Prophet Margin (18 page)

Hired a gang of xowpokes,
the note read when the youth passed it over.
Said they nuked the concert as a sort of diversion. Said they had to steal something during the chaos.

Johnny scowled. "Steal something? What?"

Roolán snatched at the paper again.

Don't know. Guy passed out before he'd say. I want to be a Strontium Dog.

Johnny blinked at the last sentence, looking up at the youngster in surprise. The youth met his empty stare, and again Johnny could almost feel the anger radiating from his eyes. He was hurting. He was thirsty for revenge. Johnny didn't need to use his freakish eyes to know it.

He wanted to say: Roolán, a Stront has to be detached. You get too personal, you get too involved, you're just another psycho. He wanted to say: You won't last five minutes, and if you do, it won't be as a professional - it'll be as a monster. You'll be exactly what all those xenophobic sneckwits back on earth think you are.

He wanted to say: You'll be a freak, Roolán. A nutjob. A psycho.

He wanted to say: Money isn't much of a reason for killing someone, but it's better than doing it for hate.

But he couldn't handle the hypocrisy, so instead he said, "I see," and chewed his lip. "That's... well... It's a big step."

The pencil scratched across the paper.

I've thought about it.

"You... Look, no offence, but you should think about it some more."

What else am I going to do?

Johnny fidgeted. Talking had never been his strong point - particularly when it came to talking youths out of the worst decisions of their lives. But then, hadn't joining the SDs been the making of him? Hadn't it been the only thing he'd ever been good at? Hadn't it been like salvation? Hadn't he found a release in "the hunt" - that polite euphemism that he knew meant "the kill"? Hadn't he enjoyed it?

Then again, hadn't it taken away any chance he might ever have had of being human?

Roolán sat and stared, fire in his eyes and hate twisting his guts, and Johnny thought: yeah. Just like me at that age. At any age.

What else am I going to do?
, the paper read. Roolán waved it for emphasis.

"You should get some rest," Johnny said. "It's been a tough day."

They found Everyone's Skodashrike
^TM
the next day, deserted in the shadows of a rocky gorge. Mired in smog, the area could hardly be less pleasant. From the air, there was no sign of Everyone, no sign of why he'd come to this place.

"Snecking eerie, Alpha," was Kid Knee's analysis.

The Dilûu settled in the sludge of the swamp with all the grace and care of a sledgehammer, honking in satisfaction at the water lapping around its sides.

Johnny shook his head. "There goes our element of surprise. Again."

He drew his blaster and slipped down the Dilûu's sweaty flanks, crouching and combat alert in the mud, staring along the barrel. The landscape remained ominously empty; only Everyone's car - the hood still warm - seemed out of place.

Footprints, already filling with water, led away through the unhealthy trees and into the gorge itself. Johnny triggered a burst of alpha-waves across the desolate landscape, hoping for a glimpse of a scurrying body, some hint of biological heat, maybe the flicker of a sniper's rifle. No traces of life were forthcoming.

"Roolán," he said. "You stay here."

Up in the howdah, the youth's eyes flashed dangerously, brows bunching. He seized the pencil and started scribbling furiously on the pad of paper.

"Skip it," Johnny barked. "We need someone to stay with Fido. You see anything, just give us a sh... Whistle. Can you whistle?"

Roolán nodded, morose.

Johnny knew the look, and could quite easily imagine what was going through the youth's mind. "I mean it," he said, emphatic. "You stay here. This isn't a holoflick. The Plucky Young Companion doesn't save the day. The Plucky Young Companion disobeys orders and gets himself killed. Understood?"

Roolán slunk back into the howdah with a grouchy salute.

Kid Knee stared down from beside him. "Thing is," he burbled, patting the Dilûu's greasy skin, "me and Fido, we've formed this sort of b-"

"No," Johnny sighed. "You're coming with me."

"Sneck."

The footprints vanished at the edge of the path, by which point they'd become entirely redundant anyway. Johnny and the Kid had made a discovery.

Set well back from the gorge, cowering amongst the crags and fissures like a limpet with agoraphobia, was a doorway. Sealed in steel, wide enough for a decent sized car to fit through (had it been able to negotiate the craggy rise first), it was shielded from prying eyes by an overhang of solidified lava, like an old man's beard face. Only here at ground level, looking up along a naturally formed path, was it obvious that extensive digging works had been carried out. The gorgeside, some part of it at least, had been hollowed out.

This far beyond civilisation, on a random patch of rock in a random swamp on a random uninhabited continent, coming across a secure bunker installation was a little like finding an all night Bingorama bobbing about in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
⁹

^{9. Such as, for example, AquaBingoLand, founded 2134. The development sunk in 2135 when the combined mass of its punters - mainly obese gambling addicts from NeoVegas - overcame its buoyancy. Insurance companies blamed the on-duty Bingo Caller for the loss of all hands, claiming that his repeated shrieks of "Too fat, ladies!" may have confused the customers.}

"Well, sneck me," the Kid said.

Johnny vaguely wondered how many women on how many worlds had turned down that offer, then berated himself for being cruel. For all he knew, the Kid led a full and active sex life, rich with the deviant acts of gratification that came from having a mouth below one's hips.

But probably not.

"Stay quiet," Johnny murmured, doing his best not to imagine anything unsavoury. It was a well established fact that if a mutant was unable to get a job with the Search/Destroy agency there were always careers available in Madam Sutra's chain of UnCleanGene
^TM
brothels. Sutra's selection of highly motivated mutantric girls and boys (etc) prided themselves on having Something For Anyone. Johnny was staring at the Kid in morbid appraisal when - mercifully - something moved on the edge of his vision and interrupted his thought process.

Reacting before the motion was even established in his mind, he pounced across the rocky path and grabbed the Kid's shoulders, dragging him bodily into the shadow.

"Ow! That hu-"

"Shhh!"

Someone was coming out of the doorway. As silent as a snake, Johnny drew his blaster. The Kid followed suit more reluctantly. His shakes had started already.

A voice filtered through the drifting fog: irritated bluster unmistakable as Stanley Everyone's.

"Stupid bloody thing, quit snecking around! We're leaving."

Johnny fixed his eyes on the rock he was hiding behind, cutting through its layers of strata as though peeling an onion. In his vision the world became a lattice of ghostly light skeins, bunching around corners and contours. Peering through the solid rock, Johnny could make out Everyone as clear as day.

"He's alone," he whispered. "Unarmed."

The Kid grinned beside him, relief oozing from him like sweat. His shakes died away.

"For the Boddah's sake!" Everyone snarled, now close enough for the hunters to hear his footsteps, "would you just stop it? Come out where I can see you! We haven't got time for this shit!"

The Kid started shaking again, eyes wide. "H-he knows we're here," he breathed, words competing with alcohol-tinged halitosis for Johnny's attention.

"He's not talking to us," Johnny hissed, caution staining his thoughts. The fat shapeshifter gestured frantically around the path, apparently addressing the empty air.

Someone in an invisibility suit perhaps? An etherbeing? A fractal assassin, slipping through the air around Everyone?

But no, Johnny's mutant eyes would have seen all of them: flickering shadows and hints of heat, nebulous clouds of trace radiation, coiling Mandelbrot patterns...

There was nothing there. Nobody.

Everyone's stomping progress carried him past the lurking hunters.

"Was supposed to be your hideout," he was ranting. "Supposed to stay here, weren't you? But I know, oooh yes, I know. The boss might think butter wouldn't snecking melt, my little horror, but I know. I've seen the papers, yessiree. Fifteen tramps and that's just the ones they could find. Couldn't help yourself, could you? Eh? Snuffling about in town when you're supposed to be locked up nice and tight out here. Greedy little bastard. Don't think for a second you'll get away with that sneck while I'm around, you hear me? Boss has given me a remote control, see? I'm in charge."

"He's talking to himself," Johnny whispered, trying to reassure himself. "Must be mad."

The Kid didn't look convinced. Johnny ignored his pale kneed look of terror and tensed. It was now or never.

"You ready?"

The Kid shook his head.

"Tough."

Johnny leapt from cover like the proverbial jack-in-the-box, blaster brandished. Somewhere behind him his partner surfaced from the shadows with all the haste of a bubble rising through mud, furious clickings accompanying his struggle to prime his blaster.

"That's far enough, Stanley!" Johnny called, taking careful aim at the back of the fat man's head.

Everyone jumped in alarm, skin flexing through a kaleidoscope of colours and shapes. The back of his head melted like hot wax, eyes and mouth forming in the centre of the blobby mass, facial features accreting with liquid precision. Without moving a muscle, he'd effectively turned in his spot. A thick sludge of mucal paste slithered from his skin to puddle around his feet.

"Ah," he said, face unreadable. "Mr Alpha. Ever persistent." He smiled, arrogance smeared like paint across his face. "I was just the same, y'know, in my day. You want to tell me what I'm supposed to have done? And you might wanna tell your pet there his safety's still on."

Kid Knee finally managed to arm his blaster, legs blushing.

"I've got evidence placing you at the scene of a crime," Johnny said, ignoring his partner.

"Oh?"

"Bio-waste. All over a bombsite back on earth."

"That's it?" The man chuckled, folding his arms with shake of his head. Johnny glanced around the rockface, alert for threats. Something didn't feel right.

"That's what this is all about?" Everyone chuckled. "A bit of slime? Wouldn't stand up in a court of law, Alpha. Not exactly hard to get hold of." He waved towards the ground at his feet; the goo already starting to solidify. "Could have been planted by anyone."

"But we both know it wasn't, don't we?"

"Come off it, Alpha. You think I'm gonna stand here and confess to all my sins? They had case-recorders in my day too, you know." He pointed a lazy finger towards the pommel of Alpha's helmet, the miniature AI within busily recording the confrontation.

"So I'll switch it off," Alpha shrugged. "I'll do you a deal, Stan. You're not the big fish here. You're mixed up with Grinn up to your flabby arse, we both know it. I'm not interested in you."

"No?"

"No. Tell me what you know. I'll let you walk."

Everyone's eyes - colours and shapes changing every few moments - narrowed.

"Not interested in me?"

"Right."

"So, let me get this straight. John Alpha, renowned Strontium Dog, is going to let his mark walk away? Just like that."

"Just like that."

"Pull the other one, Alpha." Everyone's lips rippled; somewhere between a smile and a grimace. He wiped slime from his eyes. "Thing is Johnny, unless things have changed since my days with the agency - which they haven't - you..." he threw a derisory look towards the Kid, "
men
are sanctioned to hunt wanted criminals, right?"

"I'll ask the questions, Stanley."

"Right. So you won't mind showing me my arrest warrant, will you? I seem to recall that's the one demand you can't refuse."

Johnny curled his lip. The Kid threw him an uncertain glance. Stanley Everyone started to laugh.

Johnny renewed his grip on the blaster. "Pursuit of known criminals," he said, reciting from memory, "and their associates. Using reasonable force."

"I know the deal, Alpha," Everyone slurred, waving it away as if insignificant. "But I can't see the GCC looking at the comprehensive destruction of a multi-billion-cred mansion, belonging to an innocent man as reasonable-snecking-force. Can you?"

"Where's Grinn?" Alpha snarled.

"You know," the fat man sneered, "it's sort of funny, what you said. You said that I'm not the big fish. You remember that?"

"Grinn, Stanley. Last chance!"

"Big fish. That's what you said you were looking for. Heh, it's ironic. I got news for you, Alpha. That big fish, it's right behind you."

The Kid shrieked.

Johnny felt a shadow blossom behind him. That weird sixth sense that had been clanging about his mind, that feeling of being watched, being stalked, being hunted - switched itself off in outraged protest. He dived to one side, promising himself that if he got out of this mess he'd pay more attention to his hunches in the future. As he landed he rolled, pushing one armoured shoulder into the rock and tumbling aside, spinning to see whatever stealthy attacker had crept up on him so successfully.

"Oh," he said. "Oh sweet snecking sneck."

It was the big fish. The very big fish.

FOURTEEN

Amongst the wreckage, high piles of broken components and chassis parts, something moved. Every so often a feeble
knock-knock-knock
sounded from beneath the detritus, as if the world's largest earthworm was writhing below a rubbish tip. The fact that it, along with all the scrap metal and shattered rock, was strewn across the ceiling, merely added to the weirdness.

Wulf stood - or dangled, depending upon how one looked at it - and stared up.