"So?"
"I am given to understand that there are…um…camp followers, and a bar or two, where they have…um…gambling."
A tumbleweed rolled lazily by. There wasn't much wind, so the things must mainly lie and rot.
"The place looks completely deserted."
"They come out at night, Ms Juillerat, and sleep during the day."
"Like vampires?"
"Yes, exactly like vampires."
From the look of distaste curling about his thin lips, Chantal guessed that Captain Lauderdale had little use for camp followers and gamblers. Perhaps he subscribed to one of the many repressive protestant doctrines running rampant here in the United States? She found it hard to keep them separate in her mind—Mormons, Josephites, Scientologists, Moonies, Seventh-Day Amish, Hittites, Mennonites, Danites, Disneyworlders, The Bible Belt—and imagined they themselves had the same problem. Being a Catholic was a lot easier since 'Vatican LXXXV' loosened things up.
"Where did the people go? The ones who lived here?"
They had found a skeleton dressed as an English policeman, half-buried in rubbish and sand, but few other signs of previous habitation.
"The nearest PZ, if they could afford it. If not, there are squatters' towns around most conurbations. Some take to the roads, like the okies in the '30s. They're the problem."
"I don't understand?"
"It's difficult to drive around the burned-out vehicles. Defenceless citizens should keep off the interstate."
From the outside, Fort Apache looked more like a mediaeval castle than the wooden stockades of the Old West. Its windowless walls were stone and steel, and the structure was tiered like an old-fashioned wedding cake. A few sensors, tiny at this distance, revolved on the roof, and the Stars and Stripes flew, hanging stiff from a rod. It was one of a chain of identical forts dotted throughout the Western States.
There was a noise, and Lauderdale drew his sidearm. It had been another stone falling from the bridge into the mud. The captain grinned without humour and holstered his weapon.
"You have to be alert," he explained.
"It's too quiet out there, you mean?"
"Huh?"
"In the films, that's the cavalry catch-phrase. Just before an Indian attack, someone says "it's too quiet out there" and an arrow sticks in him."
Lauderdale didn't crack a smile. Their senses of humour were noticeably out of sync. "I never liked Western films much, Ms Juillerat. Never liked films, really."
"Then what are you doing dressed up like John Wayne?"
The revived US Cavalry wore outfits modelled exactly on the 1870s styles. Lauderdale had a blue tunic, a modified stetson with the cav insignia and carried a Colt .45.
"It's just the uniform. I'm here to serve my country."
Most of the personnel Chantal had met at Fort Apache said something like that. They were proud that the US Cav was still an arm of the US Government, especially since it fought off the last privatisation plan. However, the organization was mainly involved in keeping the interstate routes clear for GenTech and the other multinats. She guessed that private citizens, like the modern okies Lauderdale had complained about, were mainly considered to be a nuisance. This was no era to be an innocent bystander.
From the bridge, they could see the approach road. A column was nearing the fort. Motorcyke outriders, a couple of cruisers, and a triple-jointed tanker.
"Here comes the water and the gas," said Lauderdale. "Supplies for a month."
"You really are cut off here?"
"That's right. Where there's no water, people don't live. This is not a natural community. We had pipelines, but the Maniax trashed them during the first days of the joint action."
"Ah yes, the Maniax. In Rome, I saw on the teevee about them. Children, were they not?"
Lauderdale spat, "savages!"
"They have been…pacified?"
"If you mean killed, mostly they have. The rest are in Readjustment Camps, or on the offshore penal colonies. You have the same set-up in Europe, I believe, You dump all your human garbage on Sicily."
"The European Community does. I'm not a Eurocitizen."
"The Maniax moved in after it started to break down. When it stopped raining, when food became scarce. The Maniax, and people like them. They sacked the towns that were losing it, raped and murdered at random, destroyed property, looted on an industrial scale."
"Their average age, I hear, was fifteen."
"Maybe so, you don't ask for a birth certificate when you're hand-to-hand with a genetically-engineered homicidal psychopath"
The Maniax were only the largest of the gangcults, Chantal had heard. By no means, the worst. She had been briefed back in Rome by her superiors on the groups she might come across. She had a special dispensation to commit suicide if captured by The Bible Belt, the fundamentalist crazies who viewed the world as a large-scale Sodom and Gomorrah and saw it as their duty to bring down the Wrath of God upon all sinners. She wasn't worried. She had been trained—in the language of the States, she was a "Proper Op”—and she could deal with most eventualities.
A bugle call sounded on the tannoy, and gates appeared in the hitherto seamless walls. The column crept into the fort like a maggot crawling into an apple. Barked orders carried on the still air. The last vehicle in the convoy was an open truck. People stood up on the flatbed, shackled together.
"More Maniak stragglers. Captain Badalamenti has the mop-up detail. We'll be bringing them in for months."
The prisoners were dragged off the truck and led into the fort by guards. One Mohawk-haired giant shouted defiance, and a Trooper struck her with something. There was a crackle and the Maniak fell to her knees, screaming.
"Cattle prod," Lauderdale explained. "It's the only thing they understand. Pain."
As the Maniak twisted in agony, the prisoners she was chained to were pulled off their feet. They fell badly, leg and wrist irons clanking. The grossly fat Sergeant in charge of the detail took the prod from the Trooper and touched it not to any particular prisoner but to a length of the chain connecting them. Sparks flew, and sixteen men and women screamed in unison.
"Pain, Ms Juillerat. They're experts at inflicting it. It's our job to turn things round."
"O brave new world…"
"I beg your pardon?"
"…that has such people in it!"
II
Brevet Major General Marshall K. Younger examined his reflection in the glass that covered the life-size portrait of Charlton Heston which had pride of place in his office. He tried to match his head and shoulders to the Ex-President's, and fell only a little short. You could do a lot with your body if you exercised regularly and took the Zarathrustra treatment, but, unless you wanted to become a complete cyborg, you were stuck with the bones you were born with. Younger wasn't ready for that yet. He thumped the sides of his stomach with both hands, relishing the way his tight fists bounced off leather-supple gut muscles. Younger stuck a foot-long Cuban cigar in his face, bit off and spat away the wet end, flipped his zippo and touched flame to the tip. He sucked thick smoke into his GenTech remodelled lungs.
"Ain't no way you're gonna give me cancer, you long brown bastard," he said to his cigar, puffing deeply, "so you can just give up trying to mug my alveoli."
It had been a simple treatment, and was available at a massive discount to serving officers in the Road Cav. The corp wanted the interstates open, and didn't mind throwing a few favours around to keep in with the law enforcement community. And as a brevet ranking, Younger was grateful for the perks of the trade.
Younger snapped off a perfect salute at Heston. Big Chuck had been the man who authorized the revival of the United States Cavalry. Before that, keeping the peace on the roads had been down to the Highway Patrol, and the interstates had been warzones. Now, Out West at least, you could guarantee your wrappers would get through. Big Chuck had done a hell of a lot for the country. His Moral Re-Armament Drive, and his Youth Pioneer Scheme had given the country some backbone again. And, of course, him and Senator Enderby had pushed through the Enderby Act and opened up the field of law enforcement to private individuals and organizations. The Cav wouldn't be here if it weren't for Enderby and Big Chuck.