The Gunfighter and The Gear-Head (20 page)

Back in the room, Gieo found Fiona already
trying to get dressed. She set the plate of food on the nightstand
again, and began undoing all the work Fiona had managed in clothing
herself.

“I need to go hunting,” Fiona protested.

“The sack of coins at the end of the bed says
you don’t
need
to do that again anytime soon,” Gieo
said.

“Okay, fine,” Fiona grumbled, “I
want
to go hunting.”

“I
wanted
to go to MIT, marry a
Wellesley girl, graduate with honors, and work for NASA, but that
didn’t exactly happen either! So fuck what you want—my list is
longer!”

Fiona took off her own shirt and slid back
into bed, watching Gieo with wide eyes.

“I’m sorry for snapping at you,” Gieo
murmured. “I’m going to go get cleaned up and see what Veronica
wants.” She made it to the door before Fiona spoke.

“I know you’ve made sacrifices,” Fiona said.
She didn’t say anything else before she started eating, but somehow
just hearing Fiona admit as much made Gieo feel a little
better.

Gieo took a quick sponge bath on the roof.
She dressed in her black and purple saloon girl dress with the
shiny, tight top and flowing, ruffled skirt. As with most of her
clothes, she’d modified the dress with leather strips to hold
widgets, hooks, and necessary gear-workings to have it interface
with an airship. She’d actually worn the dress while piloting her
second dirigible—it was something of a good luck charm, and it left
her shoulders and chest bare in an appealing way. She added her
leather top hat, and gave Ramen a pat on the head before heading
out.

“Have you thought about a puppy?” Ramen asked
in parting.

“It’s on my list.”

The streets were clear and eerily quiet. Dust
eddies, kicked up by the swirling desert ground-breezes danced
across Gieo’s path. Aside from her own, knee-high Victorian lace-up
boots crunching across the remains of asphalt and creaky, metal
signs shifting in the wind, there was nothing to differentiate
Tombstone from a ghost town. She couldn’t put her finger on it,
nothing more than a crawling feeling at the back of her neck, but
something told her to look over her shoulder before turning the
corner at the end of the street. Four cultist men, moving as
quietly as the dust eddies themselves, were coming up on her
quickly.

She turned the corner and ran.

In the dress, with the high-heel boots, she
knew she wasn’t going to get away from the swift-moving scarecrows,
but she could avoid their limited sight. She crossed the next
street up, ran a few buildings down, and ducked into a narrow
alleyway between two buildings. The dark, fetid air was several
degrees cooler than the street. The smell of dried motor oil and
mildew was suddenly overpowered by the stench of unwashed human
flesh. Two of the milky-eyed cultists stepped across the shaded
alleyway entrance, hearing, rather than seeing Gieo as she tried to
slink back into the gap so narrow it could only be walked down
single-file. She’d selected the alley poorly and her heart sank
when she felt a chain-link fence press against her back. A quick
glance over her shoulder told her the fence was not only
un-climbable, but, even if she did manage to get over the
barbwire-topped, ten foot tall fence, she would just be in a second
enclosed two-foot wide gap between the fence and another
building.

As little as she knew about fighting, she
knew that was her last resort, and so tried to look as fearsome as
possible by crouching and getting into something of a karate
stance; she desperately hoped the cultists were foolish enough to
believe all Asians were secretly ninjas, Shaolin monks, or karate
masters. Before they could even decide who was to go down the alley
first, both cultists dissolved into pulpy red slurry from hips to
chest. Gunfire, more hollow and thunderous than the metallic shriek
and explosion of Fiona’s gun, registered, but almost seemed
unrelated to Gieo as she couldn’t see the shooter. The cultists
looked as surprised as she did at the sudden transformation of
their midsections into ground meat. Two more powerful gun shots and
two more bodies falling let Gieo know whoever had come to her
rescue had also finished off the other two cultists following
her.

Her mouth was dry and her hands shaky.
Slowly, she crept toward the front of the alley, hoping whoever
took down the cultists didn’t do so with the intention of
kidnapping her for themselves. She half-expected to see Fiona in
the street; she’d gotten so used to the gunfighter’s timely
interventions that another would have felt routine. Instead,
strolling across the mouth of the gap, brazen as you please,
removing two spent shells from the breach of a double barrel,
ten-gauge shotgun, was Veronica, wearing a wedding dress modified
into prostitution appropriate attire.

“If it isn’t Fiona’s lovely little pet,”
Veronica said in her smooth, practiced southern Belle persona. She
shouldered the smoking shotgun, cocked her hip to one side, and
smiled like an armed and dangerous blushing bride. “I was just
about to pay you a friendly visit. Come take a stroll with me.”

Gieo gingerly stepped over the felled
cultists, shuddering when she felt her boots squish into…she had no
idea what it was, but it was red, spongy, and smelled horrible.
Veronica offered her free hand to help guide Gieo through the
slippery mess, and Gieo gladly took it.

“I’m getting a little sick of being rescued,”
Gieo muttered.

“If you’d like, I could teach you to fight,”
Veronica said. When Gieo was clear of the mess, Veronica linked
arms with her and guided her to walk down the middle of the street
like two old friends on the way to afternoon tea. “I taught Fiona
and she’s done mighty fine for herself.”

“I’m not all that comfortable with violence
against people,” Gieo said.

Veronica giggled in a girlish titter,
squeezing herself even closer to Gieo’s side. “Aren’t you just the
sweetest thing!” she exclaimed. “Why would these blind gentleman
want to do you harm?”

“They think I’m the devil and want to burn me
at the stake.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised to find out a
precious little thing like yourself had the devil in you, but to be
the devil incarnate, that seems like a mistake only blind men could
make.” She winked as though it were reflex. The conspiratorial
nature of the exchange sent a shiver through Gieo.

The affectation, which was ridiculously
charming and only amplified by the virginally sexy wedding dress,
lost a bit of its hypnotic power for Gieo after seeing Veronica
obliterate four people with the limbered shotgun she had slung over
her shoulder as though it were nothing more hazardous than a
parasol. The strength and dangerous edge that Fiona wore like a
shield, armor, and club to bludgeon with, was present in Veronica,
Gieo could sense it just beneath the surface, but she wore it like
a dirty secret, slutty lingerie concealed beneath pedestrian
clothing, kept under wraps for special occasions. Gieo surprised
herself a little in the realization that she found both very
different types of dangerous women compelling and sexy.

The closer they got to the Raven Nest, the
more of a shine the town began to boast. Cleanliness and a feminine
touch radiated in ever-increasing waves off the brothel. The
nearest few businesses and occupied buildings took to the Ravens’
influence readily; the positive nature of the influence was
undeniable. Men, gentlemen really, were dressed cleanly, tipped
their hats to the passing women, and spoke in cordial tones with
one another. An infection of civility had found root in Tombstone,
and the epicenter of the spread was the brothel.

“Fiona was always a knife looking from
someone to hone the blade with an edge,” Veronica explained as they
walked. “I supplied the edge and a purpose to the cutting, but her
morality drove her to other, less ambiguous, endeavors and I’m
sorry to say it created a divide between us that couldn’t be easily
mended.”

“Tombstone seems like an odd haven for
someone with morality,” Gieo said.

“Make no mistake, vice and turpitude exists
in spades here, but there is no ambiguity to it. The four dead men
divided into eight parts half a block behind us are a fine
example—lousy morals, but their intention were clear.”

Finally reaching the Raven Nest, Gieo
couldn’t have imagined something so opulent and feminine could even
exist anywhere anymore, never mind that it had sprung up in the
middle of Tombstone in a little over 24 hours. Women and services
were advertised. More than just prostitution, simple pleasures like
massages, burlesque shows, drinks, food, and a dance hall were all
available for the right price; more decadent pleasures like spa
treatments, medical services, and sexual favors were listed for
astronomical prices that Gieo couldn’t imagine anyone in town could
afford yet. The situation, combined with the needs of men, did
nothing to dampen spirits as many sought out the simple comforts of
female companionship even if it was little more than a dance or a
shared drink. Men left happy with contented smiles on their cleanly
shaven faces with printed photographs to remember their visit even
if they were never touched in the process.

“This isn’t at all what I expected,” Gieo
whispered.

Veronica tittered again and gave Gieo’s arm a
reassuring squeeze. “The world was ruled by men because they were
the first ones to climb to the top; knowing what we know about the
world they created when given that chance, why on earth would we
let them do it again?” Veronica handed off her shotgun to one of
the girls on their way through the front door. The other women,
charming song birds all, shot flirty glances, kind waves, and warm
smiles in Gieo’s direction as they passed through the pleasant
smelling halls of the Raven Nest. Gieo had to admit, if this was a
picture of the world ruled by women, she couldn’t have agreed
more.

Their final destination was a sitting room on
the back half of the courthouse. It was likely at some point a
cafeteria in its original incarnation, but had since undergone a
transformation into a hookah lounge, entertainment hub, and tea
parlor. Men sat in mixed company with women, joking laughing,
sharing pots of tea and pulls from bubbling hookah pipes all while
a string quartette of three beautiful women played soft strains of
Vivaldi. Veronica ushered Gieo to a reserved table beneath a
window, overlooking what had formerly been a parking lot, but which
was quickly being turned into a garden of some kind. Something
seemed off about the garden at first until she realized the nature
of the plants being tended; she didn’t know a whole lot about
drugs, but she’d gleaned from news programs what marijuana and
poppy plants looked like. Superficially, the organization looked
squeaky clean, but she imagined many of the hookahs were loaded
with hashish or raw opium.

“I have questions for you, as I’m sure you
have some for me,” Veronica said, folding her hands delicately in
her lap. “Please, feel free to start with one of yours to get
things rolling. I am nothing if not an open book.”

Gieo mirrored Veronica’s posture, pulling her
knees together, tucking her feet beneath her chair, with her hands
folded in her lap. “Why is Fiona called the Red Bishop or Red by
some? I thought it was just a hair color thing, but it seems like
there’s more to it than that.”

“It was a hair color thing, in a manner of
speaking,” Veronica explained. “Our units in Las Vegas were
designated by chess board pieces. We had many divisions that I
won’t bore you with; suffice it to say, red was a division color,
and Fiona was placed in it based, in part, on her hair color, but
mostly due to her violent outbursts. She rose quickly from pawn to
knight to rook and finally to bishop where she likely would have
stayed had she not left our organization.”

“The parting due to the aforementioned moral
ambiguity,” Gieo said. “Why would she have stayed a bishop though?
Why not promote her to king or queen eventually?”

“There are no kings in the Lazy Ravens, and
the positions of queens are difficult to come by. The Red Queen,
who was the only one above Fiona, would have had to die, and
Carolyn just isn’t the type.” A serving girl came around to their
table, delivered a pot of tea, two tea cups of fine china, and a
small tray of cut star fruit. Gieo almost didn’t recognize the
exotic fruit it had been so long since she’d seen it.

“What position do you hold?”

“I am the White Queen.” Veronica poured a
rose scented serving of tea into Gieo’s cup first, before filling
her own. “White is the offensive side of the board in chess, thus,
I am the colonizer while the Black Queen defends our holdings.”

“I was vice president of the chess club in
high school,” Gieo said, immediately feeling silly for comparing an
unimportant high school club to the ruling structure of a new world
order.

“You’ll have to favor me with a game at some
point,” Veronica said, seemingly unconcerned with any slight the
comment might have carried. “I would like to get to know every
little thing about you, my dear. The picture Fiona painted was most
flattering, if not hastily sketched. The broad brush strokes
indicated you are a scientist.”

“Physics mostly,” Gieo said, “although I’m a
quick study of most things mechanical and electrical.”