how Elvis would take the loss of the carboat. It was a common panzergirl taunt against Ops that their guts were under the hoods of their machines and that if you took their wheels away they were like turtles on their backs. There was even a whole range of semi-obscene jokes about the relationship between Redd Harvest, the top T-H-R Op, and her G-Mek V-12 'Nola Gay. But, hell, Krokodil had known gangcultists who were just as hung up on their hardware.
Elvis surprised her, by taking the loss as a simple irritant. She had gathered that a good deal of his earnings over the years had been channelled into the Cadillac, and that this would practically wipe him out financially. Apart from the one million he would pick up for this job if he survived, of course. But even a cool mil probably wouldn't replace a '57 Cadillac with more firepower than a US Cavalry cruiser.
'Easy come,' Elvis said, 'easy go. We better find ourselves a boat to requisition.'
'Requisitioning' was a term used by Ops whenever they wanted to steal anything. They would turn over the Walton diner completely before leaving.
They hunted through the ruins of the kitchen and dining room. They came up with a cache of ammunition for the Moulinex machine pistol Elvis had requisitioned from the late Donny Walton.
'Do you reckon any of this stuff is okay to eat?' he asked, indicating a refrigeratorful of supplies.
She wasn't sure. Most of the food looked like the plastic replicas they use for adverts.
'Best be safe.'
'Yeah,' the Op sighed. 'Hell. I could do with a candy bar or something.'
'I could catch you a trilobite and we could cook it in swampwater.'
Elvis made a face. 'I just lost my appetite.'
Upstairs, the Waltons had lived in an illustration from an old magazine. Everything was perfect in its place. There were
'Do you notice?' she asked him.
He looked around. 'Nope. Nothing strange here.'
'It's what's not here. Colonel.'
'What?'
'This is their living room. It's their only room. No bedroom, no bathroom. What kind of people don't need a toilet?'
'Jeeze,' he shuddered. 'These people are weird.'
Krokodil smiled at the understatement. Like almost everyone else in the world. Colonel Presley didn't really know what was going on. It wasn't his fault. She had crossed Elder Seth back when she was a teenager, taken his spectacles and been taught to see the world as it really was, a fragile place being crowded at the edges by the Dark Ones. Monsters and demons walked with her always now. The thing inside her was coiled dormant, but she was forever aware of it, waiting for it to erupt again. She hoped never to see anything like the Jibbenainosay again, but knew that her life held those horrible possibilities, and that she would have to confront them.
'Look at this,' Elvis said, pointing to a framed picture.
A talon of fear punctured her heart. It was Elder Nguyen Seth himself, amateurishly painted with an unconvincing angelic smile, standing in front of the Josephite Tabernacle, a glowing halo around his black hat, surrounded by little children who were beaming merrily up at him.
Without thinking, she made a fist and put it through the picture. Glass shattered.
'Whoa there, ma'am. It ain't that ugly.'
The picture was torn now, ripped across the face.
In her head, the Elder spoke to her again, taunting her for her many failures. No matter how she strove, she would never stop him. She didn't even know what his Grand Design was; how could she hope to prevent him from the accomplishment of it?
She broke contact with the painted eyes, and stormed downstairs, with Elvis following.
'I never thought to see that face again,' Elvis said.
Krokodil didn't understand.
'Mr Seth. He don't look no different now than he did back then.'
'Back when?'
Elvis was preoccuppied. 'The crazy days. The music days. Him and Colonel Parker ran me like a greyhound.'
'This is the same man? Elder Nguyen Seth.'
'Now you mention it, I suppose they are the same man. That ain't possible, is it?'
Krokodil remembered the memories that had bled into her mind from the Elder's.
'He'd have to be near a hundred years old.'
'He's been around for a lot longer than that.'
'Lady, what are you in to?'
She shrugged. 'You don't really want to know, Colonel Presley. Just get me to the Cape.'
'I'll try.'
There was a small powerboat in a shack by the diner, gassed up and ready to go. They loaded scavved weapons and ammo into its storage compartments, and Elvis insisted on bringing along some of the more obviously pre-packaged foods.
'There ain't no charts,' he said. 'We'll have to steer by the stars when it's night. Still, if we cut across the peninsula until we come to the sea and turn South we'll have to find the Cape.'
Krokodil didn't doubt that they would get there without getting lost. It was what would happen afterwards that worried her.
'This will slow us down some. Put a couple of days on the journey. And I don't know if there's enough gas in the extra cans to get us there.'
'We'll deal with that when it becomes a problem.'
'We surely will.'
Elvis cast off, and the boat puttered out onto the waters, which rippled thickly as it cut across them.
It was late afternoon, and the insects were thick in the air. The Op was sweating heavily, even with his jacket off, and had to bat the bugs away from his face. They grew them big in this country. Even she was bothered by them. Doc Threadneedle had made her invulnerable to almost everything short of a direct hit with a nuclear weapon, but she could still be bitten by nuisance-value creepy-crawlies. That was science for you. They'd find a cure for cancer before they got around to licking the headcold.
He was humming under his breath. Krokodil wondered if he realized he had that habit.
It was an obscure American folk song, composed by someone called Alligator John Fogarty. She had only heard of it because Petya Tcherkassoff had done a cover version, with a bizarre Russian-accented twist to the English language lyrics, on his
It was called 'Born on the Bayou.'
IX
Sister Addams summoned him down to the control bunker. It was good news. Fonvielle had established contact with Keystone, the communications link of the Needlepoint Ring. If the satellite could be made to respond, then the whole chain would fall in line. And the Church of Joseph would wield unparalleled power over the nations of the Earth. His first impulse had been to order someone to report the good news to Elder Seth, but he held back. There was no harm in verifying the situation for himself.
Simone trailed along after him. He rather liked the obvious disapproval the Brothers and Sisters had to choke back whenever she was around. They were prudish fanatics mostly, even the ones who hadn't gone Donny-and- Marie yet. Given free rein, they'd like to stone Simone Scarlet, the Scarlet Woman, to death. They did that sort of
