She fell heavily to the ground. From far, far away she could hear the gasps of the Humble & Poor and the prayers their retainers were sending up to another authority. But before her eyes, all was black as she heaved for that sweet air.
When she could see, she was staring straight into George’s boots which, after all this way, still kept their shine.
“You can’t do this!” he roared at her and at the dog handlers, “Tie her up again. Come on, hurry up! I want my breakfast!”
But the illegal immigrants, by now convinced they had seen a miracle, were either throwing themselves face-down on the rough wood of the pier or backing away, crossing themselves and praying for deliverance.
“You scum! Then I’ll do the job myself,” George roared and grabbed at the frayed end of the rope still around Henty’s neck. His timing was off because, just then—
Henty decided it was time to go. She came up on her knees and pressed on the pier with the Fist and straightened her arm with all the force she could muster. She exploded violently into the air, on the way striking George in the face with her shoulder and sending him staggering back to fall off the pier and into the water.
“Oh dear,” said Nicholas. “The marina keeps alligators in the river here to discourage the plebs from swimming.” He pointed as the alligator-heads broke water all around the struggling George. “Doesn’t look like he can swim either. Poor George.”
“Well, let’s get on with the hanging so we can have our breakfast,” a red-headed woman said impatiently.
“And then we can elect a new MFH on full stomachs,” another woman said.
Henty landed right at the end of the pier, on her feet. She teetered precariously over the head of an alligator waiting for her with open jaws, her arms wind milling to try and restore her balance. The alligator’s breath smelt of carrion. At last Henty whirled the Fist hard enough to fling her body back a step.
But there was to be no respite: behind her the Humble & Poor were already thundering down on her. Desperately, Henty looked around. There was no escape. She was at the end of the pier, alligators behind her, foxhunters in a hanging mood in front of her.
“Hey, Missy!”
Henty turned around to the urgent whisper. “You'd better get out of here or you’ll be sharing that boat with a whole lot of horses,” Henty told the white haired old man standing up in the speedboat below her.
“You need this boat more than I do,” he said. He turned the key and touched the throttles and gestured for Henty to jump in.
Henty needed no second invitation. As she jumped in, the old man stepped out onto the pier and threw the tie-rope off the bollard. “There you go,” he shouted over the thunder of hooves of the approaching Humble & Poor.
“Hey, I can’t drive a boat!” But nobody could hear Henty.
The old man leaned over, slammed the throttles open, and turned to meet the charge of the heavy brigade.
Henty fell over backwards. By the time she regained her feet the boat was speeding for the far bank. Frantically she turned the wheel to set the speedboat plowing a tight circle in the middle of the river. The thing was in danger of swamping itself in its own backwash, one gunwale well below water lever. Henty hastily closed the throttles to slow it down to a less lethal speed. Only then could she steal a moment to glance anxiously at the pier to see if her benefactor survived.
The old man calmly kneeled, facing the charge of the Humble & Poor. He crossed himself and his lips moved in prayer.
“Duck!” Henty shouted at him but he kept his back as stiff as a ramrod and his faith was rewarded as the well-trained mount of the red-haired lady foxhunter — leading the charge in the absence of a duly elected MFH — rose cleanly into the air to clear his head by a two feet. All the other horses, superbly trained animals, followed suit. All splashed into the water among the alligators. At the back of the pack, Nicholas almost managed to pull up his horse. But one of the Humble & Poor’s erstwhile retainers ran up, slapped the horse on the rump, and it too jumped over the white-haired old man, disturbing him not one whit at his devotions, and splashed into the water among the alligators, horses, riders and Dobermans.
“Every alligator gets its day,” Henty said to an alligator swimming by her boat with all speed to join the party before it was too late. The alligator was in too much of a hurry to spare her even a glance.
Henty looked to the pier, where the Humble & Poor’s much abused servants were cheering on the frenzied alligators.
“How do I get your boat back to you?” Henty shouted at the old man.
“Not to worry. It’s not mine. When you finish with it, just set it adrift and we’ll catch it when it floats by here.”
“Thanks,” Henty shouted and, opening the throttles wide so that the nose of the speedboat rose cleanly above the water, and with a wave to those on the pier, she headed upriver. Westwards!
CHAPTER 45
The young banker from the Chaser sat strapped into his chopper, tapping the fingers of his left hand impatiently on the rifle across his lap. His right arm was in a sling and here and there on his face and neck and hands were stitches, iodine marks and plasters: his reward for causing a traffic jam in Des Moines.
He had been at Lincoln, the state capital of Nebraska, since just after dawn and now it was nearly midday and he was fuming.
“Call her again,” he told his pilot.
“Man, you’re irritating that woman. She’s gonna clam up if you carry on like this.”
“Call her.”
As the pilot put out his hand to the mike, a speaker beeped. The pilot pressed a button and passed the mike to the banker, who said, “Yes? Have you found her?”
“Watch your vidi,” a woman’s voice told him sourly.
The vidi showed Henty refueling at a marina, then at another marina, then at yet another marina.
“What the hell!” shouted the banker. “Why wasn’t I told till now?”
“If you were nice to people, they'd tell you things,” the disembodied voice gloated.
The banker gritted his teeth. The pilot looked away to hide his grin.
The vidi flashed a map. The River Platte with flashing asterisks at Grand Island, Cozad and the city of North Platte.
“She’s been sitting on that river all day and you only tell me now!” the organ chaser howled.
“Listen, are you going to be polite or do you want to know which fork of the Platte she took, the north or the south?”
For a moment it looked to the pilot as if the banker was going to say something final, then he swallowed painfully and gritted, “I’m so sorry. Please tell me which fork she took.”
Coldly: “We don’t know, we will resume contact when we have more information.” Click!
For a long time the banker sat there grinding his teeth. Then he told his pilot. “She can only be on the North Platte or the South Platte. We’ll find her ourselves.” But the pilot had not waited for orders; he was already taking the chopper up and away westwards.
CHAPTER 46
Henty studied the dial with trepidation. It was a wonderfully fast speedboat but it slurped fuel at an alarming rate. She wondered how long before she struck a marina with an attendant rather than a credit card-slot bowser — or how long before The Caring Society sneaks set the bounty hunters on her. Sooner or later she would have to get off the river. Better sooner than later, she thought, but she was reluctant to desert such a speedy, convenient means of transport. All the same, when the fuel next ran out, she'd take to dry land again.
When Henty looked up, the Chaser Organ Bank chopper danced away across the water in front of her speedboat, keeping an exact distance. The banker grinned evilly at her over the sights of his rifle.
“You are becoming a nuisance,” she told him and, when her words were swept away in the wind and the noise of the speedboat and chopper engines, stuck her tongue out at him, while slamming the throttles open to crash the speedboat into the helicopter.
The banker could
not believe his eyes, over the sights of his rifle, he was seeing this woman sticking her tongue out at him and apparently speeding up towards her death! He put the rifle down to wipe at his eyes. When he next aimed, just as he was squeezing the trigger; the pilot took evasive action and the shot missed.
“If you hit her fuel tank,” the pilot shouted, “there’ll be no organs to collect.”
The banker cast him a dirty glance and breathed deliberately, evenly, to steady himself. Then he aimed again.
Henty had meanwhile found a coil of rope in the boat and tied a sliding loop to one end to make a lasso and as the banker aimed again, she stood up in the boat and whirled the rope around her head, intending to rope him out of the chopper. Instead, Henty got a part of the chopper, something she only realized after she had given the rope a good few twists around a stanchion.
The pilot took the chopper up — and the boat with it. For a moment Henty was too startled to do anything — she could only watch the water receding from her at an incredible rate. Then the boat tilted and she fell out. As she rolled over on her back, she saw the unbalanced chopper crash back to the water right on top of the boat.
Just before it burst into flames, the banker jumped. It seemed almost as if the fearful billowing explosion reached out to bring him back.
Henty started swimming for the bank. As she made it and dragged herself ashore, the banker flopped in the shallow water, face down, not ten feet from her.
Henty turned him over and dragged him far enough so that his head couldn’t roll back in the water. He stared up at her, bleary-eyed. “You’re a sorry sight,” Henty told him.
“I’ll get you yet,” he said before his head flopped back to the ground.
Sure,” Henty said soothingly. “As soon as you come out hospital. I’ll send a doctor for you, next stop I make.” And with that, Henty trotted away, her hand to her head, saying, “All this swimming will ruin my hair.”
She didn’t see the slit-eyed hatred the banker from the Chaser stared after her.
Shortly, Henty found a dirt track that led southwest and trotted along it — it wouldn’t be long before she ran into Interstate 80, she thought. Presently, she came to an arched gate and beyond it she could see a large, very modern building, of somewhat strange proportions. She was about to turn into the gate when her eye was caught by the sign: NO NORMS.
“Whatever ‘norms’ are,” Henty said, entering the gate.
“You’re a ‘norm’,” said a voice.
Henty jumped. She looked around but could see no-one. She turned 360° but still could see no-one.
“Down here, stupid!”
Henty looked down and there was a little man, barely two feet tall. But he was holding a full-size shotgun expertly and it was pointed at her.
“Can’t you read,” the midget asked crossly. “That sign means you, it means stay out. Now get out!”
“I was only going to ask for a drink of water,” Henty said.
“Are you a person of restricted growth?”
“Well, no. but—”
“Are you a person of excessive growth?”
“Well no. I’m just an average height but I get thirsty all the same.”
“Average" is just another way of saying ‘normal’,” the little man sneered. “Out!”
The shotgun jerked to emphasize the order.
“Or before I break you in two,” a voice from on high added.
Startled, Henty looked up. The gateposts were the legs of the tallest woman she had ever seen, perhaps fifteen feet high. Hurriedly Henty jumped back to the road. The monster woman leaned over and snapped her fingers — thick as sewer pipes— in Henty’s ear. Henty took off down the road like it was the starting gun at the Olympics.
Not too far down that dusty, thirsty track. Henty found another farmhouse: not too big this time and standing near the road together with its peaked barn, against a background of golden wheat, Henty stopped to admire it.
“Just like a painting,” Henty said.
A man and a woman came out of the house. He wore bib overalls and carried a pitchfork like some biblical staff. She wore a shapeless dress. They both had pinched, disapproving faces. “Not a painting,” Henty said wonderingly to herself, “the painting.”
“Git,” said the man.
“All I want is a drink of water,” Henty said, wondering why she hadn’t just drunk some of the South Platte while she was in it. “Git,” said the man unemotionally. Henty was already turning away dejectedly when the woman cooed, “Of course we’ll give you some water. And something to eat.”
As Henty turned, she saw the glint of avarice in the woman’s eyes, which were both riveted to the Fist.
Henty hesitated.
The woman shouted. “The Fist! Git her, Joel! Ten million!”
The man, jerked into action by her words like a marionette answering to string, came at Henty with the pitchfork leading. The woman ran into the house — to fetch a gun, Henty thought. As Henty turned to run for her life, she noticed through the open door on the wall of the parlor a picture labeled “St Richard Nixon” and on the gate, two names: MIDDLE AMERICA and AMERICAN GOTHIC.
Henty was absolutely exhausted but that farmer was faster than any man his age has a right to be. Every time Henty dared look back — each time risking falling to his mercy on that uneven track — he was nearer, the pitchfork reaching closer to her. The last time she looked back, he was six feet behind her and hauling the pitchfork back to plunge it into her back.
Henty screamed as she whirled to defend herself. The pitchfork headed straight at her chest and then it jerked to a standstill. Henty took it and the farmer fell forward on his face not to move again. Henty saw out of the corner of her eye the gaping hole in his back as she looked his wife straight in the eye over the smoking barrel of a twelve bore.
For a moment Henty was tempted just to stand there and let that farmer’s greedy wife shoot her, then she heard, over the pumping in her ears, the sound of heavy trucks passing at speed. She turned and flung herself into the cutting and fell on top of the load of an open truck. She waved cheerfully to the enraged murderess as the truck carried her swiftly out of shotgun range.
Then Henty felt under her to find out what was digging into her and found crates and bottle tops. She hauled up a bottle and — oh joy! — it was Coke. Thirstily she twisted the top off with the Fist and drank half the bottle before looking up and passing her verdict on the events of the day so far.
“The righteous always prosper.”
CHAPTER 47
The private citizen has an inalienable right to carry around his own machine gun, howitzer, or atomic device. — Stockton, California, Gun Shop Owner
Each step we make today towards material progress not only does not advance us towards the general well-being, but shows us, on the contrary, that all these technical improvements only increase our miseries. — Tolstoy.
Henty woke to find herself face to face with a Watcheye which, under the impetus of some remote and unseen hand, tied itself in knots to keep her in view. It was mounted on top of a set of traffic lights and Henty, lying high up on the Coke crates, was no more than twelve inches from it. It twisted again but was obviously at the limit of its adjustment.
“Well, if you want that much to see me,” Henty said and, reaching out with the Fist, tore it from its moorings and held it in front of her face. “Cheese!”
Just then the lights changed, so Henty hurriedly put it back on top of the traffic lights, where it faced the night sky, which was clear and starry over Cheyenne, Wyoming.
CHAPTER 48
Petey, watching this performance on the vidi, burst out laughing. The surgeon looked at him carefully for a moment, then laughed too.
“Go get ’em, Mum,” Petey gurgled.
Jimmy Twoshoes was not amused. “That’s Caring Society property!” Another idea struck him. “And what the hell is she doing live on camera in the middle of Cheyenne? I told her to lie low this time ev
ery night.”
“You don’t tell the Runner what to do!” Petey was, despite Henty’s efforts to shield him, imbued by the ubiquitous media with the mores of his age.
Jimmy Twoshoes glared at the child. “Seems to me she just woke up underneath a Watcheye,” the surgeon said. “She’s not doing it to aggravate you.”
Twoshoes snorted savagely but said nothing more, his attention fixed on the vidi which now showed crowds armed with pickaxe handles, knives and guns pouring into the streets of Cheyenne to hunt Henty.
“A public service direct from NBC to the citizens of Cheyenne!” the anchorman’s voice rose over the hubbub.
“But where’s Mum?” Petey wanted to know.
CHAPTER 49
Henty stood down a dark lane beside the back door of a restaurant. A waiter came out with two plates in his hands and was about to throw the food from them into the dustbin when Henty reached a hand out of the darkness to rescue a T-bone, still sizzling hot. Henty held it up in the uncertain light. Not even a bite had been cut from it. “Why did they send it back? What’s wrong with it?”
“Nothing,” said the waiter. “The Runner’s in Cheyenne, so they dropped money on the table and ran out to join the hunt.” He pointed to the crowd charging past the mouth of the alley.
“Oh, them,” Henty said dismissively. “I hate wasting good food.”
“Yeah, me too. Eat it in good health. Want some French fries?”
“No thanks. I got to watch my weight.”
The waiter laughed heartily, then popped back into the restaurant to reappear with a bowl and a spoon just as Henty chucked the now bare T-bone in the dustbin. “Here. Strawberries and cream. The same folk paid for it. And a glass of wine to wash it down with.”
He watched while Henty ate and drank, then took the bowl and the spoon and the glass. “It was just on the vidi: they heard a rumor you’re staying the night at the Hitching Post Inn. When the manager can’t give you up to them, they’ll tear his place apart,” he added with evident satisfaction.