"Do it."
Finney opened the shears, and crunched them into the rope. Sparks flew, and meters burst. Chantal covered her face. Finney flinched, and cut again. She wrestled with the rope, which was kicking, and fell back, her hands smoking. The shears hung, embedded in the wires.
Finney waved her hands and shoved them into her armpits. The shears jerked, and arcs danced on the blades.
Quincannon pushed forwards and grabbed the handles, forcing them together. His face showed the strain, but he persisted. The access room was thick with smoke, and Chantal was coughing, her eyes streaming.
The shear blades met, and the rope parted. Quincannon fell back, dropping the tool on the floor.
"Done, Sister," he said.
"Fine. We've got the genie in its bottle…"
She pulled the vials of Holy Water—refilled at Welcome— from her belt, and set them on top of the terminal.
She said a brief prayer, and crossed herself. Quincannon and Finney had done their bit. Now it was her turn.
She started tapping the Latin words into the database.lt was just a way of getting the demon's attention, but it ought to give a litle pain to the creature.
She tried to think in sync with the system, projecting herself through her fingers into the machine's space.
Finally, the thing inside turned round and roared its hatred at her.
IX
With a leather-gloved hand, the stranger swept his slicker back from his hip. A pearl-inlay on the stock of his revolver caught the moonlight. In one smooth, easy movement, he drew a six-gun, a long-barreled beauty with a filed-away sight.
The Oscars halted, and stood as still as the monoliths of Stonehenge.
Stack turned, and looked at the machines who had come to kill him. The stranger pointed his gun without seeming to take aim, pulled back the trigger, and fanned the hammer.
Six shots went into the first Oscar in a vertical line from the centre of its visor to its metal crotch. The black holes looked like buttons.
Stack's breath was held. There weren't supposed to be bullets that could pierce durium plate like that.
The Oscar leaked fluid from its lower holes, and toppled backwards. Stack felt its impact in his ankles as the ground shook.
The stranger spun his gun on his trigger-finger and holstered it. Then, his hands moving too fast for human eyes, he pulled a repeating rifle from a sling on his saddle.
The Oscars' visors raised.
Nothing is faster than a lase. It is an instantaneous weapon. It strikes its target simultaneously with its ignition. The beam doesn't travel through space, it appears in the air and anything in its way is cut through as if a red-hot wire had materialised out of another dimension and the object of the attack happened to be occupying the same space in this world.
The stranger outdrew and outshot three lases.
His hand was a blur as he pulled down the trigger guard lever three times. There were three sharp flames, and three shots.
He put each bullet into the hole in an Oscar's head.
The night air was sharp with the aftertang of honest gunsmoke. The Oscars collapsed like broken statues.
The stranger's horse was a little spooked. It shifted, and he gently tugged his reins, calming the beast.
He swung his rifle back into its sheath with an easy motion.
"What is that?" Stack gasped.
"It's a Henry, son. The 1873, manufactured by old Oliver Winchester himself, to the design of Benjamin Tyler Henry. Best rifle there ever was."
"A Winchester '73?”
"Yup."
Out in the Big Empty, something howled at the full moon. Stack shivered again.
"That thing must be a hundred and twenty-five years old."
The stranger grinned. His teeth were white and even.
"How can you do that? How can you bring down an armoured android with an…with an antique?"
"You do what you have to, son…"
Stack knew he had gone crazy, and was hallucinating. This was where his brain checked out on him, and he was left to flounder in the desert. All those wounds, all that ju-ju, all the strain. It had finally been too much for him. In retrospect, he was amazed that he had held out against madness so long.
But the stranger was here. There was no doubt about that. The man and his horse were massive, not in size but in substance. This was reality. The stranger pulled a pouch and paper from his waistcoat pocket and rolled himself a cigarette one-handed. He struck a match on the horn of his saddle and lit his smoke.
"Who are you?"
The cigarette burned. "Just a drifter."
"Where did you come from?"
He threw the cigarette away, ash in the sand, and exhaled a cloud of smoke.
"No place special, son," he waved a hand at the desert, "out there somewhere, I guess."
Stack's head hurt. Sand drifted against the Oscars. A wind was rising, whipping the tops of the dunes.
"Why did you come?"
"You needed help. I always try to help."
The stranger adjusted his hat, fixing it tight to his head. An unheard-of cloud drifted across the face of the moon. No, not a cloud, a shadow. The stranger looked up, a touch of concern in his expression.
"Looks like a sandstorm's blowing up," he said. "I'd best be on my way."
Stack opened his mouth, but had nothing to say.
"So long, pilgrim," said the stranger, pulling his kerchief up, and turning his horse away.
Stack finally got it out. "Thank you…"
The horse picked up speed, and the stranger's slicker billowed around him like a white cloak. He raised his hand to clamp his hat to his head, half turned in the saddle, and waved a farewell.
"Thank you, thank you."
The stranger rode off into the night. Darkness and the wind swallowed him. For a few moments after he was gone, Stack could hear hooves, then there was just the whistling of the wind and the shifting of the sands.
He turned, and walked past the dead Oscars, back towards Fort Apache.
X
Everything was going wrong. The androids weren't responding. Lauderdale had had Stack in his sights, but a sandstorm had blown up and his viewpoint blanked out. He tried to activate the nuke, but hadn't been rewarded by a big bang. There was someone in the desert with Stack, but there was no way of telling who. He didn't like that.
Also, half the Ops Centre had shut down without warning.
Rintoon was still crying "mutiny."
Lauderdale pushed angrily away from his console, and wheeled around, looking for a course of action.
The demon had stopped coming through the speakers. It was still in the works, Lauderdale knew, but it was busy with its own battle.
What would Elder Seth want him to do now? What was the Path of Joseph?
“I'll have them all flogged within an inch of their lives!" screamed Rintoon. "Flogged, flogged, FLOGGED!”
The Colonel was making whipping motions with his arm, relishing in his imagination the thwack of leather against flesh.
At least, he was happy.
What to do, what to do?
Lauderdale's hands were shaking, and his heartbeat was up. He loosened his tunic collar.
"Lay open their backs, and pour salt into the weals…"
Lauderdale was afraid. His mouth was dry and his tongue was swollen. He trembled with the fear that he had lost his way, had strayed from the Path of Joseph.
Elder, help me!
He had bitten his lips and his tongue. There was blood in his mouth.
Blood!
"… stripe 'em with the cat. Nobody defies the will of Colonel Vladek W. Rintoon, and gets away unmarked! Nobody, nobody, NOBODY!"
The Path was clear. Lauderdale would see the way ahead if only he performed one more blood sacrifice.
He looked at the ranting, mad old man and knew what he must do.
The sabre mounted above the map was from the Battle of Washita in 1868. Some people said it was Custer's. That had been a massacre too. He hummed "Garry Owen," the tune the 7th Cavalry Band had played that day when the long-haired general put Black Kettle and his sleeping Cheyenne men, women and children to the sword. Not feeling the pain, Lauderdale punched through the glass and gripped the weapon by the hilt. He pulled it free, and swung it in a neat arc towards Rintoon's neck.