Convoy of the Territory, for the same reasons.

The other Frenchman is the one who made it possible for Campbell
to make contact with the sheriff and Link de Nova a little more than two years ago. Chrysler’s father knew him before Chrysler was born, when the man was still just a teenager newly arrived from Europe. The Frenchman’s father also worked for the cosmodrome at the time, and Campbell’s father had more or less been friends with him, apparently.

Schutzberg. An Alsatian. They say he hates Muslims ferociously, and that when Wilbur Langlois decided to have the throats of all their Muslim prisoners cut after the attack on the cosmodrome, Schutzberg had been the first one to volunteer for the job. They say he took care of fifty men by himself, and took evident pleasure in the task.

He is worse than all the other cops in HMV put together. He is not violent; he
is
violence. He is not the Law like Sheriff Wilbur Langlois is; he is the shadow cast by it on the blood-soaked earth.

“He’s a fucking bastard,” says Yuri, “but he’s a Territory cop. The fucking bastards are the ones you have to be nice to, especially when they’re cops. And especially in the Territory.”

“So keep the smile on your face and be nice. We are the Territory,” says Campbell just before he opens the car door.

Later, Yuri will tell himself that the problem is not so much knowing how to be nice to the last cops in the Territory as knowing what to do when the biggest bastard of them all acts somewhat friendly toward you.

Later, Yuri will tell himself they should have been more careful.

“You’re late,” Schutzberg says. “The sheriff wants to see you, urgently.”

“We’re five minutes
late,” replies Campbell, “and I’ve already arranged things with the sheriff. We need to see Link de Nova urgently, and Professor Zarkovsky.”

“Five minutes or five hours, I don’t give a fuck. And the sheriff wants to see you urgently
before
you see Link de Nova and the Professor urgently. Am I making myself clear?”

Campbell glances at Yuri out of the corner of his eye. This guy really is a fucking bastard. But yeah, he’s a Territory cop.

“Okay,” he says, with a sigh of resignation. “Lead us to the sheriff’s office.”

“No,” Schutzberg replies. “We’ve got to stay here. Do you remember the way, or do I need to draw you a map?”

“Are you guarding HMV?” asks Campbell, careful to keep the impertinence out of his voice. “New orders from the sheriff?”

“The only one authorized to answer any questions is the sheriff himself. Actually, I’m not even sure you’re authorized to ask him any.”

Florian Schutzberg really is a fucking bastard, but he’s a true Territory cop, thinks Yuri again. He, too, would sacrifice himself without the slightest hesitation to ensure the success of his mission, to protect Heavy Metal Valley, to obey the Law of Bronze, to cast his shadow on the blood-soaked earth.

They all belong to this land; their blood has flowed here for thousands and thousands of years. But soon there will be no human blood left to spill to quench its thirst; they will all have lost not only their lives but their deaths.

Who would have thought that this just-ending day would be another of the majestic and terrible “Turning Points” that have been ceaselessly occurring in his life for months now? He had said to Link de Nova, after one of those cataclysmic days, that it might be the first but it wouldn’t be the last.

In fact, he thinks, as they face a new and sudden change of situation, it is like the whole business of false numerical infinity and true ontological infinity; nothing can be added. There is no succession of turning point days. There is really only one event, even if it seems divided into a series of repetitions. There is only a single day, a single turning point, and he is only just now reaching the curve.

At very high speed.

The total and sudden change of situation is happening before his eyes and, strangely, he is hardly surprised. The Turning Point Day is continuing; that’s all. The Great Day/Night of Change. The Daynight of the Territory.

And this is what is happening at the moment:

The sheriff’s office, the midnight blue police trailer, has swallowed them like a huge rectangular whale.

Inside it, Wilbur Langlois is waiting for them with Slade Vernier, Erwin Slovak, and a third deputy, a man originally from Ottawa named Bob Chamberlain.

Campbell asks the reason for this mandatory, unplanned visit. He begins to explain that the situation in the Territory is worsening fast; that they are overextended; that the Triads are now keeping them from doing their work correctly, but that they have compiled all the data in their possession and they need to get it to the Professor as soon as possible. …

The sheriff replies with the machine smile of the Law of Bronze. The Law smiles like a gun at the moment it shoots a bullet, with fire, powder, and steel. And it is with great calm that he explains to them that the
entire
situation changed, suddenly and completely, the moment they set foot in his territory, in the county of Heavy Metal Valley, and in the sheriff’s office itself.

“I can’t place you formally under arrest, but I have the right to put you in a monitored residence within Humvee.”

“The right?” repeats Campbell sarcastically. “The right to act like the Great Mogul? You’d better tell yourself this is only a dream; you’ll wake yourself right up.”

Yuri smiles. The good old Territory joke.

But the sheriff is not joking.

“I’m going to confiscate all the firearms that are probably still hidden in your pickup—and the pickup, too. You cannot leave HMV—and I mean Humvee, the city itself—without my permission, nor can you cross the borders of the county.”

“I hope you’ve got some very good reasons for acting illegally this way, Sheriff.”

Wilbur Langlois’ smile does not alter; it seems suspended for eternity, with the Law, above the blood-soaked earth.

“I am the Law, Campbell; and beyond that, I have excellent reasons for my actions. To start, what would you say to a very strong suspicion of murder in the first degree, with the complicity of your friend here?”

Campbell knows every ruse in the Territory, thinks Yuri; he won’t flinch at this one.
Maybe they found the body of the man with the red Buick. Maybe I didn’t do enough to make sure it would disappear at the bottom of the lake
.

“Murder? The last time I committed a ‘murder,’ as you say, Sheriff, we were together in the Notre Dame mountains, and if I remember correctly you would have a lot more charges to answer to than my ‘acolyte’ and I would.”

“You’re a good one, Campbell. I want you to know I respect both you and your young friend. I know a lot about you in particular; I only met your father after he left the county, when you were born and they moved to Omega Blocks. But he came back here when I took over after the death of John Winston Lagarde, the previous sheriff, who was killed when an operation went wrong in the northern part of the strip. After that I didn’t see him much, but we’d cross paths from time to time at the cosmodrome
when he became head of security for Platform 1. He was a good man, your father.”

“Are you arresting us because of my father’s career, Sheriff? I hope you’ve got a better argument than that.”

“I told you, you and Yuri are probably going to be accused of murder. I’m simply handling things for the short term. It’s unexpected and … let’s say, a little complicated to manage, let alone to explain, but I can assure you, Campbell, that if I tell you I’m looking at the possibility of accusing you of murder, you can bet I’ve got a few cards up my sleeve.”

“Let’s see what kind of cards—and what kind of sleeve.”

Wilbur Langlois simply gestures in the direction of his deputy Erwin Slovak, another European who, Yuri knows, told the sheriff about the embezzlements committed by Pluto Saint-Clair. It was the sheriff who then told them about it. And the loop closes here. Closes on them, like the teeth of a trap that didn’t even know it was a trap.

Erwin Slovak is like a cop replica of Campbell, another human computer. He begins, calmly, evenly, and precisely, to explain the evidence against them. He really is a lot like them; he may be a cop, but he talks more like a doctor than a killer. The cop-killer-doctor is in the process of unveiling the truth—naked, simple, and disarmed. But it is useless.

Because Yuri has already realized, as has Campbell—their good old intuitive connection—that the day they die, each of them will know very exactly what the other is experiencing.

Erwin Slovak is a man with a lot of experience. One day, Yuri heard Slade Vernier alluding to his talents as a soldier:
He was a mercenary for several military private contractors during the Grand Jihad. I know before that he started his career in the Foreign Legion during the Second French Civil War; then, after the defeat of the Republican isolationists, he joined the SAS. He had British citizenship through his mother. Then war broke out in its turn in England, and then in all of southern Europe. I don’t know how he ended up coming here after the Fall, but the sheriff hired him immediately on the basis of experience. Hierarchically, he’s one of my lieutenants. He commands the second squadron
.

The report by one Territory soldier on another Territory soldier. But it was enough to give a very precise idea of the talents possessed by the man in question.

The sheriff was not mistaken. The Law of Bronze knows how to recognize its guardians.

The Anglo-German-Czech cop—a neo-European typical of the post-Fall world—managed to spy on Pluto Saint-Clair, Link de Nova, and the
two teenagers from New Arizona a few days before the arrival of the Convoy; he had gone unnoticed despite not having taken any particular precautions. Then he had followed them,
them
, with Pluto Saint-Clair, Link de Nova, and the man they had killed in cold blood. And he had gone unnoticed. Despite all their precautions.

“You’re very good. At around fifty meters you would have been able to see him, and surprise him.”

And Yuri thinks: But he’s the one who saw us, and he didn’t come to surprise us, that night, in the middle of nowhere in Champlain Banks.

He came so the sheriff could surprise us, at his chosen moment,
on his own territory
.

Now Milan Djordjevic takes up the thread of the narrative. He is not only a member of the grand jury, he is the father of Link de Nova. He will be even more difficult to get around, thinks Yuri, than the sheriff and his Law of Bronze.

“Your son is young and he wants to do good,” Campbell replies to Djordjevic’s opening volley. “Yes, he sometimes makes mistakes, but this time it was because he fell in with Junkville scum like Pluto Saint-Clair.”

“I’ve told my son from the beginning not to get mixed up with your dirty little business; now look where it has led us!”

“Listen, Mr. Djordjevic; I’m going to be very clear about this, for once and for all: We are not trafficking in organs or anything else. We are collecting information to help Link—excuse me, Gabriel—to counteract the effects of the Thing. We receive nothing in return but a well-deserved salary that barely covers our expenses. On the other hand, your son’s gifts, Mr. Djordjevic, have helped the whole community of HMV. Without him, even the sheriff’s dog would be blind and probably dead as we speak. So you would do well, simply put, to reevaluate your position. It is illogical. And counterproductive.”

“It’s going to be more and more difficult to keep the secret about Gabriel,” remarks the sheriff.

“I know that, Sheriff Langlois, but my programmable scopolamine still works very well. That said, we can’t lose sight of the fact that it was the immunization campaign that Link—excuse me, Gabriel—conducted here in ’64 and ’65 that led to all the rumors. Rumors we selected, hand-picked, and analyzed until they led us straight back to Link—excuse me, Gabriel—two years ago. You were very lucky that we were the first ones
to figure it out. Others—Mr. Djordjevic, to be exact—would have been much less picky.”