Jack Yeovil - Krokodil Tears

"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.

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.