Janet Morris - Crusaders In Hell

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WELCOME TO HELL...

Zeno peeked, spreading his fingers. Through them he saw Satan, not a don now

in human robes, but a gigantic fiery-eyed thing with horn and tail, beset by a

great serpent and by winged docks with spear-like arms. He saw chariots with

wheels of flame and mushroom clouds on which they rode. He saw creation and

dissolution. He saw the sun swallow up me sky. He saw the earth charred to a

cinder, deep within the corona of that sun. And he saw a cloud of gas in which

angels darted-hundreds, thousands, wing brushing wing as they worked. He saw a

huge ball forming in me midst of pregnant gasses. And around all of this wound

the serpent, and in the serpent's coil die Devil toiled.

And in the Devil's arms Michael was cradled, fangs bared at a hungry sky as me

serpent's wide-spread jaws came closer-jaws mat contained an entire universe

within the maw they circumscribed.

Zeno's fingers dosed of their own accord, shutting out the awful sight.

Janet Morris

CRUSADERS IN HELL

Distributed in Canada by PaperJacks Ltd. A Licensee of the trademarks of Simon

& Schuster, Inc.

CRUSADERS IN HELL

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this

book are fictional, and any resemblance to red people or incidents is purely

coincidental.

thereof in any form.

A Baen Books Original

First printing. May 1987

ISBN: 0-W1-65639-2

Cover art by David Mattingly

Distributed by

SIMON & SCHUSTER

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, N.Y. 10020

CONTENTS

The Nature of Hell, Janet and Chris Morris

Gilgamesh Redux, Janet Morris

Crusaders to Love, Bill Berby

Between the Devil and The Deep Blue Sea, Michael Armstrong

Sharper Than A Serpent's Tooth, C.J Cherryh

By Invitation Only. Nancy Asire

The Gods of the Gaps, Gregory Benford

Springs Eternal, David Drake

Snowballs to Hell, Chris Morris

THE NATURE OF HELL

Janet and Chris Morris

Sinday, Moanday, Duesday, Weptsday, Tearsday, Frightday, Sadderday ... the

weeks rolled on, tune without end, and the Devil rolled with the punches.

Usually.

Time in Hell is an endless series of infinitely divided instants, as Zeno of

Elea would have put it. Did put it, as a possible solution to the paradox of

Achilles and the .tortoise. Infinitely divisible or singularly indivisible;

either any moment, no matter how small, could be divided into an infinite

number of smaller moments, and so on ad infinitum, or not: these were the.

Original Choices in the quandary of time.

Now that Zeno had all the time in Hell to work out the solution to his

problem, it seemed not to matter. At least, not until the Devil came to call.

"Hello, Zeno," said the Devil who looked, that Sadderday, rather like an

Oxford don. Zeno hadn't been familiar with Oxford dons or atomic clocks before

he came to Hell. Now, he worked at the Infernal Observatory, in the department

of Apparent Time. Here he was in charge of the Diabolical Dialing Department,

which dispensed, by phone, the exact Satanic Mean Time to all callers.

When the phones were working, anyway. If the tape-machines were running

properly. And assuming that the Demonic Day and Dating Service wasn't screwing

around with the intervals between Paradise-rise and Paradise-set.

Which they were today. Or someone was, today. If the term 'day' had any

meaning-beyond that of a mathematical standard 24 + hours-when your hours were

on the fritz.

Zeno had known that something was amiss with the hourly rate of time's passage

in Hell for some ... time ... now. He hadn't known, however, that the Fault

finding Forum would decide that he was to blame which it must have. Otherwise,

why would His Infernal Majesty be visiting up here, on Mount Sinat-coming to

Zeno's monastic little cell in the observatory?

"Ah, s-s-sir," stammered the philosopher to the donnish Devil, a man in black

robes and a powdered wig. "D-d-do sit d-d-d-down." Zeno gestured to the sole

wooden chair that, with the single writing desk and feather pallet on the

floor, made up his cell's furnishings.

When the Devil crossed the cell to take his seat, a black, scaled and furred

creature with wings folded against its back scampered in after him. The door,

closing on its own, nearly caught the thing's tail. It hissed, its back arched

like a cat's, its tail fluffed to twice-normal size, and it looked Zeno

straight in the eye.

Then it opened its jaws (the size of a big cat's) and hissed again, showing

ivory fangs. Next, it pronked in mock-threat and bounded into the Devil's lap

with a rip of his robe.

The Devil winced and, from beneath his seated person, smoke began to rise from

the wooden chair in which he sat. Grabbing the familiar by its ruff, he

settled it roughly into his lap and said, "Greetings, Zeo of Elea. It seems we

have some sort of problem,"

"Yes sir. Your Satanic Majesty, we have."

"'Nick' will do, Zeno, at least until this crisis is over."

Zeno of Elea, whose sins had been the inventions of dialectic and the

technique of finding paired, contradictory conclusions in other men's

premises, had never imagined himself on first-name terms with the Devil.

He could only mutter, "Yessir, Nick, sir."

At the mention of the Devil's name, the furred and winged beast in his lap

fixed Zeno with a baleful stare, then growled on an ascending note.

"Michael," chided the Devil, offering a finger to the beast who immediately

took the appendage in his jaws and began contentedly to munch on it.

"Michael's my eternal companion. Pet. Friend. You get the picture. Have you

some milk around?" As he spoke, the Devil grimaced intermittently as the beast

gnawed.

Zeno could hear the sound of fang scraping bone.

"Yes, sir-Nick. Around here someplace." And went to fetch the pot of newts

milk cooling outside his single window in the snow of Sinai's peak.

When he returned with it and a bowl to pour it in, the beast deserted the

Devil's lap with a bound. And its master said, "Now, then, Zeno, I'm here

because you're the man who argued that every magnitude is divisible into an

infinite number of magnitudes, and yet self-same and indivisible. Do I have it

right: 'both like and unlike, at rest and in motion, ease and many'?"

"Ah, well, that's a good paraphrase. Sir Nick."

"Just a paraphrase, then? You don't consider yourself responsible for the

human concepts of infinity, continuity, and unity?" said the Devil with

deceptive casualness.

But Zeno was not fooled. This might be the beginning of infinite punishment;

so far, he'd avoided the worst that Hell had to offer. He said carefully,

drawing on all his philosophical skill, "Surely no human is responsible for

the concepts of infinity, continuity, or unity. Unity is a precondition for

all existence ... something must be, indivisibly and wholly, to differentiate

itself from nothingness. Once 'being' is established, one has two states,

being and non-being. As-"

"I'm not saying you created the concepts - just that you re guilty of first

explicating them," Nick interrupted impatiently. Now cut to the chase, you

long-winded pedant"

"Yes, s-s-sir" Zeno quavered, trying to stifle a pained look. The 'chase' had

been his life's work; was his eternal vocation; he could not 'cut' to it, he

was eternally and entirely engaged in it. And continued: "As soon as there are

two states, there is also duration, from which follow all relations of space

and time: forward and back, up and down, to and fro, before and after.

Thus the assumption of being and non-being' create a primary divisibility

which, in and of itself; generates the concepts of infinity, continuity, and

unity, since none of the aforementioned can exist without its opposite.

Therefore, differentiation is the Initial State, First Moment, the Root

Casuality ... and the culprit you seek." Zeno smiled, having gotten himself

irrefutably off the hook.

The Devil did not smile. The Devil stared at Zeno unblinkingly and then leaned

forward, elbows on his knees, his white, curly wig swaying gently against

powerful shoulders. Regardless of your pettifogging, you, you alone, first

rubbed Mankind's nose in this particular brand of philosophical bullshit...

What would you say if I told you that something is disturbing the very fabric

of your assumptions, here in Hell? That forward and back, to and fro, before

and after are threatened at their very center? That the forward-moving arrow

of time and the backward-moving arrow have collided in mid-air?"

I would say, Zeno replied very softly, "That you are better at creating

paradoxes than even I am. But since my clocks are not reading the time in

concert - not simultaneously, if I may add a loaded term to this discussion -

I will admit that there does - seem to be some disturbance in the procession

of time. In the length of what had previously and conveniently been uniform

instants. In the ... fabric of time itself."

The Devil nodded morosely. He looked at his hands between his knees and then

at his familiar, Michael, lapping from a bowl of milk which was still as full

as when the two men had started their conversation, or the creature had first

begun to lap. "I'm told that Hell is in danger of becoming temporally unstable

- of having no duration and all duration simultaneously, I ask you, Zeno of

Elea, is this a syllogism, or a real threat?"

Zeno had a sneaking suspicion that the Devil was trying to trap him into

speaking some blasphemy so terrible that it demanded infinite punishment of

indeterminate duration. He said slowly, "Sir Nick, if that were so then it

would always have been so - at least once it starts or started, or will start

So we wouldn't know the difference, since there would only be a single moment

in which to realize, cogitate, remember and predict Therefore, also, because

danger, is a transient condition which leads to a result, there could be no

peril in the true sense, because there would be insufficient duration to lead

to any denouement. , . no result no crisis or shift or event to which what the

New Dead call catastrophe math could apply. There could be no catastrophe

whatsoever, since there could not be, in an indivisible instant, any shift of

states - no events, if you like. There would be simply stasis, in which

everything poised to occur simultaneously, but nothing whatsoever did occur.

And stasis, of all states, demands the single condition consciousness cannot

meet peace. Thus, my answer is no, such a threat is not real, because such a

threat, if it became reality, would be imperceptible and so unreal. Unreal for

as long as there exists consciousness. And if consciousness does not exist,

then nothing--"

"Stop!" howled the Devil, his fists balled over his ears, his wig's flaps

pressed against them like earmuffs. "You know, you smartass word-monger, you

really do belong here! Some of them don't, Ill admit ... bureaucratic muck-ups

and the nature of big systems to malfunction. But you're as bad as Aristotle,

who told me that his precious geometry proved the threat false in as

masturbatory language as you're using."

"Sorry, Sir Nick, but you asked..."

"Asked!" This time, the yowl was so loud that Michael flattened himself before

the bowl of milk and began to choke. As Zeno watched, the cat/bat/familiar

seemed to bloat to twice its size as every hair stood on end. Its whole body

convulsed from back to front. Then, its neck stretched to double its former

length and its tongue sticking an inch out of its mouth, it vomited all the

milk it had drunk back into the bowl.

And this was a very interesting phenomenon, because the bowl was still full

before Michael began to vomit. And yet, as he vomited and after he vomited the

milk he'd drunk back into the bowl did not overflow. When the animal lay

exhausted and panting beside the bowl with its eyes glazed, having vomited

into the bowl the entire contents of its prodigious stomach, the bowl was

exactly, as full as it had been before the beast had begun vomiting. As, fall

as it had while Michael had been drinking. As full as it had been when Zeno

first brought the bowl, sloshing milk against its rim, to place it on the

floor before Michael in the first place.

Zeno had stopped listening to the Devil, who was yelling. He said quietly,

"Sir Nick, do you realize what this means? The bowl... the quantity of milk in

the bowl was unchanging throughout the entire interval of not-drinking,

drinking, and regurgitating. And after."

When Zeno again looked up at the Devil, the face he saw was as red as the sky

above New Hell when Paradise was trying to set.

"No. Tell me. What does it mean?" said the Devil, spittle riding his words as

he expelled them from purpling lips.

"It means that your informant was correct ... at least partially correct; In

some places - for example, where Michael and the bowl are, but not here, only

a few feet away on either Side, where you and I are - space-time is becoming

anomalously subject to different laws."

"No shit," said the Devil as he rose from his chair in disgust "Michael!" The

call shook the very rafters of Zeno's cell.

And the familiar rallied to it - or tried to. It twitched its ears, it got up

on its hind legs, it sought to back away from the bowl. But for every moment

away from its bowl, it exhibited an equal and opposite movement toward the

bowl. To Zeno, the cat seemed trapped in a tape loop. First it went forward,

then it went back, but it never managed to execute more than a circumscribed

set of motions.

And the Devil, watching the familiar, began to rage. "Michael! Michael!" he

screamed as if the beast were his only child. And strode forward, toward the

bowl.

"No! Don't! Sir! Nick" Zeno called, and lunged for the Prince of Darkness,

hoping to stop the Devil from becoming stuck like a fly on flypaper, as the

familiar was now, in some temporal glitch.

The familiar was yowling, intermittently, whenever it reached a forward

instant in its forward/backward/forward/backward minuet...

Now the Devil was cursing so horribly that demons started appearing-coming out

of the walls, the ceiling, the floor, the very air. These were horrid

creatures and Zeno (seeing acid spittle drip on floorboards and begin to

smoke, spittle that dripped from gaping jaws which could chomp him in two),

covered his head with his hands and sank down to curl himself into as small a

ball as possible.

He heard noises his ears couldn't sort into sensible sounds. He heard the

ripping of the firmament and the fundament.

And then he peeked, spreading his fingers. Through them he saw Satan, not a

don now in human robes, but a gigantic fiery-eyed thing with horn and tail,

beset by a great serpent and by winged clocks with spear-like arms.

He saw chariots with wheels of flame and mushroom clouds on which they rode.

He saw creation and dissolution. He saw the sun swallow up the sky. He saw the

earth charred to a cinder, deep within the corona of that sun. And he saw a

cloud of gas in which angels darted - hundreds, thousands, wing brushing wing

as they worked. He saw a huge ball forming in the midst of pregnant gasses.

And around all of this wound the serpent, and in the serpent's coil the Devil

toiled.

And in the Devils arms Michael was cradled, fangs bared at a hungry sky as the

serpent's wide-spread jaws came closer - jaws that contained an entire

universe within the maw they circumscribed.

Zeno's fingers closed of their own accord, shutting out the awful sight. His

head bowed down until it touched his knees. He curled up, hiding from the

chaos he had seen. And though he could no longer see a struggle that his mind

could not comprehend, he could still hear it.

He heard the Devil snarling that Michael was his and no Power had the right to

take Michael from him. He heard a chorus of demons singing songs to sear the

inner ear.

Then he heard nothing. Silence. Utter peace.

Unutterable peace. He couldn't even hear himself breathing. He couldn't hear

the pulse in his ears. He couldn't hear the wind whipping Sinai.

Then he did hear something. He heard the squishy sound of a terrified man

losing control of his bowels. Himself And he smelled his fear in its most base

form.

And he heard a clearing of someone's throat. Then: "Zeno?"

He raised his head and the Devil was there. Alone but his familiar, riding now

upon his shoulder, wings unfurled the Devil had wings now, also, great

leathery wings and deep-burning yellow, slitted eyes.

This horror made Zeno raise his hands before his face.

But out of the gaping, sharp-toothed jaws of the Devil's new aspect came the

same cultured voice of an Oxford don: "Now that we've determined that there is

a threat, I'd like you to work on some solution. Now that the physics are

clear to you." And the Devil began to laugh.

Squinting, Zeno saw why he laughed: the familiar had sunk its teeth into his

neck and was gnashing them there. Blood began to drip from the wound, down

over Satan's shoulder.

"A solution?" Zeno gasped. "Me?"

"You. A way to keep the clocks right. I'll deal with what's throwing the

larger temporality out of balance ... it's, ah, certain mischievous souls

among the dissidents and elsewhere who're to blame." From a pouch at his

stomach, of the sort nature gives a marsupial, the Devil brought forth an

object and held it out to Zeno.

Zeno scrambled to his feet to take the artifact. "But ... it's just an

hourglass. A mere hourglass, big, but not the sort of thing I need to keep-"

"Just an hourglass?" boomed the Devil, his wings moving restlessly. "This is

the hourglass. The primal standard. If you lose it, you'll find yourself with

first-hand experience of a multi-temporal hard time. For now, your job is to

keep the observatory running like..." White teeth gleamed. "...Clockwork."

"But...."

"But what, mortal?" thundered the Father of Lies. "Its the nature of Hell to

give every man a problem he can't solve. I'll leave a few demons here to make

sure you've got the proper motivation."

And in a puff of black smoke that smelled hideously charnal, the Devil was

gone.

But the demons weren't. They were outside Zeno's cell in the hall. They were

outside his window, making obscene snowmen from the white caps of Sinai. And

they were waiting, Zeno knew, for the hourly chimes to toll.

He didn't need to hear that first ragged, imprecise and tardy announcement of

the approaching hour to know what the demons were going to do to him, every

hour on the hour, for howsoever long he failed to make the clocks toll

simultaneously.

The snowman outside his window looked just like him, and what was happening to

it was so awful, and so graphic, and the demons were having so much fun doing

it, that Zeno's hands were trembling like leaves before he'd even gotten down

to work.

It wasn't so much the fear of intermittent punishment that made him shake, but

the fear of getting caught in one of those space-time glitches while he had a

demon up his ass.

GILGAMESH REDUX

Janet Morris

"To the end of the Outback, and back again."

Silverberg: Gilgamesh In The Outback

"The lord Gilgamesh, toward the Land of the Living set his mind," chanted

Enkidu, hairy and bold, trekking beside Gilgamesh up to the mountain peak.

And Gilgamesh, gasping for breath because the trek was hard and the air was

thin, interrupted, "Enlfl, the mighty mountain, the father of all the gods,

has determined the fate of Gilgamesh - determined it for kingship, but for

eternal life. He has not determined it..."

These lines, from the epic sung as The Death of Gilgamesh for ages, shut both

men's mouths.

But in the inner ear of Gilgamesh, the poem continued, fragments sharp as

spear points in a wild boar's heart: "Supremacy over mankind has Enlil granted

thee, Gilgamesh. Battles from which none may retreat has he granted thee.

Onslaughts unrivalled has he granted thee ...in life. Be not aggrieved, be not

sad of heart.

On the bed of Fate now lies Gilgamesh and he rises not ... he rises not... he

rises not."

On the top of the mountain peak now stood the lord Gilgamesh and his servant -

his friend - Enkidu. And Gilgamesh wondered if Enlil inhabited this peak even

in Hell.

It was silly, it was foolish, to have climbed this mountain in search of more

than he could ever find in Hell. For that was where Gilgamesh now was, who had

sought Eternal Life and now sought Eternal Death-the peaceful sleep that had

been promised him while all around him were the lamentations of his family.

In life. So long ago Uruk.

For a time the presence of Enkidu had soothed him, but now it did not. Below

and behind them was the caravan they had joined because Enkidu had seen a

woman there he craved. And because the caravan was well supplied with weapons

that were to Enkidu like toys to a greedy child: plasma rifles, molecular

disrupters, enhanced kinetic-kill pistols that fired bullets tipped with

thallium shot whose spread was as wide as Gilgamesh's outstretched arms.

Cowards' weapons. Evil upon evil here at die end of the Outback. Such was

behind Gilgamesh, down on the flat among the covered wagons of the mongrel

caravanners with whom, for the sake of Enkidu, he'd fallen in.

Before him, on the far side of this mountain whose peak Enlil did not inhabit,

was a shore and a sea and an island off that shore, an island belching steam

and gouts of flame from its central peak-the destination of the caravan

Gilgamesh had left behind on the flat. Pompeii was the name of the island, and

whatever awaited there, neither Eternal Life nor Eternal Death was among its

secrets.

Gilgamesh knew This because he was the man to whom all secrets had been

revealed in life, and some of that wisdom clung to him even in afterlife.

"To the Land of the Living," Enkidu took up his chant once more in stubborn

defiance of the murky sea and burning isle before them, "the lord Gilgamesh

set his mind."

As if it made any difference to Fate what Gilgamesh wanted, now That Gilgamesh

was consigned to Hell. Enkidu's mind had been poisoned by the woman with the

caravan, by nights with her and the thighs of her and the lips of her which

spoke the hopes other heart: That there was a way out of Hell.

So now Enkidu sought a way out of Hell through tunnels; through the

intercession of the Anunnaki, the Seven Judges of the Underworld whom

Gilgamesh had seen in life; through perseverance and even force of arms. Myths

from the lips of a woman had seduced Enkidu and put foolish hopes in the heart

of Gilgamesh's one-time servant and beloved friend - hopes that were, with the

possible exception of intercession by the Anannali (whom Gilgamesh had seen

and knew to exist), entirely apocryphal.

If Enkidu and Gilgamesh had not so recently quarreled and parted, if Gilgamesh

had not missed his friend so terribly when they did, the lord of lost Uruk

would have argued longer and harder with Enkidu. He would have refused to join

the caravan. He would have stamped out Enkidu's vain and foolish hope of

escape from Hell.

He should have done all those. But there was no one in the land like Enkidu,

no one else who could stride the mountains at Gilgamesh's side, whose stamina

was as great, whose heart was as strong, whose hairy body pleased Gilgamesh so

much to look upon.

There was no companion for Gilgamesh but Enkidu, no equal among the ranks of

the damned. Thus Gilgamesh put up with Enkidu's foolish hopes and hopeless

dreams. Enkidu was not the man to whom all secrete had been revealed.

Only Gilgamesh was that man. Only Gilgamesh had known the truth in life. the

truth had less value, here in afterlife. It had no more value than the carcass

of a feral cat or a rutting stag or a rabid demon - all of which Gilgamesh had

slain while hunting in the Outback. It had no more value than the skins he cut

from those carcasses as he had in life. It had no more value than the flesh

beneath the skin of those animals, dead while he dressed their carcasses, dead

while he ate - when he must - their flesh.

But not dead. Death was rebirth here. Death was forever elusive. Death was

merely a hiatus - and a short cut to the teeming cities of Hell's most

helpless damned, among whom Gilgamesh could not breathe.

In Hell's cities, Gilgamesh felt like the lion caged to please the king. In

Hell's cities, his limbs grew weak and his spirits low.

This city before them now was no exception. It dried the chant in Enkidu's

throat. It dried the blood in Gilgamesh's veins. Pompeii, the caravanners

whispered, had come whole to Hell, so purely iniquitous were its very streets.

Its dogs had come. Its dolphins had come.

Its whores had come. Even Pompeii s children had come to Hell.

And it was a city, so the tales ran, where everything was as it once had been

- where outsiders were unwelcome and never settled, where a language neither

Greek nor English was the norm.

Gilgamesh looked at Enkidu out of the corner of his eye. Enkidu had brought

them here, from the clean violence of the Outback, because of his loins and

his lust for modem weapons.

Gilgamesh had never asked Enkidu if the former servant got pleasure from his

copulation with the woman, or only frustration, as was the lot of so many men

in Hell. Men whose manhood was too dear, too often proved, too important to

their hearts, often could not consummate the act. Gilgamesh and Enkidu had met

because of one such woman, centuries ago in life.

He shook away the cobwebs of memory, so common lately, and said to Enkidu,

"See, the city of ill repute. Let us leave the caravan now, Enkidu, and return

to the Outback, where the hunting is good."

"Gilgamesh," replied Enkidu, "the animals we hunt do not die, they only

suffer. The skins we take ... are these not better left on animals who must

re-grow them? And the haunches we eat, which distress our bowels? Let us go

with the caravan into the city, and explore its treasures. Are you not curious

about That place, which came to Hell entire?"

This woman was destroying Enkidu, rotting the very fiber of his mind,

Gilgamesh realized. But he said only, with the patience of a king, "We will

not be allowed into the city, Enkidu, you know That. the caravan must camp on

the shore and its people go no farther."

"Ah, but the lord of the city will come to us and then, hearing That you are

Gilgamesh, lord of the land, king of Uruk, he will surely invite us there ...

to see what no outsider has ever seen." Enkidu's eyes were shining.

Gilgamesh had never been able to resist that look. He said, "If you will put

away this woman--who will not be allowed to travel with us to the city in any

case--and separate from the caravan thereafter, Enkidu, I will announce myself

to the lord of the city and demand the hospitality due the once king of Uruk -

and his friend."

"Done!" cried Enkidu.

High above the caravan, in a helicopter hidden by Hell's ruddy clouds, an

agent of Authority named Welch reviewed the background data That had brought

him here, on his Diabolical Majesty's most secret service. Welch had become a

member of the Devil's Children, Satan's "personal Agency" among a dizzying

proliferation of lesser agencies, without ever meeting Old Nick face to face.

Agency was special, privileged, demanding and unforgiving of failure.

Agency was not, however, infallible, and the briefing material before Welch on

the chopper's CRT was no better than what Welch's own spotty memory could

provide. Worse, perhaps. Since bureaucracy in Hell functioned but never

functioned well.

Tapping irritably at a toggle to clear his screen, Welch mentally recapped the

"secret" analysis he'd just read:

Mao Tse-tungs Celestial People's Republic had spread quickly along the tundra

of the Outback, stopped only by Prester John's border to the south and the Sea

of Sighs to the west. New Kara-Khitai had already been invaded by the

collectivizing hordes of the CPB, led by Mao's Minister of War himself, Kublai

Khan.

Communist troops in the Outback didn't bother Authority - as Mao had said,

revolution wasn't made in silk boxes. the misery Mao's CPR fanatics brought

with them like bayonets on the barrels of their ChiCom rifles would have been

allowed to spread unchecked, at least until it over-swept Queen Elizabeth's

domain and the entire West was Mao's if Mao could have been content with That.

Unfortunately, Chairman Mao had greater ambitions. He sought to export

revolution to every socialist crazy who could say Marghiella, and that

included Che Guevara (or what was left of his soul since Welch had called in

an air strike on Che's main Dissident camp north of New Hell). If the export

of revolution had stopped with rhetoric, perhaps AuAority could have looked

the other way.

But Mao was using drug money to fund his ideological allies - from Che on the

East Coast to the Shi'ite bloc landlocked in the Midwest. Once his

revolutionary exports reached New Hell, reached as far as the very Mortuary

itself, then something had to be done.

Narco-terrorism wasn't to be tolerated. the poppy fields of the Devil's

Triangle reached from Idi Amin's southern frontier to the Persian holdings in

the Midwest, and over to Mao's capital, the City of the Fire Dogs. From Dog

City, "China White" made its way south sad east by boat and caravan, dulling

the sensibilities of the damned.

Communism was one of the Devil's favorite inventions, and that made Welch's

assignment harder. Agency couldn't simply nuke the emerging Western ComBtoc

back to the stone age - Authority wouldn't permit it. Welch's assignment was

to stop the flow of drugs East, especially into New Hell, where the Dissidents

were attracting too much attention. So it was over-flights in this Huey,

piloted by a hot-dog Old Dead, Achilles. It was a covert crusade against drug

smugglers.

And it was going to take one hell of a long time to show any results.

Welch sat back from the computer bank in the belly of the Huey and reached

sideways for his pack of Camels and a swig of beer.

Machiavelli had done this to him: vendetta. More precisely, Machiavelli had

done it to Nichols, Welch's one-time ADC-sent Nichols out on a

search-and-destroy mission aimed at a specific caravan master who did business

out of Pompeii; seat him with an Achaean relic for a pilot and Tamara Burke,

whose sympathies in life and afterlife were questionable. (Whether she'd been

KGB or CIA, even Welch wasn't sure.)

Rather than let Nichols spend the rest of Eternity fighting Mao's considerably

greater resources, Welch had pulled every string he could think of to secure

command of this mission - even called an air strike on Che's base camp to

clear his decks in time to board Achillies' Huey.

Welch shouldn't have been here, fighting the Yellow Peril put in the boonies

when Agency had bigger fish to fry, not when be had so much unfinished

business with Julius Caesar's crew back in New Hell. But he owed Nichols This

much and more: Welch's miscalculation on their last mission had gotten Nichols

killed.

If Welch had been doing his job right - before and directly after Nichols'

death at Troy - he wouldn't have owed the soldier anything. But Welch had come

back from the Trojan Campaign with a case of something very like hysterical

amnesia. It had been Nichols who found Welch, sloppy drunk with Tanya - Tamara

Burke - in a New Hell bar and offered aid and comfort.

Aid and comfort in Hell were hard to find. Aid and comfort coming from a

junior officer rankled. Welch had been the case officer on the Trojan

Campaign; Nichols had been one of many weapons Welch had employed there.

So it was all backwards, to Welch s way of thinking. He had to get things back

into a perspective he could live with. Or die with. In Hell it didn't much

matter, but case officers thought in terms of human coin - debts owed, favors

done, responsibility and trust.

Trust was a big one: whether betraying it or ratifying it, it was the fulcrum

on which all operations turned.

This mission, on the face of it, was simple, if Achilles' assessment was

correct: strafe the caravan with the Huey's chain gun until nothing moved;

firebomb what was left once they'd made sure that Enkidu and Gilgamesh were

among the dead ... or the missing. That was a little addendum to the main

mission: separate Gilgamesh and Enkidu, and send or bring both Sumerians back

to Reassignments.

There was nothing in the orders about how, though, and Achilles was right:

death meant the Trip; the Trip ended you at the Mortuary (except, sometimes,

if you died on the battle plain of Ilion, a couple of dimensions away from

here...) and then at Reassignments.

Even Tamara Burke had voted for the easy way, until Welch had put her down

with a carpetbag full of feminine accouterments and detailed her to infiltrate

the caravan and seduce one of the Sumerians.

Tanya had a field phone, tracer jewelry, and a chopped Bren Ten that could be

heard to New Hell and back if she had to shoot it. She was an experienced

field collector, as well as a proven seductress.

But the look she'd shot Welch when they'd let her out a hill away from the

caravan had been scathing. Only Achilles was pleased with that.

So now it was Welch and Nichols in the belly of the chopper, alone but for

their data collection equipment and each other, bathed in sweat and running

lights and trying to keep their equipment cool as they waited for a signal

from Tanya that the caravan had picked up its load of drugs and was headed

toward the hinterland. The low-shrubbed boonies. The damned no-man's-land of

buffer zone that was so undesirable even the commies hadn't claimed it. Yet

"You know, something about this doesn't feel right," Welch said to Nichols.

Arching his back in his ergo chair, Welch put one foot up on the padded bumper

of the "mapping" console that could show him how much spare change Enkidu had

in his pocket or how much ammo was in one of the caravan guard's Maadi AKs.

"Tanya should have called in by now. The caravan should be loaded up and on

its way out by now. And I can't find the right heat signature for Gilgamesh

and Enkidu to save my soul."

"Umn," said Nichols with illuminating volubility. "Me neither." Nichols was

still hunched over his tracking console, stripped down to a black t-shirt that

showed the screaming-eagle tattoo on one muscular arm. "Think maybe they've

gone off on their own? the OD's, I mean?"

The ODs: the Old Dead - Gilgamesh and Enkidu. One of Nichols' little

rebellions was a feigned inability to pronounce either name. "Tanya would have

let us know," Welch said, because it was his job to say that, not because he

really believed he knew what Burke would do in any circumstance That might

come up during fieldwork.

"Yeah?" Nichols was more blunt, the sneer on his square face eloquent as he

shifted to lock eyes with his superior. "What if Achilles and her have cooked

up a little something of their own? That's lots of money, lots of power, lots

of anonymity, down there." Nichols' gaze flickered to his feet on the deck,

below which was the caravan camped on the shore in sight of Pompeii. Nichols

didn't like Achilles and the feeling was mutual.

Achilles liked Tanya, though. Anything with a dork would follow Tamara Burke

anywhere, sniffing and wagging its tail and leaving its common sense behind.

Welch ought to know.

"What are you getting at?" They knew each other too well for Welch to take

umbrage at the "Sirs" missing from Nichols' badinage. When you were sweating

it out in a corn truck on the battle plain of Ilion or in Caesar's private

office at a New Hell villa or in a chopper flown by one of the biggest egos in

Hell, you wanted a man like Nichols - to have your best interests-and the

success of your mission - at heart.

"A little recon. If you don't mind. You don't need me here right now. What

these babies ain't sayin', you can handle." Nichols' chin jutted toward the

electronics displays.

Maybe it wasn't necessary, but it was logical. And it was what Nichols did

better than he did anything but exponentially increase body count.

Okay, you're go," said Welch absently in their familiar shorthand, and unwound

from his chair to give the order to Achilles on the flight deck. He could have

patched into Achilles' helmet-circuit from here, but if there was an argument

- and there almost always was with Achilles - he didn't need Nichols hearing

it.

Standing, Welch had to slump to avoid hitting his head. Stooped over, he said:

"Finish my beer for me. And take more than you need down-there. Including

this." He reached into his hip pocket and pulled out one of the miniaturized

black boxes he'd requisitioned for his recent sortie into Che's camp. "You get

into trouble, or just want extracted, push this button." He turned the

match-box sized oblong in his fingers until the red nipple on one side was

facing Nichols. "I'll be waiting."

"You expecting this kind of trouble?" Nichols frowned at the black box before

he took it.

Tm expecting a real good reason why Tanya's not checking in, yeah."

Damned women, you could never tell what they had in mind. But it wasn't so

much that he didn't trust Tanya, it was that Welch knew Nichols. Nichols had a

disdain for the Old Dead that might cause him to underestimate the opposition.

No matter who me antiques were, the opposition here was really Mao. And Mao

was nobody's friend, nobody's fool. Welch promised himself that, when he got

back to New Hell, he was going to get Machiavelli transferred to Sanitation

Engineering.

Up on the flight deck, listening to the inevitable "better idea" that Achilles

had, Welch made a mental note to include the Achaean in Machiavelli's

Sanitation squad. Then he pulled his 9mm off his hip and, flicking suede lint

from its barrel, said levelly to die pilot, "You fly 'em. I'll call 'em.

Understood?"

The chopper pilot began landing procedures without another word.

Nichols had scrambled thirty feet away from the Huey before he looked back.

Even knowing where it was, he couldn't see die damned thing. Stealth

technology had come a long way since Nichols died, not in the Med during the

Big War, but on an island off America's coast in the aftermath.

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Janet Morris - Crusaders In Hell

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