Jack Yeovil - Route 666

Winning still hurts, she had learned.

So Long was running through stats on the DAR. In the chapter they were dealing with, there were a few well-known scrappers but no clear contender. That gave the Daughters the advantage; going in, the rep would know exactly who the 'Pomps would put into the ring. Jazzbeaux was facing some unknown.

"If t'were me picking the negotiator," So Long mused, "I'd go for this fillette, Valli Forge. She's got more confirmed kills than anyone else in the chapter."

"Bio-amendments?"

So Long made the shaky sign. "None on record. Interesting chemical dependency, but she's not likely to be in withdrawal crisis when you do the dance."

Jazzbeaux liked high-fliers. They didn't know when they were damaged. The whole point of pain was to tell you when to protect yourself. Anyone with smacksynth or zonk in their system would stumble around on two broken legs until it was over.

Impulsively, Jazzbeaux slipped on the shades again. Last night, in the dark, she had scanned too many things. In daylight, they should be safe. The view seemed to ripple and voices whispered in her head. She swore she could hear the preacher man fuming.

"Best of luck, suestra," Varoomschka said, lying. If Jazzbeaux came out of this badly, Vroomsh would be the obvious candidate for Acting War Chief.

Jazzbeaux looked briefly at her, and flash-saw a jewelled skeleton wrapped in crinkled plastic. All the 'Pomps looked briefly shrivelled and dead. Then there was a shift and things settled – Varoomschka filled out her see-through jump suit properly.

Sweetcheeks stuck a wet kiss on her face, leaving a lipsticky heart. Jazzbeaux rubbed the girl's back affectionately, taking in a lungful of the scented air around her.

After only seconds in the shades, migraine sprouted. A hot nail drove between her eyebrows. Jazzbeaux took off the glasses and thought of throwing them away. She could drive a cyke over them and the distraction would be over. But she just slung them around her neck.

From inside the Tucker, Sleepy Jane reported the seismograph had picked up ve-hickles on the other side of Moroni. "Company's here," she said.

The world looked real again but Jazzbeaux found herself wanting to put the glasses back on. It was like when she was eight and Dead Daddy put her on Hero-9 to keep her under control. She'd had to wean herself off the dope over a period of years and still felt the occasional urge for a H-9 hit. She knew a lot of addicts – there were dotted blue bruises behind Sweetcheeks' plump knees and Andrew Jean kept a powder compact filled with zonk – and even more people who were just more comfortable facing the world in an altered state.

It was reversed for her, like a negative picture. As a child, she'd been drugged for annos on end and never had a say. She remembered her first straight hours, when Officer Harvest put her in solitary after a juvie bust; that experience had been like the revelation some get the first time they go out of their skulls. Since then, she'd become more and more hung up on her straight spells, taking fewer and fewer drugs, spending longer and longer with only her unaugmented senses. One day soon, she would be hooked on reality.

Unless the shades scrambled her brain.

It was an irrational longing but after minutes it became irresistible. She fought it for as long as she could, but it was such a silly thing. She was Acting War Chief. She wasn't afraid to wear a pair of glasses.

"We don't go into town until nightfall," Andrew Jean said. "That's the arrangement."

"That'll make for a long, dull afternoon," Jazzbeaux replied. "Oh well, que sera, sera .. ."

She fiddled with the shades, tapping her teeth with an arm. She knew she should eat but didn't feel hungry.

Sweetcheeks was absorbed in a tiny game console; she was hung up on a scenario called "Perfect Date", but hadn't yet made it to the senior prom, let alone gone all the way with the class captain. The one time Jazzbeaux played the thing, she wound up being gang-banged by the football team and dismembered by a serial killer.

Varoomschka unshouldered her boom-box and slotted in 'Tasha's Ancient Mariner Mambo album. It had never been one of Jazzbeaux's favourites. Tasha had been married, at different times, to Petya Jerkussoff and Andrei Tarkovsky. Moscow Beat said she represented a fusion of Glit and Glum. Jazzbeaux just thought 'Tasha was a pretentious whiner.

Maybe she was growing up.

Finally, she snapped, and – trying not to look desperate – casually slipped her head into the glasses, shaking back her hair at the same time. As the bridge settled against her nose, she kept her eye shut.

She heard Tasha singing,

"It is an Ancient Mariner

Who stoppeth one of three,

And by your hairy tangle beard and that glitter in your eye,

keep his filthy rotten hand off of me.. ."

Jazzbeaux opened her eye.

This time, the effect was different. Colours were brighter, but less sharp. There were shadows where there shouldn't be. It was a little like a Hero-9 or Method-1 buzz, but without any elation. Somehow, with the glasses on, she felt compelled to look back over her shoulder all the time.

"Like one that on a lonesome road

Doth walk in fear and dread,

And having once turned round walks on,

And turns no more his head;

Because he knows a frightful fiend

Doth close behind him tread."

She couldn't stop herself turning and looking back over the roof of the Tucker. Out in the Des, sands shifted. The sky was featureless, without even any birds.

She couldn't see the frightful fiend but that didn't mean it wasn't there. A strange shadow crept across the sand like a pointing finger. She had to hold herself to suppress a shudder.

Beyond the Des, she imagined a lone figure, advancing steadily with long-legged strides, face in the dark under his hat-brim. The preacherman was coming after her, coming for his property. That shouldn't have scared an Acting War Chief. But it did.

Brother Wiggs watched with suspicion as the cavalryman walked towards the faithful. He logged the sergeant's side arm, but noted the buttoned-down holster flap. The man didn't need to draw his weapon; there was enough rolling death in his machine to level the Lansdale Ozoner and anyone in it.

Why could Gentiles not leave the Brethren of Joseph alone? Must there be nothing but trial and blood along the road to the Shining City?

The cavalryman put his gauntleted hands on his hips and looked the congregation up and down. Under his hat-brim were sharp eyes.

"You folks having a church service?" the sergeant asked.

"A funeral service," Elder Seth replied. "For those lost along the road."

The Elder's voice, heavy with sorrow, carried across the drive-in. There was a muttering of amens.

"I think we found a couple of those souls a way South of here," the Sergeant said. "Sort of spread out across the road."

Elder Seth bowed his head and stretched out his arms. It was as if he were hanging from a cross of pain. "Brother Hooper and Brother Lennart."

"This wake for them?"

"Amongst others." The cyke troopers had dismounted and joined the sergeant.

One was a woman, provocatively dressed in indecently tight pants; the other was a black man, the type Wiggs' Daddy would never have let onto his police force.

"How many more pilgrims have you lost?"

"Brother Akins, Brother Dzundza, Brother Finnegan."

"Seems to me you've been mighty careless with your brothers."

A spurt of anger shot up from Wiggs's belly. How dare this Gentile address himself so facetiously to Elder Seth? From a dozen yards away, Wiggs recognised the red blossoms of alcohol abuse on the sergeant's face. The cavalryman stank of sin.