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  "Any chance of a belt of Shochaiku Double-Blend, Magda?" he asked Mrs ze Schluderpacheru.

  The owner looked up from her calculations and raised an eyebrow. Her feathered hat bobbed.

  "Now, Curtius, honey, you know I keep that stuff only for my special customers."

  Magda ze Schluderpacheru was Romanian, originally. Like Jitters, she had knocked around the world a bit and wound up in Dead Rat. Bloody buggering shame if you asked him. Nice people ending up clogging this plughole when the PZs were full of undeserving wankers, wallies, wasters and wooftahs.

  "Ain't I one of your special customers?"

  "Hell, not since you gave Hot Pants Hannah that dose of the Cincinatti Pox you ain't."

  "That weren't me."

  "You goddam prove it, and then maybe I'll dig out that bottle."

  "Any time, Magda, any time." Curtius started unbuckling his gunbelt.

  "Hold on there, cowpoke. I don't mean like that. I mean with a medical certificate."

  "Ah shee-it, I ain't going to no mad doctor and gettin' mah pecker all X-rayed. Probably shrivel up like a cactus in a microwave. Haw haw haw."

  Curtius Kenne thought he was funny.

  "Then, cowpoke, you better get used to having nothing but cows to poke for a while."

  "Whisky, straight."

  Mrs ze Schluderpacheru poured Curtius a shot. Even her sumpstuff was okay by Big Empty standards. If you poured it on the table, it probably wouldn't even eat half-way through.

  "Thank you kindly ma'am. That's a real nice dead bird you got on your hat. You kiss it to death yerself? Haw haw haw."

  Curtius Kenne was a bloody nuisance, and sooner or later someone would put a ScumStopper under his heart and get himself free drinks on the house for a month.

  The cowboy turned around, and surveyed the bar. He looked at Connie and licked his nose. She ignored him, and turned up the sound on the telly. Disappointed, Curtius looked for amusement elsewhere.

  "Has anybody heard the one about the Maniak Chieftain and the six-weeks-dead camel corpse?"

  "You told us yesterday," said Margaret Running Deer.

  "Yeah, and the day before that," said Connie, touching up her lipstick with a finger to cover the razorscar under her nose.

  "And it wasn't funny then," said the Indian Girl, picking her nails with her scalping stiletto.

  Having had no luck with the girls, Curtius finally noticed Jitters in the corner. A mean look crept into his eyes.

  "Hey Jitters, you limey bastid, last Thursday I saw me some Argentinian fellers marching down Main Street with GenTech weapons. You still runnin' away from that there South Atlantic battle?"

  Jitters hadn't run away. He had been ordered to make a tactical withdrawal. It had been a rout, but that hadn't been his fault. Nobody had known how well equipped the bloody buggering Argies would be.

  He didn't say anything. Curtius took his drink and carried it over to the corner. He sat down.

  "Hell, you limeys are yellower'n a cat's pee on a canary. We've bailed you out of two freakin' world wars, and you're still whinin' about it. You oughtta get yourselves some backbone. Get yourselves some real men, you know, maybe you could buy some of John Wayne's frozen sperm and impregnate some of your frigid women with it. Get yourselves a generation with cojones the size of key limes, eh?"

  Jitters just smiled, and sipped his drink.

  "Leave him alone, zeroid," shouted Mrs ze Schluderpacheru. "Jitters is all right. He never gave nobody no venereable diseases."

  Curtius grinned, showing off the diamond inset into his front tooth.

  "Me and old Jitters is just having a sociable little drink, Magda. Chatting over old times. He was like a war hero, y'know. Got his ass peppered at Goose Green."

  Jitters had been wounded in the first landing, in the shoulder. It hadn't been what they'd been told to expect by the Daily Mail. They didn't know that the Argies had GenTech and G-Mek hardware. They'd all gone over the side, singing Johnny Lydon's hit 'Who Do You Think You Are Kidding, Mr Galtieri,' and 98% of them hadn't made it to the beaches. In five minutes, everyone he had been with on the long voyage over from Pompey was dead. Jitters had been wounded early, and washed back to the landing craft. They'd piled him in with the dead, and it was only later a naval ensign noticed him twitching. That was when they started calling him Jitters. He still twitched.

  "You're a blister on the behind, Curtius," Mrs ze Schluderpacheru shouted, "leave him alone or you're barred for life."

  Curtius took his drink, smiled slowly, and backed away.

  "So long, hero. Hey, I heard me a new one. What's red, white and blue and got piss all over it? A British flag in Buenos Aires, haw haw haw! Good 'un, ain't it?"

  Jitters drank his drink.

  V

  She ran the five miles from Doc Threadneedle's place in twenty minutes. Not a world record, but acceptable. She wasn't sweating, but there was a pleasurable sense of exertion. Some time, she would have to push herself, to find out exactly how improved she was. For a real workout, she'd need an opponent. She experimented with her new optic, shifting her patch to her right eye and perceiving the world through heat patterns. She saw the sands cooling as the temperature fell.

  She was wearing a black karate suit It was loose, but felt good. She ran on bare feet.

  Her heightened senses were working overtime. She would have to get used to that. She was sensing far more people and ve-hickles in the area than could possibly be there. For a while, she would have to downscale her first impressions. Doc Threadneedle had warned her about it.

  He bicycled alongside her, keeping level, occasionally asking questions and nodding to himself.

  "No prob here," he kept saying.

  He set her tasks, and she accomplished them. "That rock, vault over it," or "the old fence, run through it." It was easy.

  "When do I get to squeeze a lump of coal into a diamond?"

  Doc Threadneedle laughed. "When I can stop a speeding locomotive with one bound."

  "It's a deal."

  The town was just coming alive, as she got to the Silver Shuriken. Sandrats were pouring in to fence their weekly scav. A Maniak chapter had been through last week, and one or two of them were still around, enjoying the yakuza hospitality at the ze Schluderpacheru place. The gaudy girls were being kept busy.

  Doc Threadneedle parked his bike next to two Maniak sickles, and chained it to the hitching post, setting the boobycharges in the padlock to blow if anybody tried to tamper with it.

  They went into the saloon.

  "Doc, honey," said a large woman behind the bar. Doc Threadneedle leaned over and kissed her. Her mainly exposed bosoms wobbled over the top of her black corset. Looking at her heat patterns, Jessamyn saw the cold outlines of the wavy dagger and the pepperpot charge-gun stashed in her garterbelt stark against the warmth.

  "Jessamyn, this is Magda. She's a friend."

  "Ohayu, sweetheart," said the woman. "Welcome to the Shuriken. First drink is on the house. Sake?"

  Jessamyn thought a moment. "Scotch and Canada."

  Doc Threadneedle was startled. "Not yet, Jessamyn. You'll burn out your greymass. Try a perrier."

  "Okay, mineral water."

  Magda took a green bottle from the cooler and poured a tall glass of sparkling liquid. Jessamyn took a swallow. Her altered tastebuds tingled, and she felt a spasm of pleasure in her stomach.

  "Whew! That's a kick!"

  "Get used to it."

  Magda fished out a bottle of Shochaiku, and gave Doc Threadneedle a shot. He sipped it.

  Jessamyn thought it out. "I get it. It wasn't the alcohol you thought would hit me…"

  "Of course not, your greymass could shrug off a concentrated squirt of pure smacksynth."

  "…it was the taste."

  "Right. You've got a touch of extrasensitivity. Work up to the extremes."

  She drank some more water. It was beyond anything she had ever experienced. "I feel like a new girl."

  "Jessamyn,
you are a new girl."

  She began to relax. This was fun. She hadn't expected to have fun ever again. (In the back of her mind, the moonface tick-tocked, tugging her towards her responsibilities.) She looked around the bar. It was typical of the places she had been in during her Psychopomp days. Half Oldstyle-Western, half Scavsurplus-High Tech. The customers drank and drugged peacefully, trying not to make contact with each other, and the gaudy girls plied their trade quietly.

  There was a cowboy song on the juke, "I Dreamed of a Hillbilly Heaven," and the two Maniax were practicing their fast draws against a GenTech Amusements Machine that zapped you insensible with a light voltage if the computer-generated gunslinger cleared leather faster than you did. One of them lost a showdown, and slumped on the shockplate, dropping the gamegun. His gangbuddy pulled out a real gun, and cocked it.

  "Whoa there, big fella," said Magda. "Them things are expensive."

  Jessamyn thought the Maniak might start a fight—she needed some action just now, her muscles tingled—but the heavy-set panzerboy backed down, and hauled his pal off.

  "Just natural high spirits," Magda said. "Them boys skinned a solo Op out in the sand last week, fenced his hide to the yakmen. Well off his trail, this feller was. Some fancy-pants search-and-destroy customer from Los Angeles, California."

  "Which agency?" Doc asked. "Holderness-Manolo."

  "I've heard of them. Glamour boys. Industrial warfare, mostly. The occasional movie star divorce. High flyers. They don't come in-country often."

  Jessamyn sipped her drink. There must still be warrants out on her. But it didn't mean anything. There would be paper out on nine-tenths of the people in the room, including the gaudy girls and the town drunk. This was a townload of fugitives. Buzzsaw the cat was probably high on the FBI's Most Wanted Felines list.

  "Any idea who the solo was gunning for?"

  "Nahh, could've been anybody? The Red Baron was through a month or two back, racking up his score. And an esperado by the name of Al Amogordo took Buck Standish out on Main Street Wednesday last. Crossed his eyes and exploded Old Buck's head in some quarrel over a high yaller lady, then hit the trail in Buck's G-Mek convertible."

  "There'd be a price on him."

  "Yeah. The solo was probably after Al."

  Doc Threadneedle ordered another drink, and tipped a few drops into Jessamyn's water. “Try that."

  It was astonishing. "This is better than sex."

  "Have sex, and then see what you think."

  Jessamyn cooled out her mouth.

  A cowboy sauntered over to the bar, and sidled up next to them.

  "Hey, beaut, you in the market for some home-baked Western-style lovin'?"

  She looked him over. "Come on, Wyatt Earp" she said, "do I look like a hog-tied sheep to you?"

  The cowboy pushed his stetson back onto the crown of his head. He had thick-oiled hair, and old acne scars.

  "Well, hell, lady, if that's your attitude, perhaps you'd better just sew it up, sister, cause there ain't no better stud bull than Curtius Kenne in the whole territory."

  Magda laughed. "Ignore him, Jessamyn. He just won the election. The town hasn't had an Official Asshole for too long."

  Curtius smiled, and a gem sparkled. "Jessamyn? That's a real purty name. Is that for real?"

  "Yes. Excuse me."

  She grabbed him by the back of his neck, and scraped her empty glass across his smile. He screeched, and she let him go. He was bleeding from the mouth. She looked at her glass. It was not scratched.

  "Paste, huh? I thought synthetic stones were getting better these days."

  "Why you…"

  He drew his hand back, and she reached out to stop the punch. It was as simple as catching a falling cup. She pushed a little too hard, and Curtius shouted.

  "My shoulder."

  Doc Threadneedle stepped in, and gave the cowboy's arm a wrench, setting the joint back in true.

  "Sorry. Don't know my own strength."

  Kenne was mad now. Everyone in the bar was looking.

  "You're…you're one of them things, ain't you?"

  There was fear and hatred in his voice. "What do you mean?"

  "One of the Doc's monsters. You ain't human. Hell, Doc, your packagin' gets better and better, but what you put inside stinks to high heaven, you know. It's gettin' so a fella don't know where he's dippin' it. I take it all back, sister. You're just a sexclone with steel teeth, and I ain't interested."

  The drunk in the corner, who wore what was left of some kind of camouflage outfit, came over, pulling a revolver out of his britches pocket. Jessamyn tensed, ready to shear his head off his neck with a karate move.

  Magda shook her head, and Jessamyn relaxed. The drunk plonked his gun down on the bar.

  "You've got a quarrel, settle it this way. Best of seven."

  "This is Jitters," Magda said. "He's British."

  The drunk saluted smartly. His hand vibrated. She didn't need to be Sherlock Holmes to know how he had picked up his nick-name. Jessamyn hefted his gun. It was a seven-shot model, a Webley and Scott .38 Bulldog, standard British Army Issue. A toy next to a ScumStopper Magnum, but it could do the job. She broke it, and slid five slugs out, leaving two consecutive bullets chambered. She sighted down the barrel. It was off, but it would do for a round of roulette.

  "You game, cowboy?"

  Kenne gulped, and looked around for a way out. "Guess I am, Mizz Frankenstein, guess I am."

  "Ladies first?" She pointed the gun to her temple.

  "Toss you for it."

  Magda dropped a one-armed bandit token on the bar. Kenne guessed lemon, and won the first pull.

  Click.

  He sighed with relief, and passed the gun over. Then, he took a shot of whisky. Magda refilled his glass. It vanished down his throat, by-passed his stomach and stood out on his forehead as droplets of 90% proof sweat.

  "The good stuff, huh?"

  "Fella deserves Shochaiku if it's gonna be his last drink."

  Jessamyn slipped the barrel into her mouth, and sucked it like a lollipop, fluttering her eyelashes at Kenne. His eyes popped.

  Click.

  "Your move."

  "Good thing it's Curtius," Magda said, "if'n he blows his brains out, at least we won't be all day scraping them off the floor. Just my dainty little hankie will be enough to clean up that kind of a smeared speck."

  Kenne's adam's apple was bobbing up and down. Jessamyn looked him in the face, smiling pleasantly. Shutting his eyes tight, he jammed the gun against his skull, and…

  Click.

  "Give it here."

  He was reluctant to let it go. She raised the gun, and pulled the trigger.

  Click. "Bang," she said. Everybody jumped. Kenne spilled his drink. "No, really, just joking."

  Kenne took the gun.

  "Have you worked it out, cowboy? Three chambers, two bullets. Short odds."

  They'd turned the music off now. Jitters was sucking at a bottle. Only Doc Threadneedle was apparently uninterested in the game.

  Kenne looked at the saloon door. The Maniax were standing between him and it. That was his bad luck. The gangboys were in the entertainment mood tonight, and nothing appealed to them more than watching some asshole respray the ceiling with greymass. He looked down at the gun, which must be feeling pretty heavy.

  "Two chances out of three, cowboy."

  He did it quickly. Up to his head. Pull. Click.

  He let out a whoop, and slammed the gun down onto the bar, breaking glasses.

  "Whooo-eee, I thought I was gonna fill my britches fer sure, sister. Looks like I win, eh? Unless you want to play on, Mizz Frankie Stein?"

  Jessamyn picked up the gun.

  "You can go home now, sister. It's all over. Buy us all drinks, and it'll be forgotten. Ain't nobody gonna hold it against you."

  She put the barrel to her temple.

  "You don't have to do it," said Magda. "That would be crazy. Even Curtius ain't that big an asshole."

>   Her finger tightened.

  "Hold on there," Kenne pleaded. "Two out of two, remember. Them's crazy person's odds."

  "Jessamyn…" said the Doc. "Stop it."

  Everyone in the saloon was looking at her. Their heat-patterns flared, as if they were blushing all over.

  She pulled the trigger.

  VI

  Cocooned inside the air-cooled cockpit of his DeLorean "Snowbird" SandMaster, Bronson Manolo checked the dispositions of the Holderness-Manolo forces surrounding Dead Rat. Within five minutes, they should all be in place.

  Once the spotman reported back that Jessamyn Amanda Bonney was in Dead Rat, Manolo had called in Holm Rodriguez from Denver and Susie Terhune from Phoenix. Terhune was an assault specialist solo who had subcontracted for H-M on several occasions, and Rodriguez was their top Colorado Op, further qualified because he came from the quarry's home turf. When he was with the Denver paycops, he had busted little Jessamyn on some juvie beefs. Truancy, stealing lollipops, pulling PZ brats' pigtails, whistling commie songs in church, assault with a deadly weapon: kidstuff like that.

  "One good thing about this action," Terhune claimed, "at least nobody in Dead Rat could possibly be classed as an 'innocent bystander'."

  H-M had enough field Ops to handle the sanction, but Manolo recognized his limitations, and had had Rodriguez and Terhune augment his forces with some local soldiers who knew the sand. Most of his full-scale skirmishes had been in NoGos or Urban Blight areas. Out here in the Big Empty, the situation was quite different. Less cover, more miles. This was sandrat heaven. He was quite willing to delegate field command to Terhune until the objective was obtained.

  He checked his GenTech digital chronometer against the dashdial. He was synchronized with the machine.

  "Ommm," he said to himself, shifting his level of psychic awareness, "ommm."

  Gari the Guru had given his blessing on this sanction down at the Pyramid. "You can't destroy, Bronson, you can only convert a thing's form." That was true, converting forms was Manolo's business. He took nasty live people, and turned them into nice dead ones. Bob Holderness would have been proud of him.