Krokodil Tears

sources must be superb. T-H-R had been after her for years, and according to them she had just dropped out of sight.

But Duroc's people must be practically inside her skull.

The Monastery of Santa de Nogueira. He had never heard of it, and it wasn't on most maps, but the Josephites had left directions in the car.

They had also left him with a stimulating array of toys, which he had put to good use already. He was pleased to discover there was a Mid-West Armaments firm called Acme Incorporated, and had tried out their electroknives on a hitch-hiker from Tucson. They were barely serviceable tools, but he kept them for the value of the name.

From a post office in Dos Cabezos, he sent a card to Rex Tendeter and the others on Monsters' Row. Tracing in the blood of the sheriff, he wrote 'HAVING A LOVELY TIME, WISH YOU WERE HERE, LOVE OTTOKAR.' He hoped the Sunnydales people would let the message get through. The monsters deserved a touch of hope. After all, if Dr Ottokar Proctor could get out, then so could they…

Since he reached the world, the media had been crazy. If he'd actually committed all the murders they were trying to pin on him, he ought to get a Nobel prize for inventing teleportation. They had him striking in New York and San Francisco within the same twenty minutes. He was as often reported and as seldom identified as Neil Gaiman. Perhaps, after he had carried out his current commission, he should go after the graphic novelist and collect the Pan-Islamic Congress' bounty on his head. No, that would demean his Art, importing a touch of too-crass commercialism to the hallowed process of murder.

He had given some thought to the problem of Jessamyn Bonney. He had listened through the Dead Rat tapes several times, and made notes on her capabilities and achievements. He had especially admired her methods in the cases of Susie Terhune and Bronson Manolo. Nothing showy, just a simple display of fatal force. She was no Artist, but she was certainly a competent enough craftswoman.

He read up on Dr Threadneedle, and looked at his autopsy reports. The conclusions were obvious. Jessamyn had something a little extra.

But he had killed people with bio-implants before. Plenty of them. He had sought out the strongest of the strong and left them howling, begging for merciful death.

Jessamyn would be no different.

There was only room for one God of Pain, and Dr Proctor was the ranking applicant for the position.

The moon rose over the desert.

IX

He was alone in the courtyard. It was late. Jesse was sleeping. There was a wind coming across the sands, coming nearer. And in that wind. Hawk knew, was the Devil.

'What the hell…' he said.

Faintly, he heard a voice in the wind, singing…

…singing 'Se quel guerrier to fossil…Celeste Aida,' Dr Proctor drove across the sands. Santa de Nogueira was off the road, but the Josephites had given him an auto that converted into a sandcat.

The monastery stood up ahead, silhouetted against the night sky like an Arabian Nights palace. Aida was most apt.

If Duroc's information was correct, Jessamyn Bonney was in that ancient castle, a princess waiting for her dragon.

Dr Proctor's smile turned into a grin, and his eyebrows lowered. Those few witnesses left alive who had seen this expression come over his face had testified that he truly did resemble the cartoon character from whom he had taken his nom de homicide.

He chuckled in the back of his throat, his eyeteeth digging into his lips, and relaxed. He was the economist again, the calm pundit of the teevee shows and the press conferences, the smooth liar who had gently pushed the richest, most powerful nation in the world into a monetary cesspool from which it would take centuries to recover.

He looked at himself in the mirror, and twisted his mouth like Daffy Duck. 'You know what,' he said to himself, 'you're dethpicable!'

He felt the killing excitement building in his water.

In the Salt Lake City tabernacle, Nguyen Seth picked up his spectacles, and slipped them on. The darkness cleared, and he peered into the pool of blood in the font.

The smoke cleared, and he saw the monastery. Duroc had chosen his catspaw well.

This was a fit night to raise the Devil.

Jesse shifted, disturbed. Faces were coming at her at great speed. The crocodile whispered in her ear, calling ladybug, ladybug. He urged her to fly away home…

…your house is on fire, your children are gone.

Her eye opened in the darkness, and she saw that Hawk-That-Settles had gone from their cell.

Moonlight was flooding in through the windowslit.

In the Outer Darkness, the Ancient Adversary strained towards the wormhole. It was time to be spat out into the physical universe, to join with its Vessel, then seek out its prey…

Dr Proctor turned off the sound system, and concentrated. He found the Devil inside himself, and summoned the creature up. His friends on Monsters' Row would be proud of him.

Hawk-That-Settles sang at the moon, a song his father had taught him. He called for the crocodile. He fancied that the yellow circle in the sky was distending, becoming an oval, disgorging a snout, sprouting a lashing tail. His song continued, and the spirits of his ancestors joined him.

Duroc awoke, and reached for the knife under his pillow. He had been dreaming of his uncle, of Dien Bien Phu, again. The woman beside him sat up, grumbling, and stroked his back.

'Roger, you're soaking.'

His heart calmed. He put the blade back. 'It is nothing, Sister Harrison,' he said, 'get back to sleep.'

'You're feverish.'

'No, it's just…a family matter.'

In the Sea of Tranquillity, the dome of Camp Pournelle reflected the sun's rays, visible to the naked eye on earth as a twinkle in the face of the man in the moon.

Abandoned for ten years, since the discontinuance of the United States space program, the camp was home only to anonymous ranks of calculating machines.

A change in the temperature of the lunar subsoil triggered a mechanism, and a printer began to process a strip for the eyes of a staff long gone earthside for desk jobs.

Sensors swivelled. Events took place. They were noted down, filed away, and forgotten…

On the Reservation, Two-Dogs-Dying was racked with another coughing fit. He was four-fifths of the way through a pint of Old Thunderblast, an especially subtle vintage manufactured as a side-effect during the processing of cattle-feed and sold off for fifty cents a bottle to the less discerning citizens of the South-West.

Two-Dogs was lying on a garbage dump, surrounded by refuse for which even the scavenger dogs of the Navaho had no use. Next to his head was the screen of an obsolete personal computer, cracked diagonally.

In the glass, he saw the moon broken in half like a plate. It shifted, and he knew his vision was going again. He drained the bottle, and tossed it away. It broke. Soon, he would be vomiting. That was the way it always was these days. Drink, then puke. He had been badly named at birth, and now he was fulfilling his father's poor choice.

The moon twisted.

Suddenly, he was sober. He turned onto his back, and looked up at the grinning face in the sky.

He opened his mouth, and felt an explosion coming up from his stomach. He took a deep breath, and joined voice with his son, three hundred miles to the south, singing the song of the moon, the song of their family…

The moon crocodile grinned.