If Hendrik shot the Ute, would the slate be wiped clean? Was this the sacrifice that was truly demanded?
'On three,' the horseman said. His voice was strong, unwavering. The Ute nodded assent.
'One,' the Ute said.
Hendrik sighted on the horseman.
'Two,' the stranger said.
Hendrik sighted on the Ute.
'Three,' Hendrik said, firing…
XI
Three shots sounded at the same instant.
The Ute's black hat flew off, a dash of blood appearing at his temple, smearing into his hair. Two wounds flowered in the stranger's chest.
Hendrik had shot the horseman. His choice was made. It had been made for a long time. He had only deluded himself that things were other than they were.
The Ute lowered his rifle. He did not touch a hand to his wound. A tear of blood ran under his unharmed spectacles and dropped from his cheek.
The horseman staggered, arms out. He looked at the gouting holes in his shirt and dropped his gun. His knees gave way and he fell back in the stubble.
Hendrik had no idea who the stranger was.
The Ute did not make a move to reload his rifle. He stood tall, fires dead around him.
The stranger's horse nosed the dead ground.
Hendrik walked across the ashes and looked at the fallen man. Wounds still pumped and eyes still fluttered. He was alive.
'You're fast,' the horseman said, through blood. 'Faster'n him,' he indicated the Ute. 'I'd have holed his evil eye, broke his damn mirrors, only you got me fust.'
Hendrik cocked his Colt again and took aim on the stranger's left eye. The horseman was unafraid.
'Finish the sacrifice, Hendrik,' said the Ute.
Hendrik looked across at the Ute. He was walking away to rejoin the war party. Hendrik had no idea who the Ute was either, but the man with the mirror glasses believed he owned Hendrik Shatner.
That might not be entirely true.
Hendrik pulled the trigger and put a bullet in the ground by the horseman's head. Dirt kicked and the stranger lay still, holding his wounds.
'Done,' Hendrik called out.
The horseman, stilled, looked up with clear, shocked eyes. He must be in great pain, but he might alive. And the Ute might live to regret his assumptions.
'Mighty fine shooting, pilgrim,' the horseman whispered.
Hendrik Shatner holstered his Colt and walked away from the man he had not killed.
Brother Clegg had his horse ready. Hendrik mounted up. The Paiute had left to make their own way home. Hendrik looked at the faces of the elect, smeared with paint and smoke and blood. They were solemn, but held no regret.
The war party rode away from New Canaan, not talking among themselves, not looking back. Someone, not Hendrik, began 'The Path of Joseph'. Soon, all the riders were singing the hymn. The sun crawled higher into the morning sky.
THE BOOK OF MARILYN
I
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
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
