Shiba followed.
'Holy Father,' said Father O'Shaughnessy, 'it is happening again. Another major tremor.'
Pope Georgi unconsciously popped his ring into his mouth, and pondered.
'Pray, Declan,' he said, 'pray…'
Elvis hit the bottom of the shaft, and sprayed gunfire at the Waltons. The fighting was almost over. Raimundo had finished most of the surviving bunker staff off.
There were fires, and water was coming in from somewhere.
'Bye-bye, Gavin,' sang Sonny Pigg, backed in this special commemorative concert by most of The Mothers of Violence and the bassman from Bolt Thrower, 'I'm a gonna zap you…' So long, Gavin, you're just a piece of crap, you 'Won all that cash, but it was gone in a flash…'
Duroc crammed himself into the escape canister, and pulled levers. This should shoot him three hundred yards through a disused ventilation tunnel, and bring him up in the saltmarsh.
He didn't have time to be angry about the collapse of the Needlepoint Project.
He had to survive, to serve the Summoner again.
Krokodil ran through the corridors, searching, firing into empty rooms.
She was her own self again, the monster receding. There were alarms going off everywhere around her.
At the end of the corridor was a chute of some kind. There was an eggshaped metal pod the size of a man on a pad, and there was someone in it.
Krokodil took aim at the face she had never seen before, and fired…
The ejection system fired, and Duroc felt his entire body slamming against the floor of the pod as it shot through the tunnel. The pain was unbelievable, and he was sure that every bone in his body was broken, every organ ruptured. Grey stone rushed past the faceplate.
…an instant too late. The pod was gone.
But the face of the man inside was indelibly printed in her memory.
There would be another day.
The pod burst through an old iron grille and shot fifty feet into the air, spinning end over end.
The faceplate was overlaid with red. Duroc waited to die.
The pod brushed the tops of some cypresses, breaking branches. Its momentum spent, it fell to the swamp, and settled, bobbing.
There was wetness around him now. Water was leaking in.
Raising a hand that felt as if it had been under a pile driver, Duroc tried to press the buttons.
With the knuckle of his thumb, he hit the right control. Explosive bolts blew off the hatch, and more water flooded in.
Pushing against the seat, Duroc launched himself out of the pod, and hugged a man-sized island.
The pod half-sank and settled. The muddy water was only about four feet deep.
Duroc's vision blurred…
Raimundo was doing a good job of trashing everything, Elvis thought. The remaining Josephites weren't resisting, so he ordered the dinosaur not to kill them. He seemed disappointed, but had plenty of machinery to vent his frustrations on.
Krokodil came back into the main command centre. She conferred with Shiba, bending down to talk to the Japanese.
'Okay, guitar man,' she said to him, 'the show's over. Let's pull out.'
X
Elvis found Krokodil squatting in the blackened area by the collapsed gantry.
'Krokodil?'
She looked up at him, her one eye cold and clear.
'Krokodil, are you still you?'
She nodded, but didn't say anything.
'I got a whole lotta things to think about, you know. I feel all mixed-up inside. You brought me here, and things have been happenin'. I don't know if I can go back to Memphis and pick up. Things ain't like I've been figurin'.'
'Go home, Elvis,' she said.
'Pardon, ma'am.'
'Just get in your Cadillac and go home. Live your life as best you can. We may not have long.'
At the other side of the base, Shiba and Raimundo were seeing to the wounded, and trying to salvage something. Shiba was going off the idea of calling up his superiors in Japan. The Suitcase People needed administrators, he had decided. More were coming out of the swamps every hour. There were the makings of a real community.
'And you?'
Krokodil sighed, and stood up. 'Salt Lake City. There's something I have to do.'
'I could…'
She shook her head. 'No. I've taken up too much of your time. I have Hawk.'
Elvis felt disappointed. Didn't she think he had done well?
'I'm sorry, Elvis, I shouldn't have changed you so much…'
Elvis didn't understand. The music was coursing through his veins. It was like being young again.
Shiba had released the indentees from their contracts, but most of them, even the unchanged ones, were acting as if they'd rather stay with the Suitcase People than return to their former homes to chance another indenture sweep.
'What will you do with the money?' she asked.
He shrugged, shaking his hair. 'That don't matter. I might buy me a congressman and do something about the Good Ole Boys. There's lots of things round the South that need changing.'
'That's true.'
She kissed him, quietly. This time, it was like being touched by a ghost. Then, she walked to the edge of the base, and slipped through a hole in the fence, into the swamp.
Elvis watched her go.
'C'mon, Jesse Garon,' he said. 'Work to do…'
XI
Simone found him in the marsh, floating, his face just above water. He wasn't badly hurt, but he was bruised and bleeding. Struggling with his big body, she eased him to dryish ground.
There were Suitcase People all around. Some were out searching for stray Josephites, but most were just wading towards the base where they could be sure of a welcome.
Roger was trying to say something, but was too badly shocked.
She had found a two-person skimmer by the docks, surrounded by the bloated corpses of Suitcase People who had died trying to make their landing.
It was not going to be easy getting Roger into it without tipping it over. She rested.
The conjure man's music still reverberated inside her head. She had never heard anything like that before.
Roger shifted, and tried to sit up. He winced, and slumped down again.
