Ron Goulart - Suicide, Inc

Cruz leaned back in his seat. “Are we inquisitive enough to go over and take a gander?”

“Might as well.”

After they’d rolled through the hazy desert afternoon for another ten minutes they crested a dune and saw the source of the smoke.

A tourist landbus, sprawled on its side on the orangish sand, was just finishing burning up. Grouped a safe distance away were two dozen pilgrims and tourists.

“What’s that godawful wailing?” asked Crux. “There don’t seem to be any dead or wounded.”

“It’s the Sophisticates.” Smith guided their van down toward the cluster of people. “Those four lizardladies on the right there. They’re singing.”

“Some kind of shock reaction, is it?”

“Nope, I imagine they’re trying to boost folks’ morale after this accident.”

“I note laz holes in the roof of yonder vehicle, indicating this wasn’t exactly an accident.”

“Somebody strafed them.” Smith parked the landvan and stepped out.

“…so don’t sit under the utumbo tree with anyone else but me,” the green quartet was concluding, “till I come marching home.”

One of them smiled around at the dusty bedraggled passengers. “What would you like to hear next to cheer you up, dears?”

“Silence,” suggested a pudgy catman in a two-piece black clericsuit.

“Girls,” said Norman Vincent Bagdad, the lugubrious gentleman who had accosted Smith on the space-liner, “give everybody a break and pipe down for a while.”

“Honestly, Norm, you’re not at all supportive of-”

“Hey, look, here comes Smith.” Bagdad waved. “What a funny coincidence.”

“What happened?” Smith asked.

“We were attacked by a stray strafingdrone,” said the catman cleric. “A representative of the idiotic Mizayen Commandos. It’s almost a divine miracle we all escaped with our lives.”

“No, no,” put in a thin man in a candy-striped robe, “it was definitely the Qatzir Militiamen. I noticed the insignia on the belly of the robot ship. Two crossed scimitars on a field of silvery ammo.”

“But that isn’t the Militiamen insignia,” said a motherly greyhaired catwoman. “They use two crossed bayonets on a circle of-”

“You’re thinking of the Qatfia Guards, granny.” Cruz nudged Smith, mentioning quietly, “Note the darkhaired lad in the green cazsuit.”

“Looks sort of like Teanegg the alfie, in disguise.”

“Yeah, it is, or a reasonable facsimile.”

Smith asked the group, “Have you signaled for help?”

“All our communications,” replied the cleric, “were destroyed when the bus was hit. We’ve been trying to decide what to do next. Some favored hiking, others prayer or-”

“I’ll use our van radio to get you some help.”

Cruz meantime was strolling casually around the crowd. Eyes on the colorful circling buzzards, he suddenly lunged and caught Teanegg by the arm.

“Gosh, sir, what’s the meaning of-”

“We merely want to have a chat,” explained Cruz as he hustled the artificial man over to the landvan.

“I appreciate your attempts at friendliness, but I really don’t-”

“Hush,” advised Cruz.

Sitting in the cab, Smith was frowning. “Been trying to contact the Oasis,” he said, “but nobody’s answering.”

“Suppose we converse with friend Teanegg and then try again?” Cruz urged the young man up into the passenger seat and remained standing in the doorway with his metal hand on his shoulder.

“Golly, I’m sure glad my lovely wife, Wanita, isn’t along on this particular jaunt,” he said. “Because I’d hate to have her see me being manhandled.”

“You don’t have a wife,” Smith told him. “Alfies don’t marry.”

“Hey, that’s a nasty thing to say about a guy. I may be a bit effeminate looking, but that-”

“You’re working for Syndek.” Cruz touched his metal wrist and a tiny truthbug came snaking out of his metal thumb.

“Ouch,” complained Teanegg when the disc was affixed to the base of his skull.

“Now, tell us why you’re-”

The artificial man had started to shiver. His perfect teeth were rattling, his eyes watering.

“The bug!” yelled Smith, grabbing at it.

Teanegg stiffened, slumped.

“Shit, too late,” said Smith. “He’s dead.”

Cruz retrieved the bug. “They had him structured to die if somebody tried to question him with any kind of gadget.”

“I’m rusty,” said Smith. “I should’ve anticipated that.”

They were stopped a quarter-mile short of the Oasis. There was a barricade of spiked plazwire and neowood stretched across the road. Landvans, landcars and sky-hoppers were parked all around on the sands of the desert.

“Must be a media event taking place at the resort,” remarked Cruz, driving their landvan off the roadway.

“Sounds like some kind of skirmish.” Smith dropped out of the cab.

You could hear the whomp of explosions, the sizzle of kilcannons from the vicinity of their destination. Because of the rise of the desert the Oasis wasn’t visible from here.

A frogman in a one-piece tan armysuit came trotting over to them. “This is a restricted area,” he warned, waving his stunrod at them. “No rubbernecking.”

“Press,” said Cruz, extracting an ID card from a slot in his metal arm. “We’re with…He paused to check what was printed on this particular fake card. “With 9Plan News.”

“Here to distort our basic issues and-”

“Who’s fighting?” asked Smith.

“We want to make sure,” added Cruz, “we give our nine hundred million subscribers a fair account of-”

“Well, a platoon of the vicious Qatzir Militiamen are trapped at the Oasis,” said the frog corporal. “Being in the Mizayen Commandos myself, I, naturally, hate them from both a military and religious point of view. Therefore, I’m pleased as punch to be able to report that my comrades in arms are wiping them out. Now, let me fill you in on the basic religious issues behind this present conflict. Firstly, it is our belief, and the only one a right-thinking man can hold, that the Holy Prophet Plaut meant this desert to be-”

“But the Oasis,” cut in Smith, “it’s being shelled?”

“What’s left of it is, yes.”

“How much damage?”

“Before the Militiamen fanatics…” He spit at his boots. “Before they took up positions there, the Qatfia Guards made an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate Dag Wentim, the acting generalissimo of the Norkin Elite Horse Guards. He escaped, but most of the tennis pavilion and the-”

“To really cover this properly,” said Cruz, resting his real hand on the corporal’s shoulder, “we ought to get right up close to the fighting.”

The frogman shook his head. “Not possible,” he told them. “We’re only allowing the crew from Trinidad Wallview News to move any closer than this. That’s their armored newsvan getting ready to roll over there. Our commander feels that only TWN will give an unbiased-”

“Ah, but we’re affiliated with them,” said Cruz. “We’ll just pop over there and introduce ourselves.”

“I suppose,” said the guard, “since you seem intent on giving us a fair shake, there’s no harm in allowing-”

“None at all,” Smith assured him.

The middle-aged catwoman in the one-piece khaki cazsuit was saying, “Norbert, don’t be a ninny.”

“But, Mom,” the chubby cat newsman said, digging the toe of his combat boot into the reddish sand beside the newsvan, “this really isn’t my strong suit.”

She caught hold of both his arms just above his fuzzy elbows. “This is the brink of the big time, sonny,” she said. “The making of Norbert Willow, the forging in the fire of combat of an ace newscaster, the-”