"Killin' ain't the way to do it. We got to negotiate, and for that we got to have the Railroad to help us."
"Fuck the Railroad."
"Johnny, think. You blow up Richmond and the whites will go kill-crazy. And it won't only be the Kuklos then, either. Be every white man owns a gun." Her voice was pleading.
"Fuck 'em," said Turner again.
"At least think of the colored folks there. At least — you can't—"
"Yes I can," said Turner, and they could hear his breathing, his panting, almost his sobbing. "Oh, yes, I can."
It was beginning now. Inside his head.
Where there'd been nothing, now a tiny flow was trickling through. A tiny flow of something almost as good, almost as right as what he remembered. Only it wasn't cobalt blue, but red. Orange-red, the red of rage.
He was filling again, with a savage joy: the joy of killing. Killing Whitey, who'd done this to him, made him a husk of a man. Killing the thin-faced major… or had he already done for him, back on the boat? He couldn't remember… He didn't really understand what she was saying about the Kuklos, about what would happen after they set the shell off. He didn't care either. It would kill them, all the whites and maybe some blacks too, but that didn't seem to matter as much as it once had. Because now he was full again, filled with the burning joy, and except for the awful emptiness inside he was glad.
"Turner?"
That voice, he thought. That voice.
Quidley moistened his lips in the dark. He was afraid. Terribly afraid. But he had to speak now that she had failed.
"Turner," he said again. "It's me. Major Quidley."
He heard nothing. The immense shadow neither moved nor spoke. He rubbed his hands on his uniform, feeling the sweat on them. He hadn't thought it would be like this. He'd thought there would be others, that he'd be welcomed and believed.
Still, he had to try.
"Listen. I came to warn you. The Railroad's being used by its worst enemies. The League is going to make your seizure of this shell the pretext for a massacre."
Still the big man was silent. Quidley heard his voice quiver, and tried to control it. "You've got to believe me. I've made myself a traitor by coming after you. Turner!" He paused, bewildered at his silence. "Can you hear me? Why don't you talk?"
With a roar, the waterman charged.
Quidley crouched and tried to feint. Turner didn't fake, or never saw it. He drove straight on, slamming the lighter man against the radiator of the truck.
And again, he found himself fighting, this time with the full knowledge he was fighting for his life against the odds. He kept his head down, away from the waterman's groping hands, and hammered into Turner's stomach. But his fists felt as if he were pounding them into a wall. Even when he brought his knee up again and again Turner only grunted.
Then the hands found him and closed around his head. He struck back, kicked, pushed — the truck rocked as his body slammed into it. But it was like fighting some irresistible machine, one that couldn't be hurt, or stopped —
For the last time the hands closed their hold again, and Aubrey Lee Quidley opened his mouth for a scream.
"Johnny!" she cried.
Why had he said that — that, and nothing else, had finally and irretrievably pushed Johnny over the edge! She circled the struggling men, hearing them pant, hearing the thuds of blows — whose, she couldn't tell in the dark — hearing Turner grunt — and tried again to push herself between them.
She gasped as someone hit her, hard, and she staggered back, her whole side alive with pain. She went in again and was shaken off with a heave of Johnny's shoulder and fell backward. She lay there, smelling the night smell of the grass and the cool dirt.
Johnny.
The major.
Who was right?
She forced herself to her knees and then to her feet. Her hands groped in the night-wet grass.
No more air. His arms were going weak, and his blows were hardly stronger than a child's. But Turner still swayed above him, dark, enormous, unreachable, implacable….
This him, screamed in his brain. This the bastard. But the voice was almost lost in the red flood roaring through his mind. Red… he had to kill him. First this one, then all of them, and he knew suddenly but without particularly caring that he'd never be at peace until either he had killed them all or they killed him.
A hollow, dull sound echoed from the trees.
And like a tree, one figure stood rigid, swayed, half turned; then toppled to the ground.
She dropped the metal cylinder and fell across Turner's chest.
Quidley sagged back against the fender of the truck. Then turned and hugged it, dragging in great lungfuls of sweet night air. Several minutes went by, with no sound in the little clearing but his panting and Vyry's muffled sobs. At last he tried shifting his weight back to his legs. They held. He managed a couple of steps toward her, staggering like a drunk, and gave up and sank to his knees. He tried to speak, and had to stop, coughing uncontrollably. Then at the third try got his words past his bruised larynx. "Vy… Thanks."
"I didn't do it for you, Major bastard."
"I don't care who you did it for." He glanced around and got up again. This time he felt somewhat steadier. He walked carefully to the truck and turned the parking lights on and came back. He stood there until she looked up, hate written plain on her face.
"He's alive."
"I'm glad."
"What you standin' there for?"
"I want you to tell me what to do."
"Me?" She looked up again, surprised.
"Yes," he said. He bent to Turner and picked up the fuze from where she'd dropped it and held it out to her. "Every decision I've made so far has been wrong. Everyone I trusted was the wrong one to trust. Everyone I suspected was in the right. But I think I'm getting a few things straight at last. From here on in, I'm placing myself under your orders."
TWENTY
It was as if he'd shed it all — all the responsibility, the worry, and the guilt. He leaned back against the reassuring solidity of steel and waited with a quiet soul for her answer.
Her face was still upturned. "Major — you mean that?"
He nodded.
She looked down and touched Turner's head softly. "Poor Johnny… I don't know. I'm not sure what to do either."
"Do you believe me? About the League?"
"Yes." She sounded uncertain. "But I never felt right about using this thing at all. To threaten them, sure… but not to use it."
"What are the Railroad's plans from here?"
"We're supposed to drive it on into Belleville. South of Richmond. Pick up a man there, some men, I'm not sure." She pointed at Leo's body. "He knew. But he's dead."
"We can do that. If you want to. We'll put Turner and — him — in the back of the truck. I'll drive. There won't be any trouble with roadblocks while I'm up front. Then I'll talk to the Railroad people there."
"You'd do that?"
"If you want me to."
She bent her head, then looked up. Even in the pale wash from the parking lights her eyes seemed to him night-dark. "And if they decide to use it?"
"Then it's between them and the government. I suppose I could volunteer to act as a go-between."
She shook her head slowly. "I'm thinking we might turn this whole mess back to the government. Give 'em their shell back. What you think of that?"