Jack Yeovil - Route 666

Trooper Kirby Yorke, United States Road Cavalry, shot a glance at the route indicator on the dash. The red cruiser blip was dead centre of the mapscreen, green-lines scrolling past. The ve-hickle's inboard computer hooked up with Gazetteer, the constantly updated federal map and almanac. Geostationary weather and spy satellites downloaded intelligence into the electronic notice board.

The patrol had just crossed the old state line and was heading up to a ghost place that had once been called Kanab. Through the armaplas sunshade wraparound, the rocks and sand of Kanab, Utah, could as well be the sand and rocks of Boaz, New Mexico, Shawnee, Oklahoma or most anywhere in the Des.

Yorke's own reflected vizz, dreadfully young under his forage cap, hung in the windscreen, superimposed on the roadside panorama.

The Big Empty stretched almost uninterrupted from the foothills of the Appalachians to Washington State. Rocks and sand. Sand and rocks. Even Gazetteer could not keep straight the borderlines of the Great Central Desert, the Colorado Desert, the Mojave Desert, the Mexican Desert and all the others. Pretty soon, they'd have to junk all the local names and call everything the American Desert. By then, they'd all be citizens of the United States of Sand and Rocks.

The two outrider blips held steady. Tyree and Burnside, on their mounts, would be getting hot and sticky. You couldn't air-condition a motorcyke like you could the 4x4 canopied transport Yorke shared with Sergeant Quincannon. That would be rough on Tyree and Burnside.

Yorke liked the feel of the wheel in his gauntlets, liked the feel of the cruiser on the hardtop. He appreciated a beautiful machine. The Japcorps could put heavy hardware on the roads and Turner-Harvest-Ramirez were known for impressive rolling stock. But the US Cav had access to state-of-the-art military and civilian tech. On the shadow market, the ve-hickle was worth a cool million gallons of potable water or an unimaginable equivalent sum in cash money.

He thought of the cruiser as a cross between a Stealth Bomber, the Batmobile, Champion the Wonder Horse and Death on Wheels. All plugged in to the informational resources of Fort Valens and, through the Fort, into the interagency datanet whose semi-sentient Information Storage and Retrieval Centre was in a secret location somewhere in upstate New York.

Ever since the Enderby Amendment of 1985 opened up, in desperation, the field of law enforcement to private individuals and organisations, Yorke had wanted to be with an agency. Sanctioned Ops were the only non-criminal heroes a kid from the NoGo could have these days. T-H-R's Redd Harvest, who dressed for effect, got the glam covers on Road Fighter and Harry Parfitt of Seattle's Silver Bullet Agency was always being declared Man of the Month by Guns and Killing, the nation's best-selling self-sufficiency magazine. It was the Wild West again. Heat went down all over the country: card-carrying Agency Ops out for the annual arrest record bonus and stone-crazy Solos who brought in Maniax for bounty.

But Yorke knew the only agency which guaranteed Ops a life expectancy longer than that of the average mafioso-turned-informer was the Road Cav. Quasi-government status bought better hardware, better software, better roadware and better uniforms. He'd joined up on his sixteenth birthday and didn't plan on mustering out much before his sixtieth. He wasn't ambitious like Leona Tyree. In a world of chaos, the Cav offered a nice, orderly way of doing things. He liked being a trooper, liked the food, liked the pay, liked the life.

He even liked Sergeant Quincannon.

Yorke reached up to the overhead locker and pulled a pack of high-tars down from the Quince's stash. The flap was broken and wouldn't stick back. The sergeant stopped pretending to be asleep, and commented, "I knew that gum-wad wouldn't last."

The flap fell down again.

"Wonderful," Quincannon commented. "They can whip up a machine so tough it can take out Godzilla and so smart it can play chess with Einstein, but they still can't get one itty-bitty little catch to stay stuck where it damn well ought to be stuck."

The sergeant accepted one of his own Premiers. He used the dash fighter and sucked in a good, healthy lungful. Quincannon held it in for a few seconds, then coughed smoke out through his nose. He hacked for almost a minute, cursing between choked gasps as Yorke lit up.

"You jake. Quince?"

"Yeah, boy, fine," he said, refreshing himself with another drag. His face had gone even redder. "You know, back when I was young, there were damfool eggheads who said cigarettes caused all sorts of disease. Heart trouble, the cancer, emphysema."

"I've never heard that," said Yorke, who'd smoked since he was ten. He dragged on his own Premier. "Dr Nick on ZeeBeeCee says nothing's better for your lungs than a Snout first thing in the ayem."

"It was a big flap, but it died down. Some say it was the tobacco companies bought or scared off the eggheads."

"Dr Nick says nicotine prevents Alzheimer's," Yorke said.

Like a lot of people his age, the Quince was paranoid. He was full of stories about the government and the multinats, and the sneak tricks they'd pulled. Yorke didn't believe a tenth of them. If he had a few snorts of Shochaiku in him, Quincannon would start claiming the President was mixed up in underhand arms deals. Yorke was used to the ridiculous fantasies the Quince picked up from those mystery faxes which spread malicious rumour and gossip.

Quincannon choked again but kept on dragging. Hell, if smoking were dangerous, the sergeant would be mummified in a museum by now.

Yorke stowed the pack of Premiers and shut the locker. The flap fell loose again and he noticed a picture of a girl taped to the inside. It must have been from some old magazine, because it was in black and white and the image was faded. A blonde stood on the street in a billowing dress, showing her legs. They were nice legs, particularly up around the thighs. The print on the other side of the picture was showing through, giving her gangcult-style tattoos.

"Old bunkmate. Quince?"

Quincannon grunted. "No, Yorke, just the fillette who got us all into this."

"Into what?"

"Hell, me boy, hell." The sergeant sounded wistful. "See those legs. They changed the world."

Yorke sucked in a lungful of gritty smoke and held it until his eyes watered. Tyree's blip wavered. Since there was no longer any such thing as a Utah State Government, the road ahead was unmaintained. Tyree was signalling slowdown. Sometimes sand drifted so thick you couldn't see asphalt. Without thinking, Yorke adjusted the speed of the cruiser.

"Who was she, Jesus's mother?"

Quincannon didn't laugh. "No, that girl was Marilyn Monroe."

"Hell, I know who Marilyn Monroe is. She's in that show on the Golden Years net, I Love Ronnie. The fat lady who lives next to Ronnie and Nancy. Her feeb husband is always coming over and making trouble."

Scanning again, Yorke saw Marilyn's eyes in the pretty girl's face. They didn't quite fit her now.

"Marilyn Monroe, huh?"

"Yeah, she's the one," the Sergeant said, almost wistfully. "Before you were born, she was a big star. Movies. Back when you saw movies on a screen, boy, not in a box. That pic's from The Seven Year Itch. I saw all her pictures when I was a kid. Bus Stop, River of No Return, How to Marry a Millionaire. And the later ones, the lousy ones. The Sound of Music. She was no nun, that's for sure, they laughed her off screen in that. The Graduate, with Dustin Hoffmann. She was Mrs Robinson. And Earthquake '75. Remember, the woman who gets crushed saving the handicapped orphans?"