Comeback Tour

Machsler reached, and then froze. He put his hand back on the briefcase. He flushed. Underneath his bee-fuzz crewcut, his scalp glowed red.

Duroc raised his drink in a toast. The soldier goggled at the bug slowly revolving in the glass.

Machsler got up, and put the briefcase down by Duroc's chair. Then he took the cashplastic, slipped it into his back pocket and sat down.

Duroc tapped the access code into the lock, and opened the case. The file was brittle cardboard, full of yellowing papers. He cast an eye over the top few sheets. There were some wiring diagrams and, essentially, a page of deep-buried codewords.

'Are you sure you won't have that drink?'

'Positive.'

There was an embarrassed moment. Obviously, Machsler wanted to leave, to get as far away from the hotel as possible, but felt he had to stay for form's sake.

Simone got out of bed and walked across the room to the fridge. Machsler's eyes followed her, but Duroc could not tell whether he was fixing on her body in general or the marks on her back in particular.

'You play rough, eh?' he said, with a weak smile.

Duroc was offended by the soldier's presumption. He sipped his drink. 'Sometimes.'

Machsler got up, and edged towards the door. '1 have a gondola waiting,' he said. 'I have to be back in base by nineteen hundred hours.'

'Goodbye, Ronald.'

'Goodbye, Elder. It's a pleasure doing business with you.'

'Likewise.'

Machsler closed the door behind him, and Simone poured herself another tumbler of mineral water. Her body was finely sheened with perspiration. She was displaying herself to him, as she had been taught. She was a good little indenture girl.

Duroc was more interested in the papers Machsler had brought him. He would have to supervise the reconnection. Fonvielle was too far gone to be much help in that department The Church had its experts on call, but Duroc would have to oversee the project.

'What are you reading?'

Simone was standing with her hip cocked, weight on one leg, a red-nailed hand idly scratching her flat lower belly. She was obviously posing, a private pornosnap for the customers.

'These are the instructions for a machine we've just bought. They tell me how to light the blue touch paper and retire…'

That was over the girl's head.

He had an idea. 'Simone,' he said, 'have you ever been to Florida?'

'Izumi took me to Daytona Beach for a convention once. We stayed in the hotel most of the time. There was a kumite contest, one of those to-the-death pyramid games. Gen Tech were sponsoring a fighter they'd tricked out with bio-bits. The fighter won, but was too damaged to appear in the teevee ads. Izumi was furious.'

She ran her finger along her thigh, outlining a barely visible scar.

'When Izumi was furious, he was a beast.'

Regular as a digital watch, it started to rain outside. New Orleans was a monsoon zone. It was something to do with the Winter Corporation's chemical synthetics plant, Duroc had heard. From three till five every afternoon, thick sheets of scalding, corrosive rain fell on the city. Everyone had worked the indoor siesta into their lives. Duroc wondered if Machsler's gondolier was caught in the downpour.

'How much would it cost to buy your indenture contract from Mink Hat?'

Simone looked frightened. 'I don't think he wants to sell. I'm new in the stable, and I bring in…'

Duroc finished his drink, stranding the dead cockroach in the melting icecubes. 'He'll sell. The Church is persuasive, and rich.'

'Do you want to…' she couldn't get the word out…'to buy me, m'sieu?'

Duroc nodded. 'I'm moving to Florida for the next few months. I would be honoured if you would come with me?'

'Are we going to Daytona? Miami?'

'No. We're going to a little place you may not have heard of. It was quite famous once, before you were born. It's a little place called…'

V

'…Cape Canaveral?'

'It's in Northern Florida,' said the smart, sharp-suited young woman.

'I know where it is,' snapped the Op. 'I just haven't heard the name for a long time. That's the place where the moon rockets used to take off, right?'

'Yes.'

Elvis looked at Krokodil, and found her as inexpressive as a statue. She was young, pretty and dressed in a conservative skirt and jacket, dark grey with a fine pinstripe. Immaculately made-up, her only really distinctive feature was the eyepatch half-concealed by a wing of raven-black hair. She was attractive, but there was something hard, almost scary, about her. Elvis had known cyborgs in the services, and there was something of the biomechanical about Krokodil. Her handshake had been a bone-crusher, he wondered how much of her was real, how much from the lab? She spoke perfect English, like an amnesiac who has had to relearn everything as an adult, but there was an occasional NoGo twist to her vocabulary. Krokodil hadn't been born to the style she was sporting.

The man was easier to take. Dressed in dusty denims, with a weathered face and a black pigtail, he was a Navaho. He had introduced himself as Hawk-That-Settles. Elvis had had a Cherokee great-great-great grandmother. Morning Dove White. As a teenager, watching Western movies from a pickup in the Tupelo Drive-In, he had been torn between his loyalties to the cowboy heroes all the fellows tried to imitate in speech and manner and his yearning for the Indian's life. One of his few regrets about quitting the movies is that he never did get to play the half-Kiowa hero of Flaming Star, the only decent script that got past the Colonel to him. John Saxon had been okay in the picture, but Elvis knew he would have been better.

Hawk was the talker, but Krokodil put over the punchlines.

They were meeting in a diner in Whitehaven, a Southern suburb of Memphis. Elvis knew the place well, and often used it as an office for the Hound Dog Agency. Gracelands, the mansion he had owned in the music days, was five blocks down, owned by a CAF auxiliary, the Church of Jesus Christ, Caucasian.

Cape Canaveral?

'Isn't that under water?'

Hawk smiled. 'Yep, but only a foot or so. They threw up them walls along the Indian River Coast when the Cape was still NASA's head office. They leak a little bit, but you can walk around with your head out of the water.'

'What about the diseases? And the skeeters?'

'Not much we can do about them, is there?'

'Fair enough.'

Cissy, the waitress, came by and refilled Elvis' and Hawk's recaff cups. Krokodil still hadn't touched hers. The Op wondered if she needed to take nourishment at all, or whether a few hours jacked into the mains would juice her up.

'You ready to order?' Cissy asked, simpering a little. Elvis reckoned she was a little sweet on him.

Elvis went for the jambalaya, Krokodil had the crawfish pie and Hawk picked the fillet gumbo. If you're in the South, you eat Southern.