Ian McDonald - Desolation Road

“Do not be afraid,” boomed the taped messages. “Desolation Road is being liberated from the tyranny of the Bethlehem Ares Corporation by the Whole Earth Army Tactical Group: do not be alarmed. We repeat, you are being liberated. Please remain calm and render all assistance to the liberation forces. Thank you.”

Behind the methane tank Arnie Tenebrae slipped off the excrementsmeared burnoose that had for five days concealed her battle suit and combat pack. She painted her face in the semblance of the Deathbird and slipped on her microphone set.

“Group 19, to me,” she whispered. “All other battle groups as ordered.” In their prearranged positions around the perimeter of Corporation Plaza, a dozen similarly attired Penitential Mendicants threw off their disguises and moved through the crowd toward the Company offices. Even as the airborne troops touched down, released their harnesses, and moved to their planned positions controlling the power plant, the landing field, the station, the truck depot, the mayor’s office, the police barracks, the microwave link, the solar power plant, the banks, the law offices and transport depots, Arnie Tenebrae rendezvoused with her battle group and stormed the sanctum of Bethlehem Ares Steel.

As old Mrs. Kanderambelow, who operated the telephone exchange, made tea for the six polite if rather frighteningly decorated young men in battle dress, and Dominic Frontera found himself staring down the emission heads of four field inducers, Group 19 rode up to the executive levels in the executive elevator. Miss Fanshaw, the Company Secretary of the Year, rose from her desk to protest the unwarranted invasion and was smeared all over the wall by a ram of gravito-strong force. Arnie Tenebrae blew in the black and gold door with its black and gold crest and strolled in.

“Good afternoon,” she said to the tear-stained, blood-stained, humiliated section managers, plant supervisors, financial directors, marketing chiefs and personnel consultants. “Where’s the North West Quartersphere Projects and Developments Manager/Director?” A sudden shrill of energy answered her and stabbed a crater in Sub-lieutenant Henry Chan’s stomach. He goggled at the unfamiliar sight of his spine and then collapsed in two halves. “Shields, boys, he’s got an F. I.” Defence canopies rang like temple gongs under the field-inducer sledgehammers. The besarcasmed executives fled, shrieking, past the red crushed patch that had been the Model Secretary of the Year.

“Where the hell is he?” someone shouted.

“He has a light-scatter field up around him,” said Arnie Tenebrae, relishing the tight tactical situation. “Everybody out. We’ll only get in each other’s way. I’ll take him myself.” She had a personal private interest in doing so. The troops withdrew to the elevator head to guard the executive prisoners.

“Hey, Johnny, where did you get the F. I.?” A howl of power blew a stuffed antelope’s head to duff and sawdust. Johnny Stalin became visible for an instant, crouching behind the Manager/Director’s chair. He vanished the instant Arnie Tenebrae blasted the end of the board table to Hinders with a beam of hypersound.

“Invisibility screen too. Not bad.” She circled the room, fully visible, defence canopy up, senses pricked like a cat’s ears. “Johnny,” she sang, “I had to come to see you when I found out it was you. Remember me? The sweet little girl you kissed behind Rael Mandella’s methane digester?” Her pulse of power screeched and howled off Johnny Stalin’s defence canopy. He flickered into momentary translucency. “Come on, Johnny, make a decent fight of it. You know the kind of weapon you’re using, you know you can’t use it offensively and defensively at the same time, and I know that invisibility field’s draining your power. How say you show yourself and make a decent fight of it?” A patch of air shimmered and Johnny Stalin shivered into visibility. Arnie Tenebrae was surprised at how he had changed: gone was the chubby, scared little boy, whining and obstreperous; the figure before her could almost have been the masculine counterpart of herself.

“You’re looking well, Johnny.” She checked her wrist gauges: 85 percent charge. Good. She circled to her left. Johnny Stalin circled to her right. Both watched for the tell-tale moment when the other’s canopy went down in the instant before firing. Arnie Tenebrae circled, waited. The air grew stale within her defence canopy.

“Oh, Johnny,” she said again, “remember, there’s a dozen of them waiting for you if you get past me.” She fired, plunged for cover. Stalin’s return fire was slow slow slow. Arnie Tenebrae had all the time in the world to turn, aim, and punch a force-field fist through his lowered canopy that smashed him apart like an egg.

Commander Tenebrae had her men search through the smoke and the rubble for some souvenir of Johnny Stalin that she might add to her collection of trophies, but they found only pieces of charred machinery. Then trooper Jensenn brought Arnie Tenebrae Johnny Stalin’s head and she sat for a long time laughing at the wires and the complex articulated aluminium joints that served for cervical vertebrae.

“A robot,” she laughed. “An olly-o, jolly-o robot.” She tossed the head away and laughed and laughed and laughed so long and so hard that it began to scare the soldiers of Group 19.

Dominic Frontera was first to learn that the liberation of Desolation Road was actually an occupation and that all the rejoicing citizens who had carried the Whole Earth Army guerrillas shoulder high through the alleys were hostages to Arnie Tenebrae’s dream of Gotterdammerung. He learned this at six minutes of six in the morning when five armed men took him from the cellar of Pentecost’s General Merchandise Store, where he had been held incommunicado and stood him against the brilliant white wall. The soldiers drew a line in the dust and stood him behind it.

“Any last requests?” said Captain Peres Estoban.

“What do you mean, last requests?” said Dominic Frontera.

“It’s customary for a man facing a firing squad to be granted a last request.”

“Oh,” said Dominic Frontera, and voided his bowels into his nice white ROTECH uniform. “Um, can I clean up this mess?” The firing squad smoked a pipe or two while the mayor of Desolation Road dropped his pants and made himself presentable. Then they blindfolded him and put him back in front of his wall.

“Firing party, shoulder arms, firing party, aim, firing party… firing party… Child of grace, what now?”

While feeding the chickens, loyal but unintelligent Ruthie had seen the soldiers take her husband and stand him against a wall and point weapons at him. She emitted a cry like a little astonished bird and chased pell-mell, helter-skelter all the way across to the mayor’s office to arrive just as Peres Estoban was mouthing the order to fire.

“Don’t kill my husband,” she shrieked, throwing herself between executioners and executionee in a welter of flying arms and skirts.

“Ruthie?” whispered Dominic Frontera.

“Madam, out of my way,” ordered Peres Estoban. Ruthie Frontera stood solid, a drab Valkyrie with fat legs. “Madam, this is a legally constituted Revolutionary Firing Party executing its legally constituted sentence. Please move out of the line of fire. Or,” he added, “I will have you arrested.”

“Huh!” said Ruthie, “Huh huh huh. You’re pigs you are. Let him go.”

“Madam, he is an enemy of the people.”

“Sir, he is my husband and I love him.” There was a flash of light that even Dominic Frontera could see through his blindfold as Ruthie Frontera nee Blue Mountain discharged in one intense moment twelve years of accumulated beauty. She swept her charisma beam across the firing party and each soldier in turn gibbered as the full potency of her loveliness came to focus on him and they dropped, eyes wide open, mouths trickling froth. Ruthie Frontera freed her husband and that same morning escaped with aged father and as much of a household as they could fit into the back of a purloined Bethlehem Ares Steel trunk.