“ I get your point, ” said Masterton, “ but nobody at all simply isn’t an option. Our… associates are getting really insistent that we get this operation up and running as soon as possible. I’d hate to think what would happen if they get tired of waiting and decide to act directly, you know? ”
“Would we?” Trix asked. “Would we even know?”
“ Damned if I want to find out, ” said Masterton. “ Use the boy if you can, if there’s any chance he’s ready-but you know what you have to do if he isn’t. ”
“Yeah,” said Trix Desoto, grimly. “I know what I have to do.”
16.
Eddie was awakened by a discreet chime from the dashboard HUD. At least, he would have been wakened by a discrete chime, had it not been drowned out by the Testostorossa shouting.
“ Wake up, fucker! ” the Testostorossa was bellowing. “ I got problems. ”
“What?” said Eddie. “What problems?”
“ Do you want the short explanation, or the technical one that’ll leave your brain running out of your ears? ”
The thought crossed Eddie’s mind that he could tell the Testostorossa to just go screw itself. There was nothing technical the Testostorossa could tell him that he wouldn’t understand, with the possible exception of the radio, courtesy of the Loup.
Then again, he was just too tired. “Give me the short explanation.”
“ A number of my fusion-compensatory systems have drifted out of alignment, ” the Testostorossa said. “ We need to get off the road and stop so I can run a self-diagnostic recalibration. ”
“What?” Eddie said. “Now, hang on, GenTech must have spent millions on you-you’re telling me that, after all that, you have to stop for repairs after only a few hundred miles? What sort of shitty quality control do they have back there at the factory?”
“ Hey, they made you, fucker, yeah? ” The Testostorossa’s belligerence seemed a little defensive. “ I’m just saying that this is my first time out of the box, and there are some things you have to tweak when you’re on the actual road. To a certain extent I’m still prototypical; this is a shakedown-operation in more ways than one. I need to get off the road for a while, and for some reason doing it isn’t flagged as mission-critical-you have to tell me to do it. ”
Eddie thought about this. That was the first time he’d had the upper hand. The idea of cracking the electric whip, as it were, was a little bit tempting.
“Supposing I say no?” he asked. “Purely for the sake of argument, you understand.”
“ Ever seen a hydro-fusion explosion from ground zero? ” the Testostorossa said.
“Do it!” Eddie snapped. “Do it now!”
The Testostorossa segued off onto a slip road and ramped its power down, gliding to a halt.
“Is this gonna take long?” Eddie said. “Cause I’m telling you I don’t like this. We’re out of contact with the Brain Train, stuck alone in the middle of nowhere and-oh fuck. There’s something up there.”
Off to the side of the road, firelight and the bulky, silhouetted forms of vehicles.
“Just my luck,” Eddie muttered to the Testostorossa. “You go wrong just in time to drop us in the middle of a gangcult camp.”
Uncharacteristically, the Testostorossa remained silent. Presumably it was devoting its run-time to performing the self-diagnostics it had mentioned.
Eddie fired up the microcams and cut in the image-enhancement. The monitor showed a collection of parked vehicles ranging from ancient pickup trucks to’ sixteen-wheeler RVs, daubed with cruciforms and what Eddie recognised as Burning Hearts and what, he presumed, were quotations from the Bible.
This latter presumption was confirmed by the HUD, which ran the configurations and attempted to pull an ID from its database. All it came up with was UNKNOWN
and a potential threat-factor of, likewise, UNKNOWN.
“Shit,” said Eddie.
He was left with two choices. He could just sit there and pray that nobody noticed him, or leave the car and try to get a handle on what was going on.
After maybe twenty minutes, however, Plan A began to pall. It was the sheer uncertainty that was the worst thing; sitting in the dark and waiting for God knew what to fall on him. At length, Eddie eased open a door and snuck towards the firelight, taking advantage of what ground-cover he could.
Eddie made his cautious way around the bulk of a bulky sixteen-wheeler, wondering what gangcult-related horrors might meet his eyes. In the event, and horrific enough in its own way, he was utterly unprepared for a bunch of bearded, bespectacled freaks in jumpers, sitting around a campfire, strumming on guitars and singing “Kumbaya”.
And, as the old joke goes, that was just the women.
Actually, he saw, as his eyes accustomed themselves to the new lighting conditions with Loup-accelerated speed, that was just the group around the campfire that just happened to be near him. Around other fires, dotted around the patch of desert corralled by the various RVs, there were other figures.
There was a confusing mix of attire and demeanour, but each of the people seemed to be what Eddie vaguely thought of as religious types. Prim church-ladies and Lutheran pastors rubbed shoulders and broke bread with ascetic and somewhat ragged figures in monk robes that looked more like what Rasputin would have worn-as opposed to those worthy Trappists who brew delicious beer to the glory of God, the aid and benefit of the Walloons, and walk in truth and beauty all their days.
In fact, these robed figures seemed… not out of place exactly, but more definite and distinct than all the other religious types. In every group, they seemed to be the centre of attention. It was as if they had been imposed on the others, in the sense of stripping some new element into a photograph, and were guiding them.
Shepherding was the word, Eddie supposed.
“Greetings, brother,” said a voice behind him. “And how might we assist you this fine night?”
Eddie nearly swallowed his tongue. There was just no way that someone could have come up from behind him like that, not with his well-known rat-line, and not to mention Loup-enhanced, senses alert for danger.
He turned to see one of the thin robed figures. It was as if the man had simply materialised out of thin air.
“I’ve, uh,” Eddie said, “I had a bit of car trouble. Nothing to worry about, it’s being… and then I saw your fires.”
“A decided boon against the chills of the desert night,’” said the man. “Father Barnabas at your service. Might I invite you to warm yourself, a little, before going on your way?”
“Uh…” Eddie didn’t have anything much against the religious types of the world; he didn’t bother them so long as they didn’t bother him. But there was something about this Father Barnabas that just creeped him out. He seemed entirely affable and harmless on the surface-but Eddie got the distinct impression that was what it was. The face was absolutely composed in a friendly smile, but there could be anything behind it.
Of course, Eddie’s unease might have been due to the small fact that all those gathered here-every single one-had stopped their guitar-playing and breaking bread and whatever else the fuck it was they had been doing, and had silently turned towards him with similarly fixed and gnomic smiles.
Eddie wondered about that, too, until the Loup supplied the information that the word “gnomic” had nothing whatsoever to do with gnomes.
“Hey, listen,” he said. “I don’t want to… say, who are you guys, anyway?”
“Josephites, for the most part,” said Father Barnabas. “A small cross-denominational sect, to be sure, but gaining some small degree of significance of late.” He gestured to take in the assembled multitude. “As it is, we are currently on our way to Utah, there to gain admittance to a certain seclusionary at the behest of our great leader. I have, myself, made a small hymnal to this most wondrous endeavour…”