"How do I get a ticket?"
"You pays at the counter. Kids today don't know nothin' about respect. You forms an orderly queue and you pays at the counter."
Stack glanced at the cashier's box. A bald fashion mannequin was stuffed into it, her ballerina's tutu fluffed up around her, her stiff arms broken.
There was a commotion outside. The secured doors shifted, and sand dribbled through at the bottom.
"I can't stand customers who track dirt all over the carpets, you know."
Sand was being scraped away from the doors. Stack saw the metal face of an Oscar, and the glass exploded inwards. The shards were followed by fifty tons of sand.
"You can't come in like that," said the commissionaire. "You can't…"
Stack barged through the double doors into the auditorium. The Oscar was floundering through the sand behind him. Stack had heard the creak of a lase visor being raised.
The show was over, and the audience—sandrats, gaudy girls, no-hope gamblers, AWOLS, a few Indians—were on their feet, singing.
An MC with protruding cheekbones and a top hat led the chorus in "America the Beautiful, 1999".
"Oh beautiful,
for spacious skies
Oh amber heaps of sand…''
The Oscar was in the auditorium, its lase lashing out like a whip. A row of seatbacks burned through. Some people scattered. Others kept singing.
"Oh poison mountain majesties
Above the blighted land…"
Stack whirled and fired the pumpgun. His shot clanged harmlessly against the Oscar's durium torso. The android's head swivelled, trying for a lock on Stack's heat pettems.
"America, America,
God spat His curse on thee…"
The audience was panicking, crushing through the exits. The MC kept singing, waving his thin arms, keeping the beat with a conjurer's wand.
"And made it worse
With massacres
From sea to stinking sea…"
There were two more Oscars in the cinema now. Sand pressed in after them like a slow wave. A chandelier fell from the ceiling, and draped around the first Oscar like an incredibly ostentatious diamond necklace.
Stack fired again, and got the machine in its lase hole. The Oscar stood stiff, and fell forwards, smashing seats like balsawood. Its companions came for him.
Stack backed away, towards the screen. There were pictures playing again. Marlon Brando as Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars. The old sage of the spaceways was ranting, cotton falling from his cheeks, at C-3PO, a golden-skinned robot. As a kid, Stack had seen Star Wars twenty or thirty times.
The Oscars came down the aisles. Bitterly, Stack wished all robots could be cute and bumbling like C3PO.
He climbed upwards, the picture playing over his body. He plunged through the fabric, which parted with a steady rip, turned, and fired again. The shot went wild, mainly perforating the ruined screen. One of the Oscars detached its hand, and threw it. The thing sprouted waspwings and dived at Stack, red lights winking where the electrodes were. Stack knew it was a shock-sticker, and if it touched him he was fried for sure. He reversed his gun, getting a grip on the hot barrel—searing his palms in the process—and swatted at the hand. He connected, and hit a home run. The shock-sticker smashed, sparking and spitting, to the floor.
There was a ladder set into the wall. He climbed fast, gun tucked between his arm and body. The plaster was crumbling and the rungs were loose. If he could make it alive to the hatch he saw in the ceiling, be would have lost these Oscars. With their weight, they would never be able to use the ladder.
A shell exploded in the air near him. The pumpgun slithered free of his armgrip, and clattered on the floor below. Shit, that left him with only his side-arm.
Stack wondered if Chantal was still alive.
He headbutted the skylight hatch, and it flew up. He scrambled through onto the roof of the Rialto. The sun was going down.
V
"You know, don't you?" a woman's voice said in the dark. "What's going on?"
"Yes," Chantal said.
The lights went up. She found herself in a small room with a rack of guns on the wall. Her arms were being held by the beefy, red-faced sergeant—Quincannon—she had seen excercising the intake yesterday. Her questioner was the Captain—Finney—who had been at the monitor when they traced Stack's cruiser to Welcome. Neither of them looked happy, and they were both violating Standard Operational Procedure.
"I have diplomatic immunity," Chantal said.
Captain Finney wasn't impressed. If she couldn't get through to these people, Chantal would have to hurt them. She didn't want to do that.
"Tell me," ordered Finney.
"Quincannon? That's an Irish name, isn't it?"
"What?" The Captain was bewildered. The Sergeant was surprised.
"Irish. You're Catholic?"
Quincannon's grip relaxed on her as he nodded.
"You, Finney. You're a sufi. You said so yesterday."
"What does all this have to do with it?"
Chantal had graduated from prisoner to advisor. Quincannon stood back respectfully.
"I'm a nun. I'm on a special mission from the Pope."
Finney was still off-balance.
"Do you believe in the Devil? In a personalised force of Evil?"
Quincannon grunted an assent. Finney took a deep breath, "Well, that's a hard question for a sufi. You see, we believe the world is composed of balances and…"
"Enough. What has happened here since I left?"
Finney took another deep breath, but was terse this time. "Younger is dead. Rintoon's gone mad. Lauderdale's a homicidal maniac. And the computer is doing things computers can't do…"
"As I thought, Fort Apache is possessed."
Quincannon crossed himself.
"You must take me to a terminal."
"Possessed?"
"By a demon. I have to perform the rite of exorcism."
"Holy Mary, Mother of God," said Quincannon.
“I'll take all the help I can get. Are you in?"
The Sergeant saluted, and Finney opened the door. "There's a conduit through here. We can get into the access space under the Ops Centre. There's a terminal there."
"Lead the way…"
VI
The demon was taking a time-out for gas and oil. It wanted to have total dominance of Fort Apache before it spawned again and made a push for the next node. It was hungry for the multiple inputs of El Paso, but it knew the triumph would be all the sweeter if it waited, nourished its own desires, its lusts, its needs…
Defer the gratification, and the blood tastes better.
Lauderdale was an annoying acolyte, a messed-up pissant in blue, pretending to be naughty, gingerly dipping a toe into the Dark but holding back. Deep down, he was just another chickenbelly scared sumpless of the monsters. He lacked the force of will of The Summoner. He was a zeroid waster even set beside the Frogman between whose ribs the demon had nestled. But Lauderdale was serving his masters adequately, and he was sure to be rewarded for his efforts.
Too bad; the demon would have got its rocks off teaching Lawdy-Lawdy-Lauderdale the true meaning of the word torture.
Before the Summoning, it had never been more than a servitor of the Dark Ones, fed with the cast-offs of the Great. The tongue-tentacles of his original ectoplasmic body were scraped raw from assaulting the Big Boys of the Outer Darkness. Here, on this Earthly Plane, it was a Giant, it had found a destiny.
"Destineeeee," it sang, to the tune of Jealousy, "I got me a destineee…"
The power was building up. It coursed through the channels of the Fort. It sealed off the underground garages, and sucked out all the oxygen in the air. Thirty-eight personnel tried to fill their lungs and collapsed, blue-faced. "Suck on that, airheads," it boomed over the tannoy as they asphyxiated. Score another bunch of notches for the killer. The demon was riding high, itchy souls wriggling in torment under its clawhomed feet.