The Devil Delivered and Other Tales Read online

  “Read me, then, for I am like Braille, and in the changing of my skin, something shall rise and find the stars.”

  The borders are closed, the lizards are dancing, the young and the old have met and argued, the antelope dig burrows in the false dawn, and the quest is now begun. And here where home is hell, the devil delivers.

  Net

  CORBIE TWA: Oh my oh my. Possible? Accelerated genetic mutations in so little time?

  BOGQUEEN: There’s documentation to support it, especially among insects. As for the higher orders, who can say. The difficulty has to do with the sheer complexity of vertebrates. Speciation is rarer because so many more variables have to come in line for any major biological or behavioral traits to be expressed.

  CORBIE TWA: Who ordered a textbook? Look, our strange friend is talkin a maze. Has me wonderin if there’s anything there.

  JOHN JOHN: Watch the news, Corbie. The Lakota have shut everything down. NOAC’s politicos are having a stock-tumbling fit. A team of multiculture negotiators is being assembled to discuss grievances, only the Lakota haven’t voiced any. In fact, they’re not talking at all.

  CORBIE TWA: Multiculture negotiators? What the hell is that?

  BOGQUEEN: Has an insidious ring to it, don’t it?

  JOHN JOHN: Applied anthropologists, mostly. Work with endangered cultures and the generally downtrodden, set up systems and programs with cheese at the far end and call it social adjustment.

  CORBIE TWA: Must number in the millions. How come they haven’t worked with me? I’m as hungry as the next mucker.

  LUNKER: You must be burdened with racial success. Hello, everyone, I stepped into the line in time to catch the boy’s last entry.

  JOHN JOHN: Backloading you now, Lunker. Welcome aboard.

  LUNKER: Caught a free-falling message from someone named Bound for Ur. Ladon’s been shut down in Antarctica. Word is, the tech is being dismantled and packaged—

  JOHN JOHN: Packaged? For what, storage?

  LUNKER: The dismantling’s in reverse order, John John. Doesn’t sound like storage. In any case, Bound for Ur hand-offs the rumor that the Lady at Ladon negotiated a new site for her sky baby. The world denies, well, almost all the world …

  CORBIE TWA: The devil delivers indeed.

  BOGQUEEN: Two and two makes four. How the hell did the boy know?

  LUNKER: If he’s reading between the NOAC lines, and knows the Swamp like he seems to, he might’ve done his own adding up. Four equals all hell busting loose.

  CORBIE TWA: This makes the boy hot, don’t it.

  BOGQUEEN: Assuming NOAC reads his mail.

  CORBIE TWA: You must be kidding. NOAC reads everyone’s mail. Readin it right now, in fact. Right fellas?

  BOGQUEEN: Comments, John John?

  …

  CORBIE TWA: Huh, he’s slipped out.

  STONECASTER: Sorry I’m late. You guys and your random activations. Give me a break next time, I’m antiquated and clunking macrotemporally. Give me a minute while I catch up.

  LUNKER: What’s that buzz?

  STONECASTER: Shut up.

  FREE WHIZZY: What’s needed here, muckers, is some encryption, and I’m your ticket-puncher. Rally my way and we’ll plunge so deep NOAC will grope and grope and grope.

  BOGQUEEN: Double me up, Free Whizzy. I want John John to find us. Hey, didn’t you get virused by NOAC last year?

  FREE WHIZZY: A worm in my brain. I had a transplant. They’re still chasing me, or am I chasing them? Let’s keep them guessing.

  CORBIE TWA: Two plus two, the Lady’s made a deal. Oh my oh my oh my.

  THREE

  Entry: American NW, July 3, A.C. 14

  The snow was just a memory. Overhead the sun burned away the clouds. On the ground the damp lichen curled its edges, mosses stiffened and crunched underfoot, and the ancient gray lichen strains formed snakeskin patterns on the boulders they would devour for the next hundred thousand years.

  Three turkey vultures rode the thermals above the baking plain. Their feathers were glossy, flashing sunlight as they wheeled. At certain angles they disappeared entirely, as if plunging into a placid tropical sea, then reemerged in sudden blooms of blinding light.

  He watched them swing southward, seeking the heart of the Hole. Orders were orders. He’d set the beacon on the largest of the nearest tepee ring’s weight stone. The beacon squatted like a turtle, silently chirping. The outside world homed in on its song, and he waited.

  Hydrogen-fueled, the helishuttle plunged earthward in a vapor mist of its own making. Down, down from the north, half its shielded face mirroring the raging sun. As it swept down, its delta wings infolded themselves into the craft’s bright self. The blades hovered an amber circle above the machine’s body, sharpened their declivity as podded feet touched earth.

  William deactivated the beacon, walked to the crest of the hill, and watched four figures emerge from the helishuttle.

  Tech Team, decked out in Cardinal Locator helmets, four black-lidded eyes facing in four directions to feed a 360-degree comprehensive image back to the inside receiver. Wearing solar conductor butterfly blades rising up fourfold from their shoulder cowls. Multifunctioned, moisture grabbing, energy hoarding, rad and humidity sensing. Reflective insulated boots hiding their feet, cow-soled in shape and the color of burnished brass.

  CL helmets, lenses each set on separate array; motion detection to the right, seeing red on the left, human spectrum straight ahead, and telephoto macro-capacities straight back.

  Chest control pads, monitor feeds, glittering in the sunlight that moved, up and down, down and up their four selves. Static discharges marked friction points as the four figures walked forward.

  Behind them the helishuttle squatted its round self on another hill, its four glider wings arched high to vent heat. The blades were now angled back and slowly rotating. The helishuttle’s canopy had shifted shades, arriving at beryl. Its round self squatted, and above it was a roundness in kind, shaped by the rotating blades.

  “I’m surprised you’re still standing, William.”

  He blinked at the crimson expellation of her words, then looked beyond to the vague throne hovering behind her, suspended a dozen meters in the air. The other three activated their CLs and scanned for life and found what life they scanned and the living creatures found no place to hide.

  “Is this your multiculture team, Dr. MacAlister?”

  “Just the outriders, William. Listen, I’m thinking now we should bring you in, soon. You haven’t been covering up, have you. Goddammit, William, at least activate your goggles.”

  “Soon. What do you need first?”

  “The Lakota have fucked up, William. Something awful. You wouldn’t believe the extent of the transgressions against preestablished agreements, especially the Covenants of ’07. NOAC won’t play nice guy in this, William. I want you to tell Daniel Horn. He’s a little boy fucking with grown-ups, and he’s going to get hurt, him and everyone behind him.”

  “Dr. MacAlister, there are layers to this rebellion. It has a long-standing precedent, wouldn’t you say? We fuck them over, they fuck Custer over, we fuck them over, we fuck them over, we fuck them over—”

  “William.”

  “And now they fuck us over. You keeping count, Dr. MacAlister? I think they’re due.”

  “Don’t let propaganda poison your scientific detachment, William. You need to stay rational about this. People could die, William.”

  “Am I to be scientifically detached, Doctor, or bound by guilt and threats? Can you really have both like that?”

  “I don’t care how you swallow it ethically, William. You deliver my message. We have to negotiate directly with Daniel Horn. Before the world mourns this tragedy, before you’re left lamenting your weaknesses, before NOAC closes the book on the Lakota Nation.”

  She left food for his mouth; he showed her a flaked stone tool, bifacial perfection in the style called Eden. He set it against his forehead as they returned to thei
r round machine with its round halo. He felt the blade cool against his brow, and knew it protected him for ten thousand years.

  He knew adamant to be a fractious material, rife with flaws and phenocryst arbitrariness. An item of glittering admiration, but nothing he could work with. This wasn’t adamant, this was chalcedony, and it was magic in a master’s hands.

  His kit was packed, supplies shouldered. He left the hill. He left the beacon where it sat like a turtle on the rock, ready to be discovered by a curious crow. He walked into the valley, forded the creek, ascended and descended a half dozen more hills, came to the closed road and walked down it, southward, until he found the barrier and the armed Lakota with their scarves and armbands and laser-tracking thunder-sticks.

  He waited beyond the antiassault mines, hunkered down on the cracked blacktop, and studied a corkscrew cactus with shiny flat spines that rotated away from the sun with perfect precision as the hours passed. Tiny white spiders spun webs between the spines, created balls of liquid that turned sticky and mimed droplets of condensation. The spiders clung to the underside of the spines, and waited.

  A skimmer arrived and landed behind the barricade. Daniel Horn passed through the shock line and carefully made his way to William.

  “Mother wants to talk.”

  Daniel shrugged. “I’ll think about it. I’m worried as hell about you, William. Those conjunctiva are there to tell you something. Something important.”

  “I see beyond them, Daniel.”

  “Fuck, you can barely blink. Here, use my goggles; they’re the best you can buy.”

  “No. Mother’s spirit is in me. She tastes bitter.”

  “We’re naughty boys, are we?”

  “Impudent and stiffhearted. Threats were made. People could die.”

  “They want a ball of fire, they’ll get it. The oil fields are rigged, and I mean subsurface rigged. The earth will melt, William. They can kill us, but they’ll get nothing for it, nothing left to plunder. We’ll butcher the buffalo, William, all of them. Call it manifest destiny; that’s something they’ll understand.”

  “I’ve disappeared, Daniel. My days as a messenger are over. Tell her yourself.”

  “Still making your entries on the Net?”

  “Like droplets of condensation.”

  “That’ll do.”

  “It will?”

  Daniel’s smile was a broken effort. “If you’re the boy, and I think you are. Please, William, pull yourself out.”

  “I can’t. I must speak of my captivity, Daniel. I must explore its absence. And all the ghosts are walking with me now. They’re an insistent bunch, Daniel.”

  “Hell, William.”

  “I found a paleo-point. Eden style. Ten thousand years old. Knife River flint. Here, it’s yours. At least in its physical manifestation. I imagine you can see the imprint on my forehead. That’s its ghost, thus I am marked, and thus it shall be. Like that spearhead of old, I am hunting big game. The biggest.”

  NOAC Net

  … announcement today confirms the rumor that Ladon Incorporated and the Lakota Nation have reached an agreement that in the words of NOAC Spokesperson Dr. Jenine MacAlister, “represents the most serious threat in terms both economic and political.”

  This follows fierce debate and accusations in the New United Nations assembly presently in an extraordinary session following the near-collapse of all world markets. Saudi Arabia was accused by both NOAC and SINJO of failing to comply with the trade embargo against the Ladon Corporation, which was enacted exactly three years ago today (July 4, A.C. 11). Spokespersons for the Saudi contingent have responded that a legal loophole was exploited by Ladon regarding the retrieval of Ladon technology from Saudi territory; a legalistic sleight of hand similar to the one employed against Argentina at Boxwell Plateau, Antarctica.

  The NUN world court, which Ladon refuses to recognize, is now considering immediate corrective measures to close this loophole, anticipating copycat pressures from other free corporations to avoid contractual obligations to their parent nations.

  Indeed, two small corporations with contract and material ties to Ladon have reportedly “abandoned” high technology on unpatrolled shoals off the African Coast, which was subsequently salvaged under Charter 70109 of the NUN Salvage Rights, by Ladon Corporation. This flagrant circumvention of the NUN …

  … NOAC Security has announced an intensive program to clean up the Net’s infamous “swamp,” after an encrypted exchange of unknown information was briefly tracked by Security monitors.…

  … Normal pursuit measures encountered a heretofore unknown tracksweeper with hidden mines, resulting in loss of trail and minor damage to the Security Insystem.

  “This constitutes a premeditated evasion of information by parties unknown, contrary to the NUN Charters defining universal access to information on the Net.” The release goes on to say that a list of suspects has been compiled and is being pursued “with rancor.”

  … Pakistani forces retreat in face of Sikh incursions and once again yield the Khyber Pass …

  … “Hidden” stock market remains a likely candidate for culpability in latest market crash …

  … NOAC Economic Security officials “closer to Ladon’s list of secret shareholders.”

  … boreal forest joins the list of Near Extinct ecosystems. But as Forestry Spokesman Arnold Sheer noted, “The boreal forest is notoriously low in energy yield. The biospheres are virtually inconsequential in global yield terms.”

  The designation for the boreal forest now adds this ecosystem to coral reefs, tropical and temperate rain forests and tundra. As has been noted, however, the deforested areas are now viable for agricorp expansions.…

  … the new virus infecting the East Codfarms has necessitated destroying over four thousand tons of fish stock. Economic and resource projections suggest a new designation to Red-3 level for Dependent Peoples. Given the trans-species characteristic of this new virus, the slaughtered fish could not be used as Feed for domesticates. The East Codfarms was the last marine farm still operating. Open Seas monitoring indicates little change in the now empty oceans worldwide. The official statement goes on to emphasize that there is no cause for panic, as GMO and GrowVat Foodstocks remain at optimum levels.…

  … four months into the excavation, with complete capping of the site set to begin immediately. The Mars Paleontology Team is now officially dissolved following an undisclosed breach of security.…

  … SINJO reaffirms military aid ties with India, at a historic meeting of officials outside Tel-abib on the banks of the Chebar River, where they arose and went forth into the plain and there spoke with each other and no one else, for this was a plain of darkness where he sang nevermore RECALL? SYSTEM ERROR SINJO SOURCE RECALL in all damnation, for they are rebellious in their houses.…

  SFI 29786.17

  Subject: Site Mj-eb 21

  Subcategory: Mars Excavation Projects

  Abstract: Sediments firmly dated at 11.2–13.3 mya yield gracile hominin fossil remains and evidence of an extensive agricultural complex in the XXXXXXX region of the Santo Regina basin—

  Tracking …

  Captured.

  NF NF NF

  Entry: American NW, July 4, A.C. 14

  In her blind world, she lay under the rock and listened. Burned blind, but eyes had become irrelevant. She thought nothing of this. Painless, forgotten. At night she would slide out from her place of rest, threading through the grasses and bouncing echoes off the land around her. Hunting, and there was food for her mouth in plenty. The rodents were everywhere, for a time unrestrained in their nightly activities. But she’d adapted, more or less overnight, along with a good many of her sisters. Granted, some took another route. No problem there. In any case, the snake was in heaven.

  Beneath the rock, her newly sensitized ears detected the presence of humans. She felt probing sonar bounce off the rock she lay under, and other probes as well, but her blood was cold, and they found her not.r />
  “I haven’t really got the time for this, Dr. MacAlister.”

  “The Lady’s put you in charge of the project. You bastard, what the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  “What?”

  “Is my language excessive, Max? Come on, give me a fucking break. These Lakota are dependent on us. If they cut NOAC out, they cut their own throat.”

  “Take it up with them, Doctor. I’ve got an engineering problem to tackle. Being intercepted has messed up my schedule.”

  “You passed through NOAC airspace, Max. Hell, I could’ve ordered you shot down.”

  “Why didn’t you? It’s the only way you can stop us.”

  “I want some messages delivered. Both ways.”

  “And those messages are?”

  “For the Lakota. The embargo is officially NUN approved. Extreme sanctions. Assets seized, the works. Nothing goes in, nothing comes out.”

  “I can hear Horn already. Back to the reservations, right?”

  “You’re missing the point. Tell the Lady this, Max. You may have made a deal with the Lakota Nation, but the Lakota Nation is finished. No money for you—I don’t think the Lady will swing this one past her secret shareholders. Ladon will be financially ruined.”

  “No money was involved, Dr. MacAlister. Basic reciprocity in action. The Lakota appreciated the irony, by the way. After all, it’s the way they used to do things, isn’t it?”

  “I’m not done with my message to Ladon. No air corridors will be granted. Your supplies will never reach here. Any efforts to breach the free-air zone will be met militarily.”

  “Anything else?”