David Drake - Balefires

Coster's tongue clicked in amusement. "Do you want references? Somebody who saw us put away Kennedy? Or King?"

Davidson snorted a puff of smoke. "You don't look like a fool," Kerr said.

"I'm not-not any longer," the rifleman replied. He shook his head as if to clear something from his hair. He went on, "What we've done doesn't matter. You won't believe me, and it doesn't matter. But if you have some place for a demonstration, we'll-demonstrate."

Kerr nodded. "That would be best," he said neutrally.

Coster suddenly turned and lowered the rifle again toward the door."Speaking of fools," he said, "your Mr. Penske-"

There was no knock. The door slammed back."All right you-"Penske shouted before he realized that the fat muzzle of the automatic rifle was centered on his breastbone. The swarthy man held a carbine waist high, his left hand locked on the curving 30-round magazine.

Obviously furious but with no more sound than his chair made clattering on the floor, Kerr strode toward the disconcerted Penske. With his left hand the black gripped the carbine and tugged the smaller man back within the room. Then his right hand slapped Penske's head against the wall. He stepped away, holding the carbine muzzle-down."And if you'd used it, you damned fool?"the big man demanded."If you'd brought the police down on us here, what chance would our plans have had then? What chance?"

"You didn't have to hit me," Penske said, not quite meeting Kerr's eyes.

Contemptuously, the black unloaded the carbine, tossing the magazine onto a stuffed chair and ejecting the round in the chamber. It winked against the carpet. "Get the things out of the van," he said.

Kerr had rented the furnished apartment a month before, but that was as far as preparations had gone. The can-opener beside the sink was broken and Penske, grumbling, had to hack their dinners open with his heavy-bladed dagger.

"If you were a real Green Beret, you could bite the lids off," Davidson gibed. "Shut the hell up!" the short man snarled. He caught Coster eying him as the rifleman spread baked beans one-handed on a slice of bread. "I'da'made it, no goddam doubt," Penske said defensively. "Only they had us doing sprints up and down the company street with sand in our packs. Some wise-ass clerk thinks it's funny to laugh at me. I knocked his teeth out, and the bastard's goddam lucky they hadn't issued us ammo. But the goddam government don't want anybody that'll really fight, so they busted me out."

"Makes a good story," Davidson said. "I think they caught him with his-"

"Dee!" Kerr said.

Penske's eyes unglazed and he slowly lowered his knife back onto the can of spaghetti. He hammered the hilt down with his palm, splashing the red sauce onto the table.

Despite their hostility, Davidson and Penske settled down to a desultory game of cribbage after dinner.

Kerr sat in the living room across from the rifleman. "I don't play games that you have to score," the big black said. "When I win, the whole world will know it. When I win, there won't be any polite Orientals pumping mercury into the sea because poisoning children is cheaper than not. There won't be any blue-shirted gestapo beating in their brothers' heads because the bankers say to. There won't be any more nuclear powerplants pouring out their deadliniess for a quarter-million years."

The rifleman smiled. He held a jelly glass he had filled with whiskey and had not diluted."There won't be any three-year-olds orphaned in La Prensa because their daddy was too slow emptying his money drawer."

"What are you here for?" Kerr demanded.

Coster's free hand played with his rifle. "Now? To kill a Japanese politician in America discussing import quotas." He swigged his drink.

Kerr leaned forward. "To show the rich that there is justice for the people?" he pressed.

"Human society's a funny thing," said the rifleman, staring at the reflection of the overhead light in his whiskey. "Very complex. But if it gets enough little thrusts, all in the same direction… lots of people hate lots of other people anyway. Someday enough people are going to hate enough other people that one of them is going to push the button. Then it all stops."

Kerr's lips tightened. "Bad as things are, I don't believe they've come to that pass yet. Nobody would gain by that."

"Right. Nobody would gain."

Penske and Davidson were arguing about the count. The dinette was blurry with cigarette smoke. Kerr stared for a moment at the ex-soldier, then said to Coster, "There'll be bodyguards, you know. Secret Service men."

"Bodyguards," Coster snorted. "Like Huey Long had? It was one of his guards who killed him, you know, a bullet ricocheting in the marble hallway. And when King Alexander was killed in Marseilles, the gunman ran right through a line of mounted gendarmes."

"I suppose you shot him, too?" Kerr said acidly. "Like Kennedy?"

Coster looked at the heavier man with an odd expression. "I wasn't there," he said. "That was in 1934. The man who did it used a pistol, yes, but there was an automatic rifle backing him up. If it had been needed." He finished his drink with a long swallow and said, "A push here, a push there…"

Kerr stood abruptly."It's been a long day for us," he said."Now that I've stopped seeing pavement, I'll go to bed. You can carry your things into the smaller bedroom, Coster. Penske fits the couch better, I think."

Coster nodded. "I don't have much," he said, toeing a canvas AWOL bag.

In the dinette, Davidson threw in her hand without a word. She followed Kerr into the larger bedroom, slamming the door behind them.

The rifleman walked over to the table, his weapon muzzle-down in his left hand. He poured a drink and raised it in an ironic salute."Cheers," he said to the brooding Penske. He drank and walked into the remaining bedroom without bothering to take his bag.

Penske drove with Davidson on the front seat beside him. Her short hair was dark except at the roots where it was growing in blond. Kerr and Coster looked at each other from side benches in the windowless back of the van.

Over his shoulder Penske said, "Ah, George… the guy who owns the farm, Jesse, I met him when I was at Bragg, see? Could be he won't be around and he's not gonna care what we're shooting, choppers, grenades, whatever. Only maybe you better stay in the back, you know? It'd be better if Jesse didn't, you know…"

"Jesse doesn't like his black brothers, is that it?" Kerr said easily. His face worked and he added, "Don't have much use fer a nigger 'cept to kick his black butt, that is."

"Well, George…" the short man mumbled. "We just needed a place to range in the guns…"

"That's all right, it's no fault of yours," Kerr said. "Or your friend's."He looked over at the rifleman."You see what they do, splitting natural allies so that they'd rather tear each other's throats out than both tear at their oppressors. Turning humans into beasts."

"Humans are beasts, of course," Coster said without emphasis. "Whether or not Darwin was right, he was convincing on that score. I think that's why the concept of werebeasts is so much less terrifying today than it was in the fifteenth century. We're all basically convinced that man-beasts are normal reality. Hieronymus Bosch and his constructs of part flesh, part metal… that I don't think we've outgrown. Yet."

"Is that all injustice means to you?" Davidson asked sharply. "That we're all beasts, so what? Did you just get out of your flying saucer or something?"

Coster looked at her, his fingers toying with the selector switch below his rifle's gunsight."Viewpoint, I suppose," he said. "But no, I'm human. Funny, I used to wonder what aliens… creatures from space, that is… would look like. I thought they might look just like you and me." He began to laugh brittlely.