And that was scary.
Death Star! Rydell yelled. It was Subletts job to keep the bead in his ear at all times, listening for the satellite-relayed, instantly overriding Word of the Real Cops.
Sublett turned, snapping the magazine into his Glock, his face so pale that it seemed to reflect the colors of the dash-display as readily as did the blank steel rounds of his eyes.
The helps all dead he said, an they got the three kids in the nursery. He sounded like he was talking about something mildly baffling he was seeing on television, say a badly altered version of some old, favorite film, drastically recast for some obscure ethnic market-niche. Say theyre gonna kill em, Berry.
What do the fucking cops say about it? Rydell shouted, pounding on the padded figure-eight steering wheel in the purest rage of frustration hed ever felt.
Sublett touched a finger to his right ear. He looked like he was about to scream. Down he said.
Gunheads right front fender clipped off somebodys circa-1943 fully-galvanized Sears rural-route mailbox, no doubt acquired at great cost on Melrose Avenue.
They cant be fucking down Rydell said, theyre the police.
Sublett tugged the bead from his ear and offered it to Rydell. Statics all
Rydell looked down at his dash-display. Gunheads cursor was a green spear of destiny, whipping along a paler-green canyon road toward a chaste white circle the size of a wedding ring. In the window immediately to the right, he could read the vital-signs data on the subscribers three kids. Their pulse rates were up. In the window below, there was a ridiculously peaceful-looking infrared frame of the subscribers front gate. It looked solid. The read-out said it was locked and armed.
Right then, probably, was when he decided just to go for it.
A week or so later, when it had all been sorted out, Hernandez was basically sympathetic about the whole thing. Not happy, mind you, because it had happened over his shift, but he did say he couldnt much blame Rydell under the circumstances.
IntenSecure had brought in a whole planeload of people from the head office in Singapore, Rydell had heard, to keep it all out of the media and work out some kind of settlement with the subscribers, the Schonbrunns. He had no idea what that settlement might have finally amounted to, but he was just as happy not to know; there was no such program as RentaCops in Trouble, and the Schonbrunns front gate alone had probably been worth a couple of dozen of his paychecks.
IntenSecure could replace that gate, sure, because theyd installed it in the first place. It had been quite a gate, too, some kind of Japanese fiber-reinforced sheeting, thermoset to concrete, and it sure as hell had managed to get most of that Wet Honey Sienna off Gunheads front end.
Then there was the damage to the house itself, mostly to the living-room windows (which hed driven through) and the furniture (which hed driven over).
But there had to be something for the Schonbrunns on top of that, Hernandez explained. Something for emotional pain, he said, pumping Rydell a cup of old nasty coffee from the big stainless thermos behind his desk. There was a fridge-magnet on the thermos that said IM NOT OKAY, YOURE NOT OKAYBUT, HEY, THATS OKAY.
It was two weeks since the night in question, ten in the morning, and Rydell was wearing a five-day beard, a fine-weave panama Stetson, a pair of baggy, faded orange trunks, a KNOXVILLE POLICE DEPARTMENT t-shirt that was starting to disintegrate at the shoulder-seams, the black SWAT-trainers from his IntenSecure uniform, and an inflated transparent cast on his left arm. Emotional pain Rydell said.
Hernandez, who was very nearly as wide as his desk, passed Rydell the coffee. You way lucky, all I can say.
Im out a job, arm in a cast, Im way lucky?
Seriously, man Hernandez said, you coulda killed yourself. LAPD, they coulda greased your ass down dead. Mr. and Mrs. Schonbrunn, they been very nice about this, considering Mrs. Schonbrunns embarrassment and everything. Your arm got hassled, hey, Im sorry Hernandez shrugged, enormously. Anyway, you not fired, man. We just cant let you drive now. You want us put you on gated residential, no problem.
No thanks.
Retail properties? You wanna work evenings, Encino Fashion Mall?
No.
Hernandez narrowed his eyes. You seen the pussy over there?
Nope.
Hernandez sighed. Man, what happen with all that shit coming down on you in Nashville?
Knoxville. Department came down for permanent suspension. Going in without authorization or proper back-up.
And that bitch, ones suing your ass?
She and her son got caught sticking up a muffler shop in Johnson City, last I heard Now it was Rydells turn to shrug, except it made his shoulder hurt.
See Hernandez said, beaming, you lucky.
In the instant of putting Gunhead through the Schonbrunns locked-and-armed Benedict Canyon gate, Rydell had experienced a fleeting awareness of something very high, very pure and quite clinically empty; the doing of the thing, the not-thinking; that weird adrenal exultation and the losing of every more troublesome aspect of self.
And thathe later recalled remembering, as hed fought the wheel, slashing through a Japanese garden, across a patio, and through a membrane of armored glass that gave way like something in a dreamhad been a lot like what hed felt as hed drawn his gun and pulled the trigger, emptying Kenneth Turveys brain-pan, and most copiously, across a seemingly infinite expanse of white-primered wallboard that nobody had ever bothered to paint.
Rydell went over to Cedars to see Sublett.
IntenSecure had sprung for a private cubicle, the better to keep Sublett away from any cruising minions of the media. The Texan was sitting up in bed, chewing gum, and watching a little liquid-crystal disk-player propped on his chest.
Warlords of the 21st Century he said, when Rydell edged in, James Wainwright, Annie McEnroe, Michael Beck.
Rydell grinned. Whend they make it?
1982.. Sublett muted the audio and looked up. But Ive seen it a couple times already.
I been over at the shop seem Hernandez, man. He says you dont have to worry any about your job.
Sublett looked at Rydell with his blank silver eyes. How bout yours, Berry?
Rydells arm started to itch, inside the inflated cast. He bent over and fished a plastic drinking-straw from the little white wastebasket beside the bed. He poked the straw down inside the cast and wiggled it around. It helped some. Im history, over there. They wont let me drive anymore.
Sublett was looking at the straw. You shouldnt ought to touch used stuff, not in a hospital.
You dont have nothin contagious, Sublett. Youre one of the cleanest motherfuckers ever lived.
But what you gonna do, Berry? You gotta make a living, man.
Rydell dropped the straw back into the basket. Well, I dont know. But I know I dont wanna do gated residential and I know I dont wanna do any malls.
What about those hackers, Berry? You figure theyll get the ones set us up?
Nope. Too many of em. Republic of Desires been around a while. The Feds have a list of maybe three hundred affiliates, but theres no way to haul em all in and figure out who actually did it. Not unless one of em rats on somebody, which they do tend to do on a pretty regular basis.
But how come theyd want to do that to us anyway?
Hell, Sublett, how should I know?
Just mean Sublett said.
Well, that, for sure, and Hernandez says the LAPD told him they figured somebody wanted Mrs. Schonbrunn caught more or less with her pants down. Neither Sublett nor Rydell had actually seen Mrs. Schonbrunn, because she was, as it turned out, in the nursery. Although her kids werent, having gone up to Washington State with their daddy to fly over the three newest volcanoes.
Nothing that Gunhead had logged that night, since leaving the car wash, had been real. Someone had gotten into the Hotspur Hussars on-board computer and plugged a bunch of intricately crafted and utterly spurious data into the communications bundle, cutting Rydell and Sublett off from IntenSecure and the Death Star (which hadnt, of course, been down). Rydell figured a few of those good ol Mongol boys over at the car wash might know a little bit about that.