Krokodil Tears

needle pass over her shoulder, and slammed the Daughter's midriff with her knee. The spiked pad ripped through the Daughter's blouse, and grated on the armoured contour-girdle underneath. The Daughter grabbed Jazzbeaux's neck, and pulled her off her feet.

Jazzbeaux recognized the move. Her Daddy had tried it on her back in the Denver NoGo.

She bunched her fingers into a sharp cone and stabbed above the Daughter's girdle-line, aiming for the throat, but the Daughter was too fast, and chopped her wrist, deflecting the blow.

Just what her Dad used to do. 'Jessa-myn, cain't you be sociable?' The low-rent ratskag. Of course, one time his reflexes had been off, and now he was recycled organs.

She danced round the bigger girl, getting a few scratches down the back of her suit, even drawing some blood. The Daughter swung round and Jazzbeaux had to take a fall to avoid the needles.

The 'pomps were chanting and shouting now, while the DAR had fallen silent. That didn't mean anything.

She was down in the dirt, rolling away from the sharp-toed kicks. The DAR had good intelligence contacts, obviously. The girl had struck her three times on the right thigh, just where the once-broken bone was, and had taken care to stay out of the field of her optic burner. Of course, she had also cut Jazzbeaux's forehead below the hairline, making her bleed into her regular eye. Anyone would have done that.

But Jazzbeaux was getting her licks in. The Daughter's left wrist was either broken or sprained, and she couldn't get a proper grip on her needle. There were spots of her own blood on her suit, so some of Jazzbeaux's licks must have missed the armour plate. The hagwitch was getting tired, breathing badly, sweating like a sow.

She used her feet, dancing away and flying back, anchoring herself to the broken lamp-post as she launched four rapid kicks to the Daughter's torso. The girl was shaken. She had dropped both her needles. Jazzbeaux caught her behind the head with a steelheel, and dropped her to the ground. She reared up, but Jazzbeaux was riding her now, knees pressed in tight. She got a full nelson, and sank her claws into the back of her neck, pressing the Daughter's face to the hard-beaten earth of the street.

Finally, the Daughter stopped moving, and Jazzbeaux stood up. Andrew Jean rushed out, and grabbed her wrist, holding her hand up in victory.

'The winnnnerrrr,' Andrew Jean shouted, sloppily kissing Jazzbeaux.

She pulled her eyepatch away, and looked at the DAR. They stood impassive as the optic burner angled across them, glinting red but not yet activated.

'Is it decided?' Jazzbeaux asked, wiping the blood out of her eye.

Miss Liberty came forward and stood over her sister. The girl on the ground moaned and tried to get up on her elbows. The veiled Daughter kicked her in the side. The poison blade sank in. The fallen Daughter spasmed briefly, and slumped again, foam leaking from her mouth.

'It is decided,' said Miss Liberty.

The DAR picked up the dead girl, and faded away into the darkness.

The Psychopomps pressed around her, kissing, hugging, groping, shouting.

'Jazz-beaux! Jazz-beaux! Jazz-beaux!'

The Psychopomps howled in the desert.

'Come on, let's hit Spanish Fork,' Jazzbeaux shouted above the din, 'I'm thirsty, and I could use some real party action tonight!'

Nguyen Seth smiled. He remembered that party himself. That was when he had been joined with Jazzbeaux. It was a shame. She was so interesting. Too few human beings were. But there was nothing for it, she would have to be killed. He was too near the Accomplishment of the Purpose to brook any distractions. Jazzbeaux would resist, of course. She was growing since Spanish Fork. She wouldn't be as easy to vanquish as she had been outside the Feelgood Saloon.

He would have Roger Duroc handle it.

II

Duroc had spent the last three months in France, dealing with the business of the Violent Tendency for Freedom. Operating out of a tiny flat on the Left Bank, the cell had succeeded in spreading some interesting biochemical havoc across half of the United European Community. They were only one of many small groups Nguyen Seth took an interest in, but Duroc knew the Elder saw Paris as an important flashpoint in the coming deluge and so they required more personal attention than similar factions in Johannesburg, Puerto Belgrano, Teheran, Shanghai, Mexico City, Malmo, Berlin, Belfast, Genoa or Birmingham. In the time Duroc had spent with the group, Biron, their leader, had revised the Violent Tendency manifesto countless times, while the scientific wing of the movement, Neumann and Alix, had developed some intriguing ramifications on recombinant DNA which, when injected into a shamburger, would cause the meatoid pulp to meld with the enzymes of any given stomach and expand its mass one hundredfold. Their attack on the Centre LePen hadn't been an unqualified success, but Duroc was pleased with the loss of life. And, of course, time spent in Paris meant that he could buy a new wardrobe, visit his mother and put flowers on his uncle's grave. Also, he had picked up some rare Charles Trenet and Johnny Halliday musichips.

Now, after thirty-seven hours in the air, he was touching down in Salt Lake City. It had proved expedient to fly from Orly to Casablanca, from Casablanca to Lisbon, from Lisbon to Montenegro, from Montenegro to Sacramento, and, by carrier-copter, from Sacramento to Salt Lake, with changes of passport at each stopover. He was used to such things, and he had been able to pass the time by fulfilling an old ambition, to read Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in the original English. He was less concerned with the fate of the customs official in Uruguay whose spine he had had to snap than he was with the course of the ancient empire on its long, slow descent into barbarism. Elder Seth had known Gibbon, and apparently given the Englishman a few insights into the fragility of civilization. Occasionally, a sentence or a phrase would leap out, and Duroc could hear it issuing from the Elder's lips. 'History, which is, indeed, little more than the register of the crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind,' for instance; or, 'corruption, the most infallible symptom of constitutional liberty,' and, most chillingly, 'all that is human must be retrograde if it does not advance.' Setting aside the final volume as the copter's blades slowed, Duroc mused that Gibbon was sending a message to the end of the 20th Century, a message he had never realized was implicit in his text. These were the Last Days, and soon would come the cleansing fire. When civilization was no better than barbarism, the whole experiment of humanity was at an end, and it was time to clean the slate. And afterwards…ah, afterwards, there would be such wonders…

The pilot flipped up the door, and Duroc bent to avoid the still slowly circling blades as he stepped down onto the tarmac.

Elder Beach and Elder Wiggs were waiting for him. They were of the inner circle of the Josephite Temple, and knew more than most of the True Purpose of Deseret.

'Blessed be,' said Beach.

Wiggs nodded. Duroc grinned, and shook their hands in turn.

Every time he came back to Salt Lake, things had changed. More buildings were reclaimed from dereliction, more dormitories built for the resettlers flooding in daily, more facilities provided.

As they walked to the terminal, Wiggs ran through the latest developments. The television station was up and broadcasting locally, and the church was buying airtime on one of the national nets. The computer interface was secretly operational, sorting through the Mormons' old listings of everybody who had ever left a record of his or her life on earth. The water pipeline was functioning properly, and three attempts to destroy it—two by the Montana gangcults, one by Jesuits—had been thwarted. The security set-up Duroc had designed was working perfectly.

They were dedicating a new runway at the airport. Duroc took the time to watch as a stout, middle-aged man walked out onto the freshly-hardened tarmac, stripped to the waist and beaming a beatific smile. The heat haze rose from the ground as he flagellated himself with a cat o' nine chains. He had to be assisted as he flayed himself, but he got most of the skin off as easily as a cardigan, and the minister only had to help him with the last few strips. He collapsed in ecstasy, and leaked blood as seven angelic Josephite children joined their voices in 'The Path