Bill scratched uneasily with one foot in the black soil. “Anyway, I think I killed it. Now I’m sorry, if it’s only a date palm.”
I gave him a reassuring smile, although I didn’t really feel like it. “Don’t worry, Bill. I’m sure it’s only stunned.”
He brightened considerably. “That’s easy for you to say,” he said.
I smashed both the Dracula and Van Helsing moddies with the brick. Who can say how much good that did, because the next homicidal blazebrain still had plenty of murderous moddies to choose from, at Laila’s store or any of the other modshops in the Budayeen. I let out a deep sigh. I’d worry about those killers when the time came.
I helped Sheba to her feet. She was still hysterical, but now she clung to me for comfort. Her violent sobbing subsided. I saw that her vampire’s elongated canine teeth were fake, a bodily modification that Sheba had paid for at one of the Budayeen store-front surgical clinics. I reached up slowly and gently pulled the fangs free.
I knew Sheba had an addictive personality — there was a lot of that going around the Budayeen these days — and although she wouldn’t wear the vampire moddy again, she was more than likely going to become something just as dangerous to herself and to other people in the near future.
Still, I thought, I could hope that the sudden awareness of what she’d done would get her to seek help. There was nothing more that I could do for her now. The rest was up to Sheba herself.
In the same way, my own future would be shaped in part by the moddies I bought and wore. Hell, I’d just come very close to killing a seriously troubled young woman while I was under the influence of the Van Helsing moddy. I was certainly in no position to judge her.
That gave me an awful lot to think about, but I could put that off until later, or tomorrow, or some other time. Right then I turned my attention to Musa Ali’s little sister. I untied her and satisfied myself that although she was exhausted and terrified, she was otherwise unharmed. Bill bent down and picked her up in his arms. He always got along well with children.
As the Budayeen characters began to arrive at the cemetery, drawn by the shouting and racket of our small battle with the Undead, I took Sheba’s arm and led her out of the graveyard, back down the Street to her long-unused apartment. As of that moment, all she had was hope.
Introduction to
King of the Cyber Rifles
A number of people asked George why he never mentioned anything that was going on in the rest of the world during When Gravity Fails. This would be a little like having Jane Austen mention the Napoleonic Wars during Pride and Prejudice — which she never does — or Raymond Chandler take a break during The Big Sleep to discuss the conquest of Poland by Nazi Germany.
The Budayeen is the only world its inhabitants care about.
Even as personality-transfer technology was assimilated by prostitutes and pomographers, so it has been incorporated into modem warfare. Like the denizens of the Budayeen, the hero of this tale doesn’t know much of what’s going on in the rest of the world, and doesn’t care. All he knows is where he is, and what he has to do for the rest of the day. With the amount of lies — propaganda and electronic — going around, it’s all he CAN know, and sometimes not even that.
The story is almost surrealist, hut has a horrifyingly genuine feel. Its hero doesn’t really know why he’s there or how his technology works, any more than the folks in the far-off Budayeen do. They’re quite clearly in the same world, and haven’t the faintest idea of each other’s existence.
Like the heroes of many of George’s stories, the soldier Jân Muhammad is agonizingly isolated, a reflection, I think, of George’s own perception of himself. For a man as gregarious as George was, and as good at dealing with all kinds of people, he was in fact half-afraid of people, seeking solitude while simultaneously dreading it.
And, like the heroes of so many of George’s stories, Jân Muhammad is simply trying to do his job in the best way that he knows how, taking what pride he can in the miniscule, mindless, and insignificant tasks he’s been given.
And getting absolutely no thanks from anybody.
— Barbara Hambly
King of the Cyber Rifles
JÂN MUHAMMAD STOPPED HALFWAY UP THE STONY hill and put down his double armload of dry sticks. By the Persian calendar, it was the second week of Mordaad, the hottest part of the summer. What little grass grew on his hillside was already burnt brown for lack of rain. The dust was thick and the tumbled red rocks gave off an arid, baked smell. Jân Muhammad mopped the perspiration from his forehead with the sleeve of his uniform tunic. Flies buzzed all around his head, but he had long ago given up trying to chase them away. High overhead, the sun was a plate of brass hanging motionless. Jân Muhammad looked down reluctantly at his burden of firewood, then opened the catch at the throat of his tunic. Sand and grit had worked down under his collar and had begun to rub his neck raw. He wished he had enough water to rinse his sweat-streaked skin.
He carried the wood up the rest of the way to the observation post. He had a box for the fuel inside the small bunker, so he wouldn’t need to step outside again to fetch it. If he were under attack and the broken branches were outside, he would have to suffer in the icy night of the wasteland, or do without hot soup and tea. It was still too early in the day to think of lighting the stove, though. He had a lot of work to do before evening.
The narrow room where he ate, slept, kept watch, and fought was solidly built of roughly dressed stone and cement. He had a cot and a chair he had lashed together himself out of tree limbs, a blanket, a jug of water and a basin, another basin for evacuation, a small stove, and his data deck. He did not understand how the power source worked. It was buried in the hillside beside the observation post, and supplied current to the data deck, the weapons systems, the portable communications equipment, and two bare light bulbs that glared starkly through the long, empty nights. The army had not seen fit to give him an electric stove or any other conveniences. Jân Muhammad supposed they didn’t want him to get too comfortable. He could have reassured them on that point.
Like a crack of thunder from a clear sky, a mortar shell ripped a hole in the thin soil two hundred yards downslope. Jân Muhammad stood in the center of his small room, cursing softly. He’d just been thinking about a Mohâjerân raid, and now their deafening shell-bursts were walking slowly up toward his observation post, leaving craters like the devastating footprints of an invisible giant. The armed refugees had tried many times in the last year to pry the lonely soldier from his defensive position. Although they had stolen grenades, machine guns, and small arms, they had no leadership, no discipline, no strategies, and no definite goals. They were just a large mob in possession of some sophisticated weapons. They were poorly matched against Jân Muhammad and his data deck.
He sat down calmly at his work space. “Diagnostics,” he murmured. The autotest lights came on, all burning green; he grabbed the red plastic command module and chipped it onto the anterior implant plug at the crown of his skull. He gasped as the hot, stale-smelling observation post melted away. His brain began to receive information only through the data deck. He saw a panoramic view of his hilltop, the rugged pass to the west, and the cracked, dry plain to the east. The view was assembled from input from many holocameras hidden in the surrounding area, processed through the data deck, and presented to Jân Muhammad in a view he might have if he were hovering peacefully some fifty feet in the air. It took him a moment to let go of his body’s senses and surrender to the deck. As much as he liked chipping in, he resisted for an instant each time, with a tingling, absurd fear that on this occasion he wouldn’t be able to disengage.