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pinching the guard's nostrils. He struggled, and died.
"Don't worry, M. Duroc. Everything in this place is soundproofed. Too many
screams in the night."
Russell was speechless, trembling. Duroc had scooped up Gilhooly's keys, and
was methodically stripping Dr Proctor of his chains.
Gilhooly twitched on the floor, still bleeding. Dr Proctor was free now. He
stretched his arms and stamped around. He passed the gun to Duroc, who turned
it on Russell. The Treasury man put his hands up.
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Dr Proctor knelt by the sergeant, and took hold of the throwing star lodged
in his windpipe.
"I told you," he said, twisting, "not to call me Otto."
The star scraped bone. Gilhooly gurgled, and stopped kicking. Dr Proctor
stood up, and smiled at the Treasury Man.
"Ottokar," said Russell, "we have a relationship..."
"That's right, Julian. A very close relationship. None closer."
The Tasmanian Devil looked around for something. He saw the coffee things,
and picked a teaspoon out of the sugarbowl.
"How careless," he said. "It should have been plastic. I suppose aluminium is
cheaper than any petroleum byproduct in these troubled times."
"Ottokar..."
Dr Proctor stood over Russell, the spoon in one hand, his other on the
Treasury man's shoulder.
"Dr Proctor," said Duroc. "Hurry up. We have a very brief window of
opportunity here."
"It's a moment's work, Monsieur."
Even Duroc didn't want to watch the Devil at work. By the time the screaming
was over, he had Bean stripped of his uniform.
"Is this your size?" he said.
"A little generous over the belly, but we can tighten his belt."
Dr Proctor stripped out of his whites, and pulled the uniform on. They would
have used Gilhooly's clothes, but there was a little blood on the collar.
"Ready?"
"Yes, Monsieur." Dr Proctor held up the teaspoon. It was red.
"What are we waiting for?"
"Cook's privilege," the Devil said, "I get to lick the spoon."
VII
"Jesse, what's wrong?"
"I don't know. Hawk. It all seems so crazy, sometimes. The Dreams, the
prophecies. I'm a girl from the Denver NoGo, not some picstrip superheroine."
"You've come a long way from the NoGo."
"Have I? Have I really?"
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"You know the answer. What were you? A petty criminal, a sociopath. You've
killed, you've robbed..."
"That was just a phase, you know. You grow out of it."
"The people you killed won't grow out of it."
"I've never killed anyone who wouldn't have killed me."
"That's not true."
"... you're right."
"How do you feel about that?"
"... I don't know. It doesn't seem like the same girl. With the gangcult, it
was different. You just kept riding along with the pack, you did what was
expected..."
"You were the leader of the pack."
"Yes, but that just meant the others expected more of me."
"Would you go back, if you could?"
"I'd bring back Andrew Jean and Cheeks and the others, yes."
"That's not what I asked. Would you ride with the gangcults again? Waiting
for the Op or the Maniak who'd take you down?"
"No. I'm too old, anyway. But no."
"And what else have you got to do?"
"Save the world?"
"Don't make that sound so bad, Jesse."
"Isn't it? This world isn't all that worth saving, if you ask me."
"You can't spend your whole life killing your father."
"What's that got to do with it?"
"Your father brought you into this world, and your father was scum, therefore
you reject the world."
"That sounds too easy to me. My father wasn't the only slimeball in the
world. For a start, you should meet my mother, wherever she is. Rancid Robyn."
"But the world isn't all slime."
"Isn't it? Apart from you, everybody I know is dead. Or ought to be."
"We will do our parts, and things will be better."
"I've heard that all my life."
"This time, maybe... Things are different, aren't they?"
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"Different? Yes. I've never been a monster before."
"You're not a monster. You're a Spirit Warrior."
"Jesse Frankenstein's-Daughter, the Spirit Warrior."
"You must take the feelings you have for yourself and channel them. You will
need all your emotional capacities."
"It's starting soon?"
"It's starting now."
VIII
Dr Proctor slipped the chip into the auto's music system, and Fast-Forwarded
to the "Nessun dorma!" As the Unknown Prince, Sir Oswald Osbourne, the
greatest operatic voice of the '90s, poured it out. Osbourne apart, the Met's
Turandot was rather minor, he supposed, but you could never tire of the
"Nessun dorma!" The aria ended, and he skipped to the finale. "Cera negli
occhi tuoi" and "Diecimila anni." Then, the applause.
The incar computers told him he was in Southern Arizona. He let the machines
do all the driving. He had been through this area in '89, when he was just
starting out on his Devil-work. He had liked it because it reminded him of the
endless mesas and sandy canyons of the Road Runner cartoons, Zoom and Bored
(1957), Wild About Hurry (1959), Fastest With the Mostest (1960), Tired and
Feathered (1965).
There had been a gangcult then. The Backburners. They had flagged him down to
kill him and rob him. He must have added fifteen or twenty to his score that
night. He never kept count. That was for the pettifoggers, the lawyers and the
journos.
There were seventeen books in print about him, not counting his [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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