The Devil Delivered and Other Tales Read online

  “The stock’s been carved some,” William said. He handed it back, then rose. “You might be right, Jim. Couldn’t prove otherwise.”

  “Some of you fellas should come down here and record all this stuff,” Old Jim said. He returned the rifle to the closet. “Jack Tree gets his hands on this, and you and your university can kiss it all good-bye.”

  “I’ll suggest it to my employers,” William said, pulling on his gloves. He paused, glancing at the rattlesnake.

  Old Jim said softly, “Most of them gone now.”

  Again, William nodded.

  “Burned blind, you know. Can’t hunt, can’t eat. Fulla tumors and stuff, too. Course, not much left to eat out there, anyway. Sure you don’t want a hot chocolate?”

  “Can’t. I’m fasting.”

  The old man shook his head again. “A damned strange thing to be doing, son, if you ask me. Exactly what kind of research you into?”

  “I’m cataloging ghosts, Jim.”

  “Huh?”

  “I walk on the winds, ride the snows. My heart beats in time with the ticking of stones.”

  Old Jim’s eyes held William’s. Slowly, he said, “You’d better get something to eat, son. Soon.” He reached out and tapped the goggles hanging around William’s neck. “And don’t take those off out there. Even when it’s snowing. Blowing snow and clouds don’t stop the rays. Nothing stops those rays.”

  “Burned blind.” William nodded.

  Old Jim walked over to the aquarium and studied the snake. “Around here, years back,” he said, “these fellas were called Instruments of the Devil.”

  “Yea verily,” William said. “‘And into the pit God casts all vermin, and into the pit shall they slither unending among the implements of history.’”

  “Never heard that Scripture before,” Old Jim said.

  William smiled, then headed for the stairs.

  Old Jim followed. He watched William pull on the goggles and activate maximum shielding, then raise the bootsuit’s hood and tighten the drawstrings. “Back out in the Hole,” Old Jim said, shaking his head once more. “I used to ride horses out there.”

  “The horses run still,” William said. He faced Old Jim. “Keep squinting.”

  “You, too. Mind the Hole, mind the Hole.”

  Net

  14.30.06 STATUS REPORT 00:00.00 GMT

  Means:

  Sea Level: +82.37 cm AMR

  Temperature: +2.6012 C. AMR

  Carbon Dioxide: +.06% AMR

  Carbon Monoxide: +1.12% AMR

  Methane: +.089% AMR

  Nitrogen Oxide: +.0112% AMR

  Organochlorine Count: +.0987 ppm (holding)

  Airborne Silicia Count: +1.923 ppm (holding)

  Aerosol Sporco (volume): +367 AMR

  Mare Sporco (sq. km): 113000 (Med.) (rising)

  86950 (Carib.) (holding)

  236700 (Ind.) (rising)

  Nil Ozone areas (since 01.01.14):

  Midwest Hole: holding

  Arctic Hole: +23416 sq. km

  Antarctic Hole: +3756.25 sq. km

  Australian Hole: +6720 sq. km

  Spawns: 24 (varied) (down 13)

  Rad Drift Alerts:

  India (north)

  Korea (south)

  Bio Alerts:

  Ciguatera Epidemics (+1000s): 17 (holding)

  Retroviral General: 07 (+6/01.01.14)

  Ebola-16/Hanta Outbreaks: 112 (+7)

  Undifferentiated ISEs: 316 (+45)

  BSE/CJD/CWD composite index: 2.4b.

  Species Count: 117

  Malaria N. edge: +2.7 Lat.

  Suvara N. edge: +3.12 Lat.

  Cholera Count (/millions): 270

  Bubonic: 113 (14 known bioflicked)

  White Rash Deaths: 12.67

  Morbilivirus-B22 Closed Zones: 16 urban (+1)

  Transmutative Viral Count: 1197 (+867)

  Hotzone Alerts Political:

  Pakistan/India (last nuke 07.03.14)

  Zimbabwe (closed since 27.05.13)

  Congo Republic (closed since 11.07.08)

  Rep. Lapland/Consortium Russia

  Georgia/Chechen Rep/Consortium Russia

  Iran (closed since 13.04.04)

  Iraq (closed since 22.11.03)

  Sinjo/Taiwan

  Quebec/NOAC

  Puerto Rico/NOAC

  United Ireland/Eurocom

  Israel/Assorted (no recent nukes/biochem WMD)

  Argentina (internal, last Bik flicked 29.01.13)

  S. Korea (closed since 15.10.07)

  Indonesia (internal)

  Guatemala/Belize/Consortium Honduras

  Ukraine/Consortium Russia (no recent nukes/biochem WMD)

  Confirmed Dead Zones:

  N. Korea

  Iran

  Syria

  Afghanistan

  Columbia

  California

  Confirmed Dead Cities (excluding those in nations above):

  Jakarta

  Seoul

  Hong Kong

  Jerusalem

  Cairo

  Berlin

  Sarajevo

  Baghdad

  Denver

  Toronto

  Old Washington, D.C.

  Refugee-Related Minor Conflicts/Incidents: +103

  Flicked Biks this month: 0

  Flicked Biobiks this month: 2

  Worldwide weather forecast: Hot and sunny. Hey, folks, looks like another balmy day out there!

  Net

  Suppressed File Index (NOACom) 219.56b

  Subtitle: The Restitution

  Category: Social Sciences

  Subcategory: Biological Evolution/Paleoanthropology/Archaeology

  Abstract: The record of anomalous finds began with the first generation of archaeological investigations originating in Europe in the nineteenth century. Prior to a defined paradigm asserting an acceptable structure to human biological and cultural evolution, many of these initial discoveries, subject to the same diligent application of accepted and then-current methodologies, were taken at face value and incorporated into the then-malleable formulation of said structures. The institutional and informal suppression of anomalous discoveries soon followed, at the expense of countless professional careers, and continued well into the twentieth century and early twenty-first century.

  Deep subsurface exploration for economic purposes repeatedly yielded unexplainable evidence of human presence at periods in geologic history deemed scientifically impossible; however, the academic and scientific institutions were securely entrenched and fully capable of suppressing said discoveries. It was not until A.C. 07 that incontrovertible evidence was uncovered in Cretaceous gravel beds at the Riddler Site in west Antarctica (for a composite list of evidence, cross-referenced dating techniques, and excavation report, see SFI NOACom 222.3a), proving conclusively that the accepted evolutionary scheme for Homo sapiens was in dire need of restitution.

  Current theories on this issue—

  Tracking …

  Captured.

  Rabbit goes back into the hat. Nada, folks!

  Entry: American NW, June 30, A.C. 14

  Outside, the wind, born somewhere out west, gusted through the small town with a howling hunger. Drifts of snow banked walls and stretched serrated ridges across the streets. Leaning into the wind, he trudged toward the hotel, its three-storied bulk barely visible.

  Through his goggles, the world was monochrome. White sky, blending with white earth. Patched here and there with the dark, angular bones of civilization. Nature erases. Nature wipes clean the slate. Snow, the rough and wild passage of spirits. Glaciers, gravid with desire. He paused and looked up. Medicine Wheels spun up there, echoes of Ezekiel. More of them now, trying to tell him something in their blurred spinning through the storm clouds.

  He pushed himself into motion once again. He passed a humped mound of snow. A car rusting under it—he’d seen it the day he arrived. A monument to fleeting technology. Once new, masked in wonder a
nd promise. When in use, mundane, banal. Then forgotten. Now buried. The makers move on, unmindful of the lessons beneath their feet. Nature erases.

  He headed up Main Street. The western horizon had come close, come to the town’s very edge, a curtain of nothingness behind which things moved, things paced, things stampeded, things watched. Every now and then their shadows brushed the curtain. And beyond them, out on the snow-laden prairie, dead earth was marked here and there by boulders, boulders set out in circles in which other rocks ran in narrow lines, inward like spokes, and a central pile marked the hub. Medicine Wheels, not yet launched skyward, remaining earth-anchored with a purpose sheathed in silence, locked in antiquity.

  The wind reached through to sting his face. Flesh-clothed people had lived out there, once. When the sun was just the sun, the sky just sky, long before the poisons and volcanic ash burned holes in the air. They talked with stones, made places where they and the ghosts could meet, places where they could dance.

  A figure slipped out from an alley ahead, stopped to wait for him. The snows spun through its body; the wind whipped unimpeded by its hide cloaks and beadwork.

  “I wonder how much you anticipated, old fella?”

  The figure shrugged, melted in a savage gust of wind.

  A stranger. An other. Not his kind, not his blood, not what he was looking for. An emanation curious, maybe, enough so to come for a closer look. Not there for answering his questions. Not there for the civilized art of conversation. Hence, making a point.

  “Thus did God, burned blind, reach down through the white, featureless void, and then did He touch the stones, and read them like Braille.” He walked past the spot where the ghost had been, then crossed Main Street, heading for the hotel. “And He spake, and He said, ‘Behold these instruments of the Devil, that would give voice to the lie of the firmament.’”

  His vision preceded him into the hotel bar, plundering lives—a half-dozen regulars, old men and women whose farmland had withered and who now lived on government assistance, ignoring the resettlement incentives and urban start-up grants. The cities held nothing for them—nothing they wanted, anyway. And meeting every afternoon at their regular tables beside the frosted window that looked out on Main Street, they found the comfort of familiar faces and familiar stories, and the demons of loneliness stayed away for a while longer.

  “Behold, I went out to withstand thee, because thy way is perverse before me.”

  Net: The Swamp

  CORBIE TWA: Oops! Where dat come from?

  JOHN JOHN: More interestingly, where’d it go?

  BOGQUEEN: What are you talking about? The SFI file or the quasibiblical dart?

  CORBIE TWA: The quasiwhat? Those files show up alla time, Bogqueen.

  BOGQUEEN: What’s with the enunciation there, Corbie?

  CORBIE TWA: Colloquial program, girl.

  JOHN JOHN: Which helps the trackers fix you, Corbie.

  CORBIE TWA: Sure thing. I may sound like I gotta confederate flag in my bedroom, but it don mean I live in Ole Arkansas, do it?

  JOHN JOHN: Where were we? We were here, I think. I’ve caught whispers about this Restitution thing. It’s not easy breaking into those SFIs, you know.

  BOGQUEEN: It’s the Track .12 entries that interest me, John John. It’s a mobile, isn’t it? Not easy to hide with one of those. But he’s managing.

  CORBIE TWA: For how much longer, though? Anyway, there’s no end of foo-stuff out there. Why pay attention?

  JOHN JOHN: Because the boy’s playing in the Midwest Hole, right, Bogqueen?

  BOGQUEEN: It all comes with what you put together. Try paying attention to the shivers on the vine, Corbie Twa. There’s weird things going on.

  CORBIE TWA: T’ain’t nothing new with dat, girl. My weird meter’s set very high, you know.

  JOHN JOHN: Extinctions. Anyone tallied the count lately?

  CORBIE TWA: I hate atavistic bastards—didn’t know I knew big words, did you? Anyway, who tallies anymore? Who keeps lists? Pictures in books, as far as my kids are concerned. Stuffed carcasses in museums, test tubes in freezers. Jus like the dinosaurs, John John.

  BOGQUEEN: Extinction’s a fact of life, right Corbie? Hail the official line.

  JOHN JOHN: So, coyote ghosts and ancient buffalo. Curious.

  CORBIE TWA: Probbly some effed-up terrorist mystic with a fieldbook and too much peyote.

  BOGQUEEN: But he’s slipping the trackers. That takes some doing.

  CORBIE TWA: Or an inside line. Some kind of NOAC counter-culture creepy.

  BOGQUEEN: Seems clunky. Too obtuse. Likely he’s running loose.

  CORBIE TWA: Lil good it’ll do im. Who’s listening?

  JOHN JOHN: Picked up a squiggly from someone named Bound for Ur. Wasn’t tethered. Seems there was a spetznaz inc. incursion somewhere in Lapland. Went sour and nobody came back out. Any shivers?

  CORBIE TWA: Don’t mess with the Lappies. Not a sniff. Sounds bizarre. A run on radioactive reindeer meat in Con-Russia. Those mafiboys like their meat.

  BOGQUEEN: News to me, too, John John. I’ll check my sinkholes, though.

  JOHN JOHN: My tally list includes coyotes.

  CORBIE TWA: Make the roadrunners happy.

  JOHN JOHN: No, they’re extinct, too.

  CORBIE TWA: Bummer.

  William entered on a gust of wind, the snow swirling around him as he turned and pushed shut the heavy door. He removed his goggles and blinked, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the gloom. Pool balls cracked and rolled, followed by voices off to his right. He untied the hood’s drawstrings, unzipped his bootsuit.

  A gravelly voice called out from behind the bar to his left. “What did I tell you, College Boy?”

  William shrugged. “Seemed the genuine thing,” he said, heading over to the counter.

  “Damn right,” Stel said, lighting a cigarette. Tall, heavy, late thirties, the hotel’s owner leaned on the counter and blew a lazy stream of smoke in William’s direction. She grinned, cleared her throat. “Didn’t Old Jim tell it?”

  “Yep.”

  Stel set a bottle of filtered water in front of William. “See, my memory’s none too bad, eh?” She glanced over at the regulars and nodded. “Sitting Bull’s rifle, sure as my ass is fat.”

  Laughter exploded in the room, forced, too loud.

  William took a mouthful of water and swung his gaze to the pool table. A local boy was having his hands full playing a tall man in expensive clothes, a man even more out of place than William.

  Stel bantered with the regulars, the old Indian jokes making tired rounds.

  “My twenty-third Sitting Bull rifle,” William softly sighed.

  “What’s that, College Boy?”

  “Nothing.” He watched the tall man circle the table once before dropping the eight ball on a called shot. Game over.

  Behind the bar a phone buzzed. Stel snatched it up. “Yeah?”

  A fingertip stroked William’s shoulder. He turned.

  “For you, College Boy,” Stel said, leaning close. “Been thinking of closing up early,” she added in a low voice.

  “Sounds bad for business,” William replied, “but good for the soul,” he added as he took the antiquated phone. “Hello?”

  Through an electrostatic crackle came Administrator Jenine MacAlister’s voice. “William? Glad you’re still in the town. The storm’s supposed to last another two days—I didn’t think you were that crazy, but I couldn’t be sure.”

  “I am research incarnate, Dr. MacAlister.”

  “You didn’t need to apply for an independent grant, you know that, don’t you? I mean, we would’ve funded you, of course.”

  “What’s up?”

  She hesitated. “Something. Maybe serious.”

  William walked away from the bar, taking the phone and the water bottle with him. He sat down at a table tucked into a secluded corner of the room. “Go ahead.”

  “Well, I’ll make it simple. Here’s what I’m looking for, William. Th
ere may be some, uh, activity down there.”

  “In Val Marie?”

  “No, no. Out under the Hole.”

  MacAlister’s voice was pitched low. Excitement and conspiracy. Used to be a good anthropologist. Used to be. Now, just one more social engineer in an army of social engineers. Now it was games, cloak and dagger.

  “What kind of activity?”

  “The Lakota. They haven’t been in dialogue with us since the Autonomy Settlement, of course, but we’ve picked up a hint of something.”

  Us and we. Defined exactly how? Us whites? We the Feds? The good guys, the cavalry? William’s gaze fixed on the tall man at the pool table. “Haven’t seen any around. Last I heard, Jack Tree was paying a state visit to Argentina.”

  MacAlister laughed. “It’s not him we’re worried about, William. He’s had his fifteen minutes at the Supreme Court, and that was seven years ago. Come on, we both know who’s about to take over the Lakota Nation.”

  “Daniel Horn?”

  “That bastard is up to something. And it has to do with the Hole.”

  “Well,” William said, “they own the land under it—”

  “That’s not the point. Hell, they’ve never forgiven us for that. As if we knew the Hole would open up when we gave them the land.”

  William’s eyebrows rose. Gave? Jack Tree stood up against the Supreme Court of North America and tore that piece of ground right out of Fed hands. William massaged his temples. Medicine Wheels in the sky.

  “In any case,” MacAlister continued. “Have you seen Horn around?”

  “Nope.”

  “Well, he’s supposed to be in the area. Keep an eye out for me, will you?”

  “My journal entries are available on the Net.”

  “Yes, William, but no one can understand them. I’d like something more direct, more responsive. One more thing, could be connected. There’s rumors going around that the Lakota are about to close their borders. If you run into Horn, see what you can suss out. But carefully, okay? Don’t push it. We’ll talk soon, then. Bye, and good luck.”

  William climbed to his feet and drained his bottle of water. He walked back to the counter and set the phone down.

  “Still planning on heading out tomorrow?” Stel asked.

  “Yep.”

  “Well”—she smiled—“I think I’ll keep your room clean and ready, just in case you come to your senses.”