0001.
It was 0001 in blue. His own reading. As long as the number was there on the dashscreen, he was alive.
He would have to sit it out, but he would live. He'd spend hours down at the Pyramid talking through his emotions on this one. There would be untold anguish to purge in the group sessions. But Gari would help him cope with it. Guilt was no good, he knew. He had to quash that, and learn to feel good about himself again. That was the main thing, to feel good about yourself.
He wished he hadn't blasted so many beers. His bladder was full to straining, and there was no catheter-tube in the DeLorean. He would have to piss in the backseat, and that was imported Argentine leather hand-tooled by a specialist flown in from Tijuana.
He should never have taken on this penny-ante bounty hunt. Bob Holderness wouldn't have touched it. He had wanted the Agency to specialize in political cases. That was probably why he wasn't around any more. Manolo had always known there were men in suits behind the Surf Nazis, but he'd never carried the vendetta to them.
When he got out of here, he would make that up. He would track down the boardroom where the orders were issued, and he would declare all-out war on whichever Japcorp or state authority had been behind the singe.
The car shifted, and something clanged.
She couldn't get in, but she was out there. The ve-hickle rang with her blows. She would get frustrated soon, and go away. Bronson Manolo could wait her out.
He had chewed his moustache ragged. His teeth were clogged with hair. That wasn't supposed to happen. His barber-surgeon had guaranteed the attachments against all eventualities.
The banging continued.
0001.
Manolo muttered to himself. 'Home freeee, you can't get meee…'
She would have to be an H-M exec to get through the DeLorean's brain, and unseal the system.
The banging stopped, and there was peace for a moment. She must be giving up, walking away. Manolo had pressed his bleep-alert The Insurance people would be here within minutes.
There was a hum of machinery, and a hiss of expelling air.
It wasn't possible. The car was rolling over and kicking its legs for her. The doorseals receded, the shutters vanished.
Manolo squirmed, pushing himself back against the seat. He didn't even have a gun.
A breeze passed through, as the doors raised like beetle-wings.
'Ommmmm,' Manolo said, trying to attune his thoughts. Positive thinking could make this go away. 'Ommmmm.'
She was a dark silhouette outside. She threw something onto the seat beside him.
It was a human hand, raggedly severed at the wrist.
'Open sesame,' she said, slipping into the car.
0001.
0000.
0000.
0000.
PART FOUR: JESSE FRANKENSTEIN'S DAUGHTER
I
The Monastery of Santa de Nogueira had been imported stone by stone from Portugal to the Gila Desert, Arizona, in 1819, and abandoned after the Mexican-American War. Parts of it were eight hundred years old, the basements were half-filled with fine sand and whatever lived there, lived alone. When the heart of America dried up and blew away, things didn't change much in the Gila Desert. But the sand was thinning: the bones of dead monks were drifting to the surface of the pit that had once been a graveyard, while the headstones sank slowly towards the bedrock.
This was the Holy-Place-From-Over-the-Great-Water. It was exactly as it had been drawn in the family for generations. Hawk-That-Settles knew it at once. He was struck by the way that the buffalo hide pictures from the last century, drawn by his great-great grandfathers, showed the monastery as it was now, in 1997. This was not only the place, this was the Time.
He had walked the length of the state, his waterskin slung over his shoulder, keeping away from the roads and the gangcults. The Navaho had long since learned that the best way to live was to stick to the land no white man would want to take from him. Taking his direction from the moon and the stars, he had kept on course. By day, under his sunshade, he had Dreamwalked ahead, learning where the sandrat nests were, divining which waterholes were safe.
Once, he had sensed a presence following him on the trail. A man on a horse. Perhaps a ghost, perhaps not. For two full days. Hawk and the horseman travelled the same course, just out of each other's sight, but then, one evening, the presence was gone. Hawk almost missed the stranger. They had been a match, an Indian and a cowboy. There had been no Darkness in the stranger, and Hawk recalled that one of the spirit warriors who would stand with the One-Eyed White Girl in the last battle was called the Man Who Rides Alone.
Otherwise, it was an uneventful trek. Hawk slept with his guards up, and was not much bothered by spirits. Of course, there was great agitation in the spirit world as the Last Days drew nearer. He half-expected to be set upon by demons—the God of the Razor, Tartu or Misquamacus—but his part in the developing story was ignored. Once, a
Everywhere he went, he felt traces of the One-Eyed White Girl. She was fighting her battles elsewhere, hauling herself out of the rut of common humanity to the point when she would be ready to accept the training the medicine man of the line of Armijah was destined to give her.
He arrived at Santa de Nogueira three days before the spirit warrior. He passed the time Dreamwalking. He travelled, sensing the works of the Dark Ones everywhere. Wars raged, famines spread, diseases ran unchecked. Death enveloped the world, seeping from boardrooms to battlefields. Those who could commit suicide, directly or indirectly, were doing so; in this War, suicide was the only way to resist the call-up. Everyone alive was being influenced, Hawk knew. Everyone would have to take sides. He was very much afraid that the side he had chosen would be outnumbered forty to one by the minions of Darkness.
Then, at nightfall, she came out of the desert in a sleek automobile with bloody upholstery. He saw her dust devil from a long way away, and knew that she had been led here by her own dreams, by the pull of the moon. Her picture was titled the Moon and the Crocodile. She would be confused, but he would have to deal with that.
The machine slid to a halt inside the courtyard, and Hawk stepped out of the shadows. The car's door raised, and the One-Eyed White Girl emerged. Her hair was long and black as a raven's feather, untied so one wing partially covered her patch-covered missing eye. She wore loose black pyjamas, moccasins and a black brassiere. She wasn't tall, she wasn't obviously muscled, and she was young, a girl not a woman.
She didn't look like a great warrior, but Hawk sensed her strength immediately. He knew some of her past, and he would learn more. Her eyepatch apart, she bore no obvious scars, but she had fought many battles, vanquished many foes. He opened his mouth, and sang the song of the One-Eyed White Girl, the song his father had taught him.
Her hand went to the holstered gun slung on her thigh. She had polished black fingernails, a single touch of ornamentation.
He spread his empty hands to show her he meant no harm. His song continued, echoing through the monastery as once the chanting of the monks must have done. The devout were long gone, but the Sacred Purpose
