The Regulators (17 page)

COLONEL HENRY

You're worried, little one.

CASSIE

Of
course
I'm worried! Snake Hunter is right! The Power Wagons were never designed for the stresses of a deep-space assault!

COLONEL HENRY

But that's not
all
that's on your mind.

CASSIE

Sometimes I
hate
your telepathy, Hank.

COLONEL HENRY

Come on . . . give.

CASSIE

Something bothers me about those shapes inside the Force Corridor. What if they
aren't
power-generators?

COLONEL HENRY

What else
could
they be?

They have reached the slide-door to the Power Wagon Corral.
COLONEL HENRY
slaps his hand into the palm-lock and the door slides up.

CASSIE

I don't know, but . . .

INT.   THE POWER WAGON CORRAL
,
FEATURING THE MOTOKOPS

CASSIE
gasps with shock, eyes widening!
COLONEL HENRY
,
looking grim, puts his arm around her. The other squad-members gather round.

ROOTY

Root-root-root-root!

SNAKE HUNTER

Yeah, Rooty, I couldn't agree more!

He stares bitterly at:

INT.   THE POWER WAGON CORRAL
,
MOTOKOPS
'
POV

Floating in the middle of the parked Power Wagons, between
SNAKE HUNTER'S
Tracker Arrow and the silver-sided Rooty-Toot, is a grim visitor: the Meatwagon,
HUMMING SOFTLY
.

INT.   RESUME MOTOKOPS SQUAD

COLONEL HENRY

MotoKops, prepare for battle!

SNAKE HUNTER
(his Stunpistol already out)

Way ahead of you, boss.

The others draw.

INT.   RESUME MEATWAGON

The Doom Turret
SLIDES BACK
,
revealing
NO FACE
,
sinister as always in his black uniform. Sitting behind him at the controls, with her customary look of sexy hauteur, is
COUNTESS LILI
.
The Hypno-Jewel around her neck
FLICKERS WILDLY
through the color spectrum.

NO FACE

Floatpad, Countess. Now!

COUNTESS LILI

Yes, Excellent One.

The
COUNTESS
pulls
a lever.
A floatpad appears.
NO FACE
steps onto it and is wafted down to the floor of the Corral. He is unarmed, and as
COLONEL HENRY
steps forward, he holsters his own stunner.

COLONEL HENRY

Aren't you a little far from home, No Face?

NO FACE

Home is where the heart is, my dear Hank.

BOUNTY

This is no time for games.

NO FACE

As it happens, I couldn't agree more. The Force Corridor approaches. You, Colonel Henry, are planning a Power Wagon assault—

MAJOR PIKE

How do you know that?

NO FACE
(icy)

Because it's what
I'd
do, you idiot!

(
to
COLONEL HENRY
)

A Power Wagon assault is incredibly risky, but it may also be Earth's only chance. You'll need all the help you can get, and you have no vehicle at your command as powerful as the Meatwagon.

SNAKE HUNTER

That's a matter of opinion, you mutt. My Tracker Arrow—

COLONEL HENRY

Stow the gab!

(
to
NO FACE
)

What are you offering?

NO FACE

A partnership until the crisis is past. Old quarrels put aside, at least temporarily. A joint attack on the Force Corridor.

He offers his black-gloved hand.
COLONEL HENRY
starts to reciprocate, and then
MAJOR PIKE
steps forward. His almond-shaped eyes are wide, and his mouth—horn quivers with alarm.

MAJOR PIKE

Don't do it, Hank! You can't trust him! It's a trick!

NO FACE

I understand how you feel, Major . . . we both do, do we not, Countess?

COUNTESS LILI

Yes, Excellent One.

NO FACE

But this time there are no tricks, no hidden cards.

COLONEL HENRY
(
to
MAJOR PIKE
)

And we have no choice.

NO FACE

Indeed we don't. Time is running out.

COLONEL HENRY
reaches out and takes
NO FACE'S
hand.

NO PACE

Partners?

COLONEL HENRY

For now.

ROOTY

Root-root-root-root!

   
WE FADE TO BLACK
.
ENDS ACT
2.

Now speaking in the voice of Ben Cartwright, patriarch of the Ponderosa, Tak said: “Ma'am, it looks to me like you were planning on skedaddling.”

“No . . .” It was her voice, but weak and distant, like a radio transmission coming in from the West Coast on a rainy night. “No, I was just going to the store. Because we're out of . . .” Out of
what
? What could they possibly be out of that this monster would care about, believe in? And, blessedly, something came to her. “Chocolate syrup! Hershey's!”

It came toward her from the den doorway, Seth Garin in MotoKops Underoos, only now she saw an amazing, horrid thing: the child's bare toes were dragging across the living-room carpet, but otherwise it was floating along like a boy-shaped balloon. It was Seth's body, poignantly grimy at the wrists and
ankles, but there was no Seth in the eyes. None at all. Now it was just the thing that looked like it belonged in a swamp.

“Says she was just going to take a mosey down to the general store,” said the voice of Ben Cartwright. Whatever else Tak might be, it was a hellishly good mimic. You had to give it that. “What do you think, Adam?”

“Think she's lying, Paw,” said the voice of Pernell Roberts, the actor who had played Adam Cartwright. Roberts had lost his hair over the years, but he had gotten the best of the deal, anyway; the actors who had played his father and his brothers had all died in the years since
Bonanza
had galloped off into the sunset of reruns and cable TV.

Back to the voice of Ben as the thing drifted closer, close enough for her to be able to smell sour sweat and a sweet lingering ghost of No More Tears shampoo. “What do you think, Hoss? Speak up, boy.”

“Lyin, Paw,” Dan Blocker's voice said . . . and for a moment the almost-floating child actually
looked
like Blocker.

“Little Joe?”

“Lyin, Paw.”

“Root-root-root-root!”

“Shut up, Rooty,” said Snake Hunter's voice. It was as if some invisible ensemble of talented lunatics were putting on a show for her. When the thing in front of her spoke again, Snake Hunter was gone and Ben Cartwright was back, that stern Moses of the Sierra
Nevada. “We don't much abide liars on the Ponderosa, ma'am. Skedaddlers, either. Now what do you reckon we should do with you?”

Don't hurt me, she tried to say, but no words came out, not even a whisper of words. She tried to switch over to some internal circuit, visualizing the little red telephone, only with
SETH
stamped into the plastic of the handset now. It scared her to try and reach Seth directly, but she had never been in a jam like this. If it decided it wanted her dead . . .

She saw the phone in her mind, saw herself speaking into it, and what she had to say was painfully simple: Don't let it hurt me, Seth. You had power over it at the start, I know you did. Maybe not much, but a little. If you have any left—any power, any influence—please don't let it hurt me, please don't let it kill me. I'm miserable, but not miserable enough to want to die. Not yet.

She looked for a flicker of humanity in the floating thing's eyes, the slightest sign of Seth, and saw nothing.

Suddenly her left hand shot up and then slapped down, whacking her left cheek with a sound like a breaking stick of kindling. Heat flooded her skin; it was as if someone had turned a sunlamp on that side of her face. Her left eye began to water.

Now her right hand rose up in front of her eyes, like a Hindu swami's snake rising out of its basket. It hung in front of her for a moment, and then slowly folded itself into a fist.

No, she tried to say, please no, please, Seth, don't let it, but nothing came out this time, either, and the fist plummeted down, knuckles very white in the dim room, and then her nose seemed to explode upward in clouds of white dots like butterflies. They danced frantically in front of her eyes even as blood, warm and loose, began to run down over her lips and chin. She staggered backward.

“This woman is an affront to justice in the twenty-third century!” Colonel Henry said in his stern voice—a voice she found more hateful and self-righteous each time an episode of the fucking cartoon came on. “She must be shown the error of her ways.”

Hoss: “That's right, Colonel! We got to show this bitch who's top hand!”

“Root-root-root-root!”

Cassie Styles: “I agree with Rooty! And a little sweetening up is just the way to start!”

She was walking again—being walked, rather. The living room flowed past her eyes like scenery running backward past the windows of a train. Her cheek throbbed. Her nose throbbed. She could taste blood on her teeth. Now she pictured a
MotoKops
-style phone, the kind where you could actually see the person you were talking to, pictured talking face-to-face with Seth on this phone. Please, Seth, it's your Aunt Audrey, do you recognize me even though my hair's a different color now? Tak made me dye it so it would look like Cassie's, and when I go out I have to wear a blue headband like Cassie does, but it's still me, still Aunt
Audrey, the one who took you in, the one who's been watching out for you, trying to, anyway, and now you have to watch out for me. Don't let it hurt me too badly, Seth, please don't let it.

The lights were off in the kitchen and it was a bowl of gloomy, swarming shadows. As she was propelled across the yellow linoleum (cheery when it was clean, but now dingy and jaundiced-looking), a thought occurred to her, one that was terrible with logic: Why
should
Seth help her? Even if he was receiving her message and even if he still could help, why should he? To escape Tak meant to abandon Seth to his fate, and that was just what she had been trying to do. If the boy was still there, he must know that as well as Tak.

A sob, as faint and distant as an invalid's breath, escaped her as the fingers of her bloodstained right hand felt for the light-switch by the stove, found it, and turned it.

“Sweeten her up, Paw!” Little Joe Cartwright yelped. “Sweeten her up, by Jasper!” The voice suddenly slid up, becoming the high-pitched laughter of Rooty the Robot. Audrey found herself wishing for insanity. It would be better than this, wouldn't it? It would have to be.

Instead she watched, a helpless passenger inside her own body, as Tak turned her, walked her over to the spice rack, and used her hand to open the cabinet above it. The other hand yanked out a yellow Tupperware container that hit the floor and sprayed macaroni across the linoleum in every direction. The flour went
next, landing beside her foot and puffing up to coat her legs. The hand darted into the hole it had created and seized the plastic honey bear. The other hand grabbed the top, unscrewed it, tossed it aside. A moment later the bear was hanging upside down over her open, waiting mouth.

The hand wrapped around the bear's chubby stomach began to squeeze rhythmically, much as she had once squeezed the rubber bulb of the horn that had been mounted on her childhood bicycle. Blood from her ruptured nose slid down her throat. Then honey filled her mouth, thick and gagging-sweet.

“Swallow it!” Tak shouted, now in no one's voice but its own. “Swallow it, you bitch!”

She swallowed. One mouthful, then two, then three. On the third one her throat seemed to clench shut. She tried to breathe and couldn't. Her windpipe was blocked by a nightmare of sweet glue. She fell to her knees and began crawling across the kitchen floor, her dark-red hair hanging in her face, barking out great thick wads of blood-laced honey. It was up her nose as well, packing it and dripping from her nostrils.

For another few moments she still couldn't seem to breathe, and the white specks dancing in front of her eyes turned black. I'm going to drown, she thought. Drown in Sue Bee honey.

Then her windpipe opened up again, a little, anyway, enough, and she was gasping air into her lungs, pulling it down her slick, coated throat, weeping with terror and pain.

Tak dropped onto Seth Garin's scabby knees in front of her and began screaming into her face. “Don't you
ever
try to get away from me! Don't you
ever
! Don't you
ever
! Do you understand? Nod your head, you stupid cow, show me you understand!”

Its hands—the ones she couldn't see, the ones that were inside her head—seized her and all at once her head was swooping up and down, her forehead smacking the floor on each downstroke, and Tak was laughing.
Laughing.
She thought it would keep on pounding her head against the floor until she passed out and just sprawled here in the mess she had made.