Comeback Tour

Heaven.' Incidentally, President North will have to find a new Ambassador to the Josephite state of Deseret. Admiral Harriman Bosley, the current holder of the post, has just announced his conversion to the Josephite faith and renounced his worldly position to become Brother Bosley, a tenor in the world-famous Josephite Tabernacle Choir.

'As if to underline Senator Redford's concern over the unruliness of Sanctioned Operatives, fighting broke out today along the Kansas-Missouri border between agents in the employ of the little-known Logan's Runners of Kansas City and the Good Ole Boys, the powerful South-Western Area Agency. Judgement Q. Harbottle of the GOB alleges that Logan's Runners have been involved in the operation of the so-cailed 'underground railroad' which has been assisting runaway indentees across the state line into Kansas, where the indenture system is not on the statutes. Max Logan, senior partner in the Runners, countercharges that Harbottle is 'nothing but a slave-whopping cotton-picking chickenplucker.' Indenture remains a controversial issue. Those corps who take advantage of indentured labour maintain that the system is not a form of slavery, but 68% of you, according to a recent national poll, don't believe them. We at GenTech would like to stress that those indentees employed in our Tennessee and Mississippi plants have offered their labour entirely voluntarily and have a standard of living far higher than the average for their socio-economic group.

'Talks again broke down between representatives of Russian Premier Boris Yeltsin and Japanese Prime Minister Noburo Sidehara yesterday, with Sidehara refusing to withdraw support from GenTech East's program of undersea mining in the Sea of Okhotsk. During routine naval manoeuvers last week, the Russian navy depth-charged the GenTech submersible rig Toshiro Mifune, and accusations have been flying all over the Far East. Yeltsin refuses to discipline Admiral Yevgeny Tchernobog for his actions, claiming that the Toshiro Mifune was well off its charted course and could easily be mistaken for a seabed rock formation, and is also ignoring the requests of GenTech East CEO Kobayashi that the Soviet Union pay reparations to the corp for the loss of expensive equipment and personnel during the incident. Three members of the Blood Banner Society, the Japanese ultra-nationalist group, took over the Russian Tea Rooms in Osaka, a popular Sovrock nightspot, and held over forty Petya Tcherkassoff fans hostage for five hours. The desperate siege ended only when the Blood Banner group finished their anti-Russian speeches and committed ritual suicide.

'On a lighter note, Dino the Skateboarding Duck was back on the streets again today after his annual medical check-up and road test. The children's favourite will be competing again in the Indianapolis 500 motor race. 'And now, back to the studio…'

VII

'How the hell did you get into the building?' Elvis asked the small man with the big hat in his hand.

Robert E. Lee Chamberlain, Memphis Office Chief of the Good Ole Boys Agency, took a drag on his foot-long cigar.

'Just who d'you think your block committee buys their security from, Presley? The Hound Dog Agency?'

Chamberlain laughed, and coughed smoke into the air. He was leaning against Elvis' Cadillac, trying to look cool despite the sweat running into his white sideburns. Chamberlain was a desk Op if ever there was; all his battles were fought to thfc death in offices, with paperclips and computer terminals.

'That's Colonel Presley to you, Chamberlain. And get your dirty boot offa my clean car.'

'Okay, okay. No need for us Southern boys to bite each other's heads clean off, is there?'

Chamberlain stepped away from the Cadillac and held up his hands in mock surrender.

'You should watch where you step, Chamberlain. You never know when a man has bought himself a pair of new shoes he don't want messed up. Like these. They're blue suede, you know.'

Chamberlain bit off the wet end of his cigar and spat it out on the floor. Elvis had never liked the man. He had been the Enderby Registration officer for Tennessee before he transferred to the GOB, and had given Elvis a hard time granting the Hound Dog Agency its license. He'd always been in the pocket of Harbottle's Boys, and now it was official.

'We're from different Souths, Chamberlain.'

'How do you mean?'

'Yours is all settin' on porches sippin' mint juleps and stringing up the coloured folks with ropes of magnolia blossom, and mine is all starvin' to death in sharecropper shacks goin' blind from bad moonshine and workin' eighteen hours a day just to stay even.'

Chamberlain expressed disgust.

Elvis looked around for Nick. He wanted to make sure the car was in peak condition. He and Krokodil planned on hitting the trail tomorrow, and he didn't want to be stranded in the swamp with a burst tyre or a jammed minicannon.

Chamberlain grinned nervously. He was oily enough to get ahead in politics, but Harbottle and the Good Ole Boys could pour more dollars into his numbered bank accounts than the government.

'What the hell do you want anyway. Chamberlain?'

Chamberlain blew more smoke, and scattered ash on the tarmac. 'Just a friendly li'l call, Colonel.'

'You ain't no friend of mine.'

'Aw, c'mon. Colonel. You know, what with this big ol' brouhaha up there in Washington D.C., all us Ops gotta stick together. We got us a whole set of interests to look after. Mutual interests, y'understand. There are damnyank politicians who just plain don't like law and order, y'know.'

Elvis spat. 'Yeah…well, the way some Agencies do business, I reckon I can understand how they feel.'

Chamberlain stabbed the air with his cigar. Its tip glowed.

'You small-time guys really unsettle mah stomach, y'know? We got us a nice thing going here, and you just breeze in and dicker around with the situation like it don't matter whether you're eatin' 'taters or grits.'

Elvis began to see what this was about. 'Would you mind excusing me. Chamberlain? I've got some arrest documentation to file. I brought in a real scumjumper yesterday. Burtram Fassett. You ever hear of him?'

A deep red flush started at the GOB man's neck and filtered up over his face.

'You needn't bother doing the bytework, Colonel. Fassett hanged himself in jail last night.''

'Ain't that a shame…'

'Yeah, you're the one to blame…'

'My tears will fall like rain.'

The red reached Chamberlain's hairline, and crept into the roots of his dyed white locks.

'Burtram Fassett was a patriot of the New South, and you had no business turning him over to the damnyanks. No business at all.'

Elvis was getting riled himself.

'Burtram Fassett was a psychopath, a dirtbag filth-hog, a disgrace to his state and should have been clapped in the pokey a long time ago.'

Chamberlain snorted smoke.

'I wouldn't be right in guessing that there was maybe some little link-up between the Confederate Air Force and the Good Ole Boys, would I?'

Chamberlain didn't answer.

'Some of the hoodheads I tangled with out in the Delta were mighty well tooled-up for a bunch of fanatics. They had the kind of hardware only the Agencies are supposed to have access to.'

'Presley…'

'Colonel Presley.'

'Colonel, Field Marshal, Whatever-You-Like, you have to get with the big picture some time…'

'Are you gonna offer me a job with the GOB again?'

'The offer is always there. You're too smart to stay independent all your life, Colonel. Within the organization, there are plenty of slots for a smart cog like you. And soon, the New South will have a lot of use for gun-guys like you and me. Utah has gone secesh, and that sets a precedent. It's the War of Southron Independence all over