Sunday

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It is Sunday.
	Today I will make an exception to my normally quite secular
life.
	I will go to church.

"Shouldn't you be in Mass or something?"
	Hap shakes his head with a sad, beaten-dog look to him.
	"This is when we're the most vulnerable.  Security has to be
really tight."
	The big man shifts his feet.  We stand near the tube entrance
to the Church of Sirius, he watching people, me, watching him.  Hap
has changed; before, the sadness of his situation, his very shitty
situation, was hidden, masked by the various tasks he occupied himself
with.  Now the melancholy is apparent.
	"You believed Flannery, didn't you?"
	"Quiet Karl," he orders, hoisting up a heavy stun pike and
striding towards a latecomer.  
	"Excuse me, brother, but we must check every twentieth for
weapons," he says.
	The churchman frowns.  "Are weapons not permitted?"
	"Certainly not!  This is a house of peace, not a temple to
war."
	The man glances around, praying not to be seen.  "Well, your
brothers in security seem to have everything under control . . ."  He
slips a small revolver from his garments and turns it over to Hap.  The
bodyguard palms the weapon, his broad hand disappearing
momentarily into his robes.  They exchange a few brief words, and
then Hap pats him on the back and allows him entrance.
	Hap steps back to his post beside the Church's main gate.  He
smiles grimly.
	"What was that about?" I ask.
	"Brother just came in from the South Projects.  Megapol's
itching to throw us out down there, on account of . . . Friday."
	Hap gives a thumbs up to several green-robes discretely
loitering around the tube gate.
	"Scanner crew," he mumbles.  "They pick up weapons-
carriers.  I get to talk them into ditching them."
	"I thought church people didn't carry," I comment, suddenly
feeling uncomfortable.
	"Some of the brothers are getting scared.  They want everyone
to be armed."
	Everyone armed.
	A weight over my bladder.
	Just like me.
	"That would just piss off the Popo."
	How the hell did that scanner crew not pick up my plasma?
	"Exactly.  Of course, not all of Father Flannery's flock
consists of geniuses."  Hap pauses a moment, his fingers drumming on
the shaft of his pike.  "Course, after Friday . . ."
	My plasma.
	I look away and snort.  I wonder how Hap's been taking it--
after killing some of his former comrades-in-arms . . .
	WHA-A-A-AM!
	"I too have killed."
	Who cares about Hap--I wonder how I've been dealing with it. 
The act was so instinctual; it didn't even register on my senses until
about three hours later, back at my apartment.  Drinking water,
reading sci-fi fan fiction on the Intranet, occasionally sneaking a peek
at some less-than-family oriented 'art,' shaving, realizing halfway
through a bucket of takeout Chinese that I'd just wasted a man--killed
a man!  My eyes going wide, calmly setting down the chopsticks, and
sitting down in my most comfortable cane chair.
	Killed a man.
	"I too have killed."
	Damn Nilwar!  Damn him to hell!  Now my hands are just as
soaked in blood as the rest of this lot I call my friends.
	Friends?  Where is Nat?  Where is Wolf . . . oh damn.
	"Hap, where is Wolf?"
	The big guy snorts.
	"The Labyrinth."
	"What?"
	"Maximum security Megapol jail.  Housing for ten thousand
inmates, two thousand guards-"
	"No, I mean, why are they shipping him there?"
	"Terrorism, I think."
	"Fuck, he didn't have a weapon on him!  He was trying to
save Bolivar!"
	"Quiet, Karl.  A lot--and I mean it--a lot of people here didn't
like what happened on Friday.  And watch your language."
	"Who would enjoy that massacre?  Senator Yuan?"
	Hap rolls his eyes.  "I misphrased that.  A lot of people here
didn't agree with Flannery's alliance with the Front."
	"Huh?"
	"Dropping the droid ban is one thing to idea men like
yourself--concept people, the real smart folks who went all four years
at Lifetree--but down on the pavement it's another thing.  People are
really afraid of droids.  The companies threaten to replace them with
robots, and when you're not bringing in five hundred dollars a week,
you don't take losing your job lightly."
	"You aren't serious."
	Hap shrugs.  "I happen to agree with Flannery.  It's stupid;
the companies just want us to waste all our energy fighting each other. 
But the fear is real; I've heard the scuttlebutt.  All that shit that went
down didn't help any, either."
	MegaPrime, just like the Babylon of old.  Cursed to forever
speak different languages.
	I sigh.
	"How is Flannery taking it?" I ask, really meaning, "How are
you taking it?"
	It's Hap's turn to sigh.  "He's been delegating most of his
leadership duties to Brother Cassler.  He spent yesterday talking to
God."
	"Praying?"
	"No.  That's just begging for answers.  Father Flannery
believes that God isn't some external force raining down inspiration
and advice; God is actually inside here."  Hap taps his hooded head. 
"When Flannery speaks to God, he meditates over something, looking
for the answers himself.  He thinks and thinks and doesn't bother with
things like eating, and eventually he'll organize everything into a
checklist of things to be accomplished."
	"That sounds an awful lot like brainstorming."
	"That it does, but Flannery does it with such an overriding
concern as to whether his checklist would get approval from the big
guy upstairs.  He's always asking, 'Is this right? Should I be doing
this?  Can I explain this to Him?'"
	"Hmm."  I am still doubtful.
	"Try it sometime.  It's harder than it sounds."
	"Sure."
	"You might be doubtful, but you would be surprised by the
number of stupid, pointless things we do just because they are routine. 
Habit--inertia--is a powerful enemy of change for the better.  Truly
gifted, truly aware people, like Flannery, ask those questions so many
times that they become part of their essence, part of their being."
	I am silent.  Spiritualism is not a trait of mine.

The man in white would not hesitate for a moment to die for his
people, the people of his Church, the people of his city, the people of
his planet.  He is a trained martyr, having spent the last twenty five
years of his life making peace with Him and himself.  The cross, the
gallows, a stake with firewood stacked beneath it . . . these would have
been his lot in centuries past.
	But this is the twenty first century and he is offered none of
those most romantic demises.  Instead, a heavy plasma pistol, black
and ugly with its clip jammed into the right upper side of its chamber
like some sort of conscious afterthought is shoved into the back of his
head.
	The short, salt-and-pepper gray hairs on his neck twitch.
	He continues to quietly pray, his hands pressed together, his
knees upon the worn rug on his office's floor.
	But he is a selfish bastard!  Brimming with righteousness and
benevolence--oh, what a purely condescending, self-centered act!  To
buy a seat in the pantheon of history's great with a single blast of
superheated elerium through his motor cortex!  To gain eternity while
damning all us wretched footsoldiers forced to toil onward in his
memory!
	No, Father, I will not let you die.

My plasma comes up, out, and I doubletap each of the trenchcoated
soldiers.  Two bolts into the one who holds the plasma pistol.  Two for
his friend who stands to the side.  Both buckle; the second man spins
like a marionette stricken and loses his beret.  He staggers backwards
for a moment; then Hap is firing, his nine millimeter ceramic beating
him down.
	"FATHER!" roars the churchman.
	The big beret snaps around, his pistol tracking me.  My
plasma rumbles four more times, each bolt slamming into his chest,
canvas overcoat flaming, body armor flaring.
	I have hit him in the heart.
	He should be dead.
	He doesn't go down.
	Somewhere in the back of my head, I recognize his face . . . 
	"Andy?"
	Red irises, red pupils.  A bolt lances between me and Hap,
another grazes my shoulder.  My skin crisps up, and I'm diving to the
left, and Hap to the right.  The pilot has the sense of mind to loose a
burst at the android, clipping his head.
	Andy's left ear is cleaned off, the bullet tearing the latex mask
of his face.  Another round sails into his left eyebrow, shredding his
blue-and-black beret as it ricochets off his cydonium skull.
	"He's a droid!" I shout, scrambling for cover.  Ramirez
crouches, steading his M4000 with both hands.  A stray shot will kill
Flannery.  His face an ugly snarl, the Latino works the trigger.
	Andy takes the first burst in his abdomen, blasting away his
light body armor and skin.  He holds still, sighting up his weapon on
Ramirez's head.  Hap fires barely in time; he hits Andy in the thigh,
throwing the droid's aim off.  A plasma beam catches Ramirez in the
shoulder and throws him down.
	I center the droid's right red pupil.
	THOOMTHOOMTHOOMTHOOM.
	A heavy silence that reeks of ozone and nitrocellulose floods
Flannery's office.
	Andy's body tenses up, his plasma falling from his cramping
fingers.  Twitching and shuddering, he struggles to remain standing;
he fails.
	The headless corpse crashes to the floor.
	"Dios mio," coughs Ramirez.
	"Father, are you OK?" asks Hap.
	I turn to Ramirez.  The former shopkeeper lays in a splash of
his own blood, the charred mush of his left shoulder an oozing, nasty
sore.  Hap and I had been eating, and Ramirez just walked in with his
Cecilia and their three children.
	I nodded to him and smiled.
	Then I saw his green robe.
	My smile turned tired.  A better fate than life in the slums,
yes?  But I remembered what had happened on Friday.  I remembered
what it meant for men to guard the Father Flannery.
	And now this.
	"Eres un hombre valeroso," I stammer, my eyes locked onto
the sight of Ramirez's wound.
	He chuckles, his other hand still clutching his assault rifle.  
	"Es nada."
	It might be nothing to a Megapol or Marsec security tough or
anybody else with access to a Nanotech suite, but Ramirez is classified
as "none of the above".  He's in a world of shit, and once the initial
shock wears off, a world of pain, too.
	"We gotta get you to the Clinic," I state.
	"It's nothing," he repeats.  "I must return to my family."
	Ramirez sets down the M4000 and then calmly strips the
green robe off, all the while cradling his left arm against his body--a
sick animal, huddling close . . .
	He stares me in the eyes.
	"The Megapol is coming.  Cecilia will be worried."
	I swallow uneasily, disgusted that I feel relieved at not having
to deal with the problem.  That wound is not a clean one.
	"Vaya con Dios."
	"El mismo," he replies, marching back towards the distant
cafeteria where we met.
	"Hey, where's he going?" asks Hap.
	"He's got to get to his family." I answer.
	"Well, we gotta get Flannery out of here!  I still can't raise the
main entrance or the garages!  Someone's taken out our com relays!"
	"Or killed everyone there," I mutter.
	Hap strides over and retrieves Ramirez's rifle.
	"Damn idiot," he snarls.
	"He had to go."
	The pilot stares at me like I'm deserting him too.
	"Well, he could have . . . we're wasting time.  We've got to
get, now."
	"If you don't mind, I won't be accompanying you."
	Both of us turn to Father Flannery.
	"What?" asks Hap.
	"I'm not leaving."
	I roll my eyes.  If Hap hadn't tried to contact the main gate,
we wouldn't have known until it was too late.  If his instincts hadn't
sent us scrambling for Flannery instead of checking on the problem up
front, we would've been in the wrong place.
	And now the martyr complains!
	"That wouldn't be a wise choice."
	This time it is all three of us who turn our heads.
	It is the other beret, a bloody pool of gore spreading around
him.  I recall his brown hair and eyes.  It is the one known as Carlson.
	A thin, silver grenade rests in his right hand.  
	"We were sent here with ten minutes' notice regarding a
Megapol raid," he sighs, his chest shattered by Hap's rounds.  "In
about one minute--if they haven't started already--Altacat Battalion is
coming through every door, window, and sewer grate you've got in
here.  We just wanted to remove Mr. Flannery from this situation and
have a chat with him regarding some fairly trivial matters--kill two
birds with one stone, as they used to say.
	"Unfortunately," he smiles, drying blood on his lips, "you
guys had to show up.  Now, Druski is dead, and I'm pretty much
fucked, so it's up to you two jokers to get Mr. Flannery's ass out of here
before those crazies start tearing this place apart."
	I glance at Hap.  He rests a broad hand on Flannery's
shoulder.
	"Come on, Father."
	Flannery stands, walks over to the dying man, and kisses him
lightly on the forehead.  He turns to Hap.
	"You didn't need to kill these men."
	Exasperated, Hap mouthes some epithets and heads for the
doorway.
	"Now, if you don't mind," coughs Carlson, "I'll be dying."
	"Uh, Mr. Flannery?" I ask.
	He peers at me through his blue eyes, and I wonder what he
sees . . . a Diablo thug?  Slum scum?  Certainly not any guardian
angel.
	But he does not wear the visage of hatred or resentment, or
even disgust.  
	Could it be forgiveness?
	I don't need his pity.
	A distant explosion rocks the Church.
	"Tactical channels just got jammed!"  yells Hap.  "It's not
Megapol, it's not one of their messages . . ."
	The internal PA crackles to life.
	"TRAITORS REPENT!  YOU WHO GLADLY WEAR THE
YOKE OF ALIEN DOMINATION PREPARE FOR THE
CLEANSING FIRES OF RACE OF MAN!"
	I whistle lowly.
	"Oh shit."

We move at Flannery's pace, down back hallways and maintenance
lifts.  Moments after we clear his office, a great wall of flame crashes
from the door.  Carlson has just suicided, his dying hands dropping an
incendiary grenade to the worn rug floor.
	"It's not Altacat Batallion?" I shout to Hap.
	"No!  They might play a little rough, but they play by
Megapol's rules!  Damn, I almost wish it was them."
	"I thought Race of Man died out after the First War!"
	Hap taps a garbage chute's access panel, enabling its
secondary function as an emergency fire escape.
	"They are very much alive," he replies.
	The lights dim as the floor shakes from a blast above us.
	"The unknown is always greeted by fear and hostility," adds
Flannery.
	"Wasn't your dad Race of Man?"
	That doesn't shut him up for a second.
	Flying down the red-lit garbage chute:  "Certainly not!  My
father was an XCOM pilot!"
	"Weren't they the same thing?"
	Hap touches down ahead of us amongst bales of compacted
scrap metals and plastics.  Under normal circumstances, gravitron
waves would smash garbage into these tidy packages before robots and
groundtrucks transported them back to Evonet to be reintroduced into
the consumer cycle.
	"As two brothers," Flannery cryptically replies.
	"Shut up!  This is the parking level!" chides Hap as we jog
down a poorly-lit corridor.
	He points the tip of Ramirez's M4000 around a corner.
	"The Paloma's twenty meters down this aisle," he reports.
	He steps around the corner and just as quickly hops back, the
thunder of automatic rifle fire lingering in the dank, subterranean
atmosphere.
	"Two of 'em," he gasps.
	I look down at Hap's robes.  A growing blotch of crimson
mars his left side.
	"Shit!  You're hit!"
	"Fuck, I know."  He pauses a moment, settling his machine
gun into his arms.  "I'll draw fire.  Karl, you're a helluva shot--lean
around the corner and clean 'em off me as fast as you can."
	"What?  If they can hit you with-"
	But Hap is already leaping out onto the concrete.  I set my jaw
and swing my arm out.  Tracking, tracking.  Two, just like Hap said. 
Squeeze squeeze.  A helmeted, jumpsuit-wearing man with an M4000
flips on his back.  Next.  Squeeze squeeze.  His partner spins with the
first bolt, a grav ballerina.  The second shot . . . his skull is a bucket of
chum, lazily splashed across the windscreen of a groundcar.
	The first man down is still twitching.  A volley of bullets
from Hap kicks away his rifle and perforates his chest.
	"Let's move," grunts Hap.

Hap coaxes La Paloma forwards, tapping away on his BAT and
oblivious to the spreading crimson circle on his robes.  The manual
flight yoke emerges from the dash.
	Flannery sits in the back, silent.
	Our driver is just as quiet as he pulls us into the exit lane for
groundcars.
	Two Wolfhound APCs block our progress, their heavy frames
profiled against the noon sky.  Squat and ugly, they are glossy black
with only thin, pale blue trim around the heavy cydonium armor flaps
that hide their sympathetic grav drives.
	Cannon fire lashes out from one, but Hap is already edging
La Paloma's throttle up to its maximum groundspeed, skidding out of
sight behind a row of powered-down autotaxis.  The yellow cabs
absorb the barrage, thermoplastic and light metal frames exploding
like porcelain under a hammer.
	"Let's try the air exit," he suggests, pulling us around a
corner.  
	I can hear the Wolfhounds' sirens.
	The nose goes up, and La Paloma no longer feigns
flightlessness.  I frantically buckle myself in as the chrome-studded
front bumper narrowly avoids striking florescent lights.
	But the ceiling suddenly gives way, and we are underneath
the cylindrical shaft of The Church of the Open Door's airborne
entrance.  A tiny blue hovercar waits high above.
	La Paloma roars skyward, bound on a collision course with
the scoutcar.
	Hap's fingers twitch.
	The Gazelle shudders and skips away, a spray of alloy confetti
flaking off its underside.
	We are airborne.
	"Shit," whistles Hap.
	"What?"
	A spray of cannon rounds rips past us, phosphor tracers
etching lines across my eyes.  Hap shoves the yoke forwards with one
hand, dropping a flare with the other.  We immediately drop fifty
meters as the elerium bomb detonates.  
	My aerial nightmare has begun.
	"We're going north," Hap states, throwing La Paloma into a
gut-wrenching evasive spiral through an upper class neighborhood.
	"Friendship House?" asks Flannery from the back seat.
	"No," answers the pilot, twitching as his threat screen
registers a missile launch.  Stunted sequoias and spruce flash by as we
go to ground, diving behind glassy rows of luxury apartments and
small mansions.
	The missile detonates far behind us.
	"That was an abort.  They won't fire at us while we're in
here," mutters Hap.
	A sole cannon round smacks the rear of La Paloma.  A
wireframe model of our Phoenix blinks red, one of its tailfins hit.
	"Maybe not," I reply.
	Hap agrees, charting out a violent, jagged path through the
low hills and manicured woods that make up the Senators' villas. 
Ground fire from concealed anti-aircraft turrets opens up on us.  Hap
dodges behind a Sensovision-owned apartment.
	His threat screen lights up, and I glance up in time to see the
first wave of Gazelles charge us.
	La Paloma takes a burst of armor-piercing rounds.  I am
thrashed around violently, my breath hammered out by my flight
harness.
	"Fuck," rasps Hap, skidding the Phoenix in midair.  My
eyelids peeled back, I watch, stunned, as La Paloma's twin cannon line
up with a fleeing Gazelle.  The lazily swinging LED crosshairs frame
the scoutcar; the whole bird shudders, anti-grav engines struggling to
counteract the kick of the two twenty millimeters . . .
	The Gazelle's rear end flames.  A half-second later, the front
end of the car explodes into the Sensovision apartment.  Shattering
thermoplastic windows leap outwards, a ripple of destruction marring
the clean, sharp lines of the apartment.
	"North," Hap mumbles, reminding himself.  La Paloma ducks
low again, the Popo hovercars coming back for another pass.  Depleted
uranium rounds walk the street behind before Hap can pull into an
alley.
	"Where are we going?" Flannery asks from the back.  
	The man in white's universally acknowledged patience is
wearing thin.
	"Prospectors, people who can get you out of town to safety."
	"I don't want to leave MegaPrime."
	"Then you'll be buried here," snarls Hap, punching the
throttle as La Paloma clears the residential area.  A pair of Gazelles
drop out of the sky on our tail.  I am slammed about as La Paloma
starts taking regular hits.
	"That doesn't bother me."
	The Nutrivend Northtown shopping complex, in all its
transparent thermoplastic glory, looms up on us.  Hap struggles with
La Paloma's controls; more and more of the wireframe damage model
is flashing red.
	"Listen, I'm supposed to protect you!"
	A cannon slug rips through the rear canopy, misses my
shoulder by a centimeter, and slams into the dash.
	"Shit!  Shit!" I yell, sparks and smoke flooding the cabin.
	"I won't have anyone else's death on my hands!  Drop me off
and make good your escape!"
	La Paloma roars in underneath the Nutrivend mall at five
hundred kilometers per hour.  The Gazelles are still hot on our tail;
tracers flash past the windscreen, some striking the underside of
Northtown.
	"What?  You're not serious!"
	"I am.  You've done enough.  I won't have you martyred with
me."
	The broad matte gray of the North Wall rushes up to greet us
on the other side of the mall.  Hap twists the flight yoke back, so far
back that he can't bend it any more or it will certainly break, and then
he dumps the rest of La Paloma's flares.  The windscreen is tinged
with white . . . and the two Gazelles disappear from the threat
monitor.
	"You got them!" I shout, my body shoved back into the plush
navigator's seat.
	"I can't just leave you to Race of Man," complains Hap.
	"Then leave me with XCOM."
	That word hangs heavy in the sooty air of La Paloma's
passenger compartment.  
	XCOM?
	But there is no time to ask any questions, for perched before
us on the Wall is none other than an Elephant.
	A thin body flanked by spindly wings mounted on two boxy
weapons compartments, the Popo missile boat deals, in fast succession,
six missiles from each side.
	Hap doesn't even swear, his pale face regaining its former hue
by the glare light of the panicking threat assessment screen.  Dumping
altitude, he coaxes an extra hundred kilometers per hour out of La
Paloma by diving for the broad upper surface of the Wall--right
underneath the Popo ship.
	The dozen missiles miss us completely, slamming into the
Northtown mall.
	The Elephant, static in malicious glory, arrogantly turns and
observes our contorted path down the outside surface of the Wall.
	La Paloma drops like a rock.  The engines kick in bare meters
from the parched exterior land . . .
	I breathe a sigh of relief.
	"PROPHET LAUNCH DETECTED," states his monitors.
	Hap guns the shredded engines, tearing off down a rough
slum street.  An abandoned factory looms up ahead of us.
	"Father, please do us the blessing of administering last rites,"
says Hap.
	"Can't you just dodge them?" I ask.
	Hap shakes his head, the factory already overhead.  
	"Prophets track."
	I spot the two red dots.  They're coming in at at least three
times our speed.  Hap puts La Paloma up on one side going through a
narrow alley, throwing me against my harness.
	I watch the monitor very carefully.
	The twin missiles jink at the right moment.
	We are going to die.
		
It is then, in this blackest moment in my short and not-so-glorious life,
that La Paloma's internal speakers crackle to life.
	"ILLEGAL FLYER 1013, YOU HAVE BEEN CLEARED
FOR LANDING AT COORDINATES 108421991-21349A. 
REPEAT, YOU HAVE BEEN CLEARED FOR-"
	"What the fuck?" I yell.
	"THIRD GARAGE ENTRANCE ON YOUR RIGHT."
	Hap raises an eyebrow, but the red pips are closing too fast to
say no.  He cranks the yoke, and we go screaming down an inky black
sewer pipe--the elevator shaft to hell.  Proximity alarms screaming, the
synth-grav circuit in La Paloma kicks in, chrome and cydonium
sparking as we hit bottom and immediately speed away down a dimly
lit subbasement.
	The Prophets are still in hot pursuit; somehow, the damned
things found this hole.  I can almost feel that shaped elerium charge
ripping through the back of La Paloma's armor, through the man in
white, and then through me.
	"INTERNAL BLAST DOORS LOWERING.  NOW."
	A tremendous muffled blast shakes me to reality.  Hap brakes. 
The engine dies, and La Paloma crashes to the concrete floor, spinning
slowly.
	"YOU MAY POWER DOWN."
	The florescent lights of this parking garage go on.
	"PLEASE STEP OUT OF YOUR VEHICLE."
	"Who the fuck is this?" I ask.
	"I don't know," groans Hap.  He awkwardly reloads his pistol.
	His green robe, from his chest on down, is a bloody mess.
	The fact that Hap is wounded finally dawns on me.
	The canopy pops open.  It does not hiss; there is no pressure
difference thanks to the thumb-sized hole in the back.
	Hap flinches, craning his neck around.  He touches the
controls; they are dead.
	"We gotta get you to the Clinic," I whisper.
	"PLEASE STEP OUT OF YOUR VEHICLE."
	The canopy cranes back.
	"Are you doing that, Karl?" inquires Hap.
	"What?"
	"Opening the-"
	Shit.
	It's them.
	Two Wolfhounds flank us, roof weapons trained on us; they
are the black and blue of the Popo.  But I have no doubts as to who the
real owners are.
	"Mister Flannery!  Join us!"
	I thought I recognized that voice.  It is my old janitor friend,
the blonde, the bastard who took Andy from me and now Grocke . . .
and I just killed Andy . . .
	Oh my God.
	They are recruiting.  They are recruiting, and if I had faced
off against them maybe a few days later, maybe it would not have been
Carlson and Andy, but instead Grocke and the droid.
	And I would have killed Casey.
	"What part 'Step out of your vehicle' don't you understand?"
yells the blonde, two of his minions hauling me from my navigator's
seat.  A third pads me down and immediately pulls my plasma pistol
from me.
	I would have killed Casey as thoughtlessly as I killed Andy!
	"Shit!  It's that damn mayhican!" exclaims the janitor,
striding up to me.  "Put him down," he orders, "he's as harmless as a
pussycat!"
	I look up into his eyes.
	"Hi," I mutter.
	"What a truly strange occurrence," continues the blonde, "that
I should meet you again!  What's the word . . . kismet?  Something
like that."
	He turns to an audience of several dozen berets.
	"Kraus?  You'll vouch for me.  I have run into this idiot
civilian three times now in the last week.  Three times!  I mean, look
at this guy!  He has no clue, and yet he's managed to contact Bureau
Ten three god damn times . . ."
	I blush and stare at my feet.
	The janitor narrows his eyes, checking my plasma pistol's
clip.
	"Carl--Kaufman, reload this."
	The commander looks up.
	"By the way, Karl," he says, and I notice that he's using my
damned first name, "did you happen to catch my companion Mister
Carlson back at the Church?"
	I open my mouth slightly.  He takes it as ignorance.
	"You know, medium height, brown hair, brown eyes--the guy
who tripped over your butt back at Juventus?"  He chuckles for a
moment.  "Took him three days to heal up from that.  Clumsy
bastard."
	I almost want to tell him, just to shut him up and wipe that 
smile off his face.  
	I wonder how he would take it?
	"Sir, the bodyguard is dead."
	Both the blonde and I turn to look at Kaufman.
	"Bodyguard?"
	"The driver.  Internal hemorrhaging.  We're working CPR-"
	The driver?
	Hap--no.
	I bolt away from the two, rushing over to his prone body. 
Robes peeled back, his white undershirt is soaked; his skin very pale. 
A beret straddles him, pumping his hands up and down on Hap's
chest; congealing blood from the hideous gouge in his lower left side
gurgles at every thrust . . .
	I turn away.
	"A good man," murmurs Flannery.
	"Only one I trusted," I reply.
	Flannery turns away from my shoulder, kneeling down to the
dead man.  I walk away, headed for La Paloma.  It is a mangled,
battered mess that has seen better days.
	"What do you want of me?" he asks.
	"We don't want anything from you.  We want to help you."
	"How?"
	"You seek the truth, Mister Flannery.  We can show it to
you."
	"I suspect that we seek truthes of differing natures."
	The janitor is silent.
	"Please hear us out."
	"That I can do."
	La Paloma, sweet chariot, your master, your creator lies dead
over there, a cooling slab of meat flung down on a cool slab of
concrete.  You are battered and abused, your chrome finery smashed
and tarnished by exhaust and blood.
	I wipe the windshield.
	But at least you have that, yes?  It isn't a war until your
windshield is shattered.
	Damn you, Hap.

"A good man?  That I wouldn't know.  But a good pilot--no, a master
pilot, a genius of downdrafts and turn radii, a composer of twisted
evasions and smooth accelerations alike.  They couldn't kill him with
half the city's hovercars--no, it took a blow to his achilles' heel--his
mortal body--to strike him down.
	"This man was a pilot, a damn good pilot.  Quick and just
crazy enough to pull what can't be pulled.  A master of his vehicle. 
One with his vehicle.  An evolution of the human ape into a winged
creature with only the bounds of space and his own imagination to stay
his wanderings.
	"Kaufman!"
	"Yessir?"
	"Take our angel home and mend his wings."

5/21/98

Ben Fischer, www.geocities.com/NapaValley/3169/index.htm

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