plans by heart, and he had been itching for another crack at this for better than two and a half decades.
Mars was more romantic, the Moon had more practical applications, and Deep Space was where the scientific data the whitecoats wanted could be scooped. But this was the one that ate him up from the inside. It had never been right, and Fonvielle didn't like leaving it that way. It could be made right, and he wanted it so.
The Prezz gave orders. And Commander Lawrence Jerome Fonvielle snapped off a precise salute.
There was a schedule. There were targets.
And within a month it would finally be done. The Needlepoint System would come on line.
And down here on Earth, the Arms Race would be over.
VI
It was just a couple of swamp shacks on poles, but it had a diner. They had been in an amphibious mode for thirty or forty miles now, the Cadillac's wheels sealed off and the rear motors kicking in. The machine displaced quite a bit of water as it cruised through the thick swampland, and they were leaving a foamy wash behind them. Progress was slower than it had been on the road, but Elvis liked being on the water—if the thick mud and chemical stew that made up the Florida swamps could be called water—and the Cadillac handled, as always, like a streamlined dream. His only worry was that there'd be something toxic in the swamp that would eat the paint off the car's hull. They hadn't crossed streams with anything alive and large enough to be dangerous.
Thanks to an old friend at T-H-R, Elvis' onboard computer had a hook-up into the Gazeteer, the map-making- cum-census-taking service underwritten by the big Agencies. Wacissa was recorded as being still barely populated. The diner was called Casper's Chow-Down, and the trilobite thermidor was triple-starred. But the date of the last check on the entry was eighteen months ago. You couldn't rely on things staying the same for five minutes out here, let alone a year and a half.
Since their tangle with Chamberlain, Krokodil had been sitting quietly, rarely talking. He was intently conscious that the obstruction had been his fight, not hers. In her place, he would be wondering whether hiring the Op had been worthwhile. After all, as she had shown, she could certainly take care of herself in a fight. Elvis was beginning to feel the strain of so much driving, the familiar ache in his neck and shoulders. And he was tired of their road rations.
He pulled the Cadillac up by the diner's jetty, and used the automatic grapple as an anchor. The ve-hickle settled down, waters lapping around the sides.
Krokodil started, as if jolted out of a waking daze. Elvis had noticed the girl occasionally seemed to lapse into vague trance states. That was what cyborgs did instead of sleeping, he knew. The trances were functional. You could live without sleep, but if you didn't dream you went crazy. Sooner or later, the GenTech brain-meddlers would find a way to burn out the dreaming synapses, and Elvis reckoned the whole human race would just have to give up and die, because it wouldn't be worth carrying on. There were some things the brain boys should just leave well enough alone.
'Chow stop,' he said.
He knew that Krokodil did eat, if only occasionally. It was probably a habit, like scratching an itch on an amputated leg.
'Fine.' She didn't protest. Some of his courier clients objected to anything that slowed down the journey, but as they got nearer Cape Canaveral, Elvis got the impression that the woman was displaying a certain reluctance. She wasn't chicken, the run-in with the hoodheads had demonstrated that, but she was nerving herself up to face something pretty damned formidable out on the Cape. Elvis didn't like to think about the kind of thing Krokodil would find formidable. He had enough nightmares of his own.
The roof rolled back, and the thick, heavy air of the swamp, with its many odours, swept in, blowing away their air-conditioned, pollution-filtered and temperature-regulated bubble of atmosphere.
They stood up, and Krokodil helped him onto the jetty. The old boards creaked under them. Elvis was a little unsteady on his legs after so many straight hours at the wheel. He swivelled his hips to get the circulation moving. A mosquito buzzed by, but a stare from Krokodil warned it off.
'Hi y'all,' said a voice. There was someone sitting in a rocking chair on the porch of the diner. 'What's yer pleasure?”
Elvis tried to make out the man's shape, but he was shaded by a saggy awning.
'Vittles would go down well, I reckon,' he said.
'Yep, I guess they would.' The old man laughed, coughing. There was an unhealthy rasp in his chest, as if it were clogged.
'Are you Casper?'
He coughed and laughed again. 'Hell, no. Casper done upped and ran off with a li'l high yaller gal a year or so back. I heard he settled down in Cuby with them ceegar-rollers and drug smugglers.'
'You run the diner?'
The old man hawked at maximum volume, and spat clear off the jetty. 'Nope. You'll find
'Thank you kindly, sir.'
'Don't thank me, boy, until you come out o' the place. You'll find it ain't the same since Casper took off. No sirree, not the same at all.'
A spear of sunlight came through the shifting cypresses and landed in the old man's lap. Elvis saw that his hands were knotted with arthritis. They were green and thickly scaled, and his nails were stubby yellow talons. The swamp bred strange things.
Krokodil tugged his sleeve, and they went into the diner.
It was empty of customers, but there was a youngish man standing behind the counter and a woman who could have been his identical twin over by the griddle. The man had a blond crewcut, a pipe clamped between his perfect teeth, a lightweight sports jacket and a Howdy Doody bowtie. The woman had a fluffy blonde perm that had turned to a concrete helmet with pink ribbons, a puffed-out dress, and a tiny, frilly apron. Elvis had the impression that the couple had been posed lifeless as shop-window dummies until the very instant he and Krokodil had come into the diner, wherupon they had sprung miraculously into an imitation of life, like the animatronic presidents in Disneyland.
'Hi, neighbour,' said the man. 'I'm Donny, and this is my wife Marie. We're here just to serve the Lord, and our good customers. What can I offer you?'
Elvis looked at the menu, which listed plain fare but was covered with curlicue flourishes and smiling cartoon faces licking their lips.
'Recaff, and…tell me, these porkchops you got listed here? They ever walked around as part of a pig?'
'Yes sir. No vatgrown meat at the Walton Family Diner.'
'Great. I'll have a couple of them, smothered in brown gravy, with a side order of fries, salad hold the mayo, and, to follow, a slice of deep-dish apple pie, with ice cream if you've got it and nothing if you ain't.'
'Coming right up, sir. And for your lovely wife?'
Krokodil raised the eyebrow over her patch, and didn't say anything.
'She'll just have mineral water. She's on a diet'
Donny grinned even wider. 'A figure watcher, eh? Just like Marie.'
Mrs Walton giggled wholesomely, and slapped a couple of chops on the griddle. She managed to cook without besmirching her pristine self, and the meal that was set before him on the counter looked as perfectly-arranged and brightly coloured as an illustration in a cookbook. A delicious aroma wafted up and curled into his nostrils.
Elvis took his knife and fork, and began carving into the chops.
'Excuse me, sir,' cut in Donny, a tone of good-natured disapproval creeping into his easygoing manner, 'but aren't you going to say grace?'
Elvis felt a chill, but bowed his head and mumbled.
'There now,' said Marie, 'don't you feel better now you've thanked the Lord?'
'Yes, ma'am,' he raised a forkful of chop to his mouth.
