Armageddon Crazy

FOUR

Mansard

The interior of madison square garden was an empty, echoing cavern that dwarfed the men working inside it. Their shouts, the hammering, the sharp bursts of noise from their belt radios, the hum of the cranes and servos, and the bump and scrape of heavy equipment being manhandled into position all reverberated around the girders of the roof and blended into a dull cacophony that signified a show was being set up. Mansard both loved and feared those sights and sounds, probably in much the same way that gladiators had loved and feared the smell of blood and sand, or that clowns loved and feared the sawdust and animal stench of the circus. The setup was the immediate prelude to Mansard's personal moment of truth. He could test and plan and check, but the time always came when there was nothing else to do except throw the switches and hope for the best. The start of the setup was the point where the tension began to build to its final peak.

He watched a rigger ride a lighting truss with professional nonchalance as it was hoisted up into the roof. The four massive scaffolds that, with their interlocking gantries, would carry the lights, the optic screens, and the image projectors were rapidly taking shape. Outside on the roof, a second crew was installing the equipment that would create the grand finale, the big Sony DL-70s, fresh off a chartered cargo plane from Chile, that would bring the Four Horsemen to life. The show was going to cost Arlen Proverb a fortune.

Mansard would soon have to go out onto the roof and check on how things were coming. The DL-70s were straight out of their packing grease and completely untested. If one of them had been damaged in transit, he would be totally screwed. Jimmy Gadd was working feverishly to get them ready for a trial run. Mansard was putting off going up there, however. It was not just that he did not want to hear the bad news, if any. Charlie Mansard, even though his life was dedicated to producing huge images in vast areas of empty space, had no particular love of heights. He could no more ride a lighting truss with the riggers' total lack of concern than he could fly in the air. He would ride the truss if he had to, but he would always be nervously looking down.

Rita was hurrying across the floor of the Garden, heading in his direction. She looked unusually agitated. "We just got a call. Proverb's on his way over."

"Damn. What the hell does he want to do that for? There's nothing for him to see yet. They should have told him that."

"Maybe he gets nervous, just like you."

"Why should he? He's got God on his side. All I've got is Jimmy."

"Which would you rather have?"

Mansard grinned despite himself. "You've got a point there."

Mansard's first impulse was to rush around and yell at people, to try to get something ready for the client. He knew that was ridiculous. Proverb was a professional: he knew that there were still two days to go and there was no way that Mansard would be ready to stage an effects run-through for at least eighteen hours. If he wanted to walk around and nod and watch the men putting up the scaffolds, that was up to him. It was nothing more than a waste of time.

"What the hell does he want to come bothering me for? Can't he stand in front of a mirror and rehearse his lines? I've got quite enough to do without conducting guided tours."

Rita shrugged. "You know what clients are like. They want to feel they're on top of things."

Aden Proverb arrived with a small army at his back and the air of an occupying general. For someone who was so famous for his stage presence, he was of surprisingly small stature. He compensated for his lack of height by extreme flamboyance of dress. He was wearing a double-breasted white suit and a purple silk shirt; a black fur coat was thrown over his shoulders. The gold crucifix that bounced against his chest must have weighed close to a pound. The stitching on his white, high-heeled cowboy boots was also gold. As with so many of those who capitalized on their charisma, the first clue to Aden Proverb's power was in his eyes. At rest, they were heavy-lidded and languid, almost lazy, but when he focused on something they came alive, knowing ami penetrating, going right to the soul. He was flanked by his two huge bodyguards. According to the media, they went everywhere with him and even slept in the room next to his. On his right was Rashid Murjeen. The huge black man, who had been a heavyweight contender back in the old days, was quite probably the only Muslim in the employ of an American evangelist. Proverb had come in for a good deal of criticism on account of Rashid, but he had consistently ignored it. On his left was Joe Don Cutler, who had played for the '96 Steelers. He was the all-around cowboy. His black country singer's suit was decorated with white beadwork, and his Stetson had the feathers of an entire parakeet mounted on its front. It was very clear from the way the two of them carried themselves that anyone who interfered with Proverb could expect to be torn limb from limb. In addition to the two bodyguards, there was a six-man squad of private security guards in brown quasipolice uniforms, three aides in business suits, and a young, very well-developed blonde who was wearing a coat that matched Proverb's.

Proverb walked straight up to Mansard with his hand extended. He grasped Charlie's and shook it warmly. His energetic bonhomie came directly from his car salesman roots.

"Charlie, it's good to see you. How are you? How are things going?"

Mansard arranged his face into his best meeting-the-client smile. "I'm very well, Reverend Proverb, and everything seems to be coming together perfectly. So far, we're ahead of schedule."

"Alien. How many times do I have to tell you, Charlie? It's Alien. I can't be doing with my best men calling me Reverend Proverb. Makes me feel that I'm a hundred years old." He glanced at the two bodyguards. "Ain't that the truth, boys? No formalities around this family."

Rashid said nothing, but Joe Don grinned. "No standing on ceremony around us, boss."

The blonde giggled. Rashid gave her a hard look. Mansard had had previous experience with Proverb's lack of formality. Everything stayed relentlessly downhome just as long as it was recognized that Arlen Proverb was the absolute dictator of the universe.

Proverb had changed quite a bit since Mansard had last seen him. Where his hair had previously been a nondescript brown, it was now dyed blue black, and the bow-wave pompadour was far more lavish than he remembered it. Proverb was also sporting thick triangular sideburns. The hair was one thing – the added length and the dye job could be attributed to a simple case of advanced show business. The sideburns were something else again. When one was as much in the spotlight as Proverb was, nothing could be dismissed as coincidental. The sideburns were too much of a symbol. They had to be perceived as an indication that Proverb really was moving closer to the Elvi – and if Arlen Proverb was moving closer to the Elvi, he was also further distancing himself from the Faithful establishment. Even though he claimed to be above it all, Mansard kept a fairly close watch on the political fluctuations of his clients.

Proverb was looking up at the giant scaffolds. "So, Charlie, where do we stand at the moment?"

"Well, Arlen, as you can see, most of the basic framework is in place. Pretty soon we'll start putting in the optical equipment. Once they're in place, we'll be ready for a visual run-through. If your sound men are ready in time, we could sync the audio."

Proverb nodded. "I'll goose them up some. Make sure they're ready when you are."

Mansard had to give Proverb credit for being well aware of the basics of the technology that went into his show. That was unusual among preachers. Most cultivated a smiling ignorance, as if pretending that they were living in some Old Testament world where special effects came straight from God.

"How are things going with the big final set piece?"

Mansard had expected that question. He maintained his air of calm confidence. "My best men are up on the roof rigging the gear, and the weather forecast looks good."

"You don't foresee any problems?"

Mansard shook his head. "Not at this point." He was not about to voice his fears about the DL-70s.

Proverb nodded again, then looked around as if he were hesitating to say something. "There is one thing I'd like to talk to you about."

He put an arm around Mansard's shoulders and led him out of earshot of the entourage.

"Now, I know, what with you being an artist and all, you ain't going to like what I want to ask, but I need a big favor."

Mansard had a suspicion of what was coming. "What do you want me to do?"

"I want you to juice the wave pushers."

"The script only called for undertow hypnotics."

"I've decided to go for broke."

Mansard sadly shook his head. "I really don't think you need to do that."

"I've got my reasons."

"Usually when a client wants me to juice the hypnotics, he's either got cold feet or he's no damn good, or both. I know that isn't the case with you. We've got an effects menu that'll knock their socks off. Most of them are spongy before they even come to the show from staring into a Jesus Wave all afternoon."

The hand on Mansard's shoulder tightened.

"You know me, Charlie. I trust your effects. Praise the Lord, Charlie, I'm counting on your effects. I have my own special reasons for wanting all the juice I can get. You'll have to trust me on that."

The eyes had come on, and Mansard knew that Proverb was determined to get what he wanted. What the hell was the man up to? He made a small gesture of capitulation. Proverb was God's own salesman.

"What levels do you want the pushers raised to?"

"Give me five with an override to eight."

Mansard let out a low whistle. "Are you sure about that?"

Proverb nodded. He looked almost grim. "I'm positive, and I want the override through to my sleeve control. I want to be able to zap the crowd if and when I need to."

The spangles on the sleeves of Proverb's costumes concealed a highly sophisticated electronic control system that he could play like a master. Mansard still was not happy.

"You want to go easy on the straight eight. You could start them flipping."

"If that's what it takes."

Mansard was surprised. He had never seen Proverb reveal that kind of ruthlessness. Clearly something was going down. Maybe he would rather not know about it.

He gave a small shrug. "It's your insurance coverage."

Proverb fixed him with the eyes again. "You're a good man, Charlie, but let me do the worrying."

There was more ritual handshaking and backslapping, and then Alien Proverb swept out again. Charlie Mansard watched him go. This was shaping up to be no ordinary show.

Carlisle

"You really think he might be a target?" Carlisle asked.

"He's getting so much publicity that we have to seriously consider the possibility," Parnell replied.

"We don't have enough troubles?"

"Not as many as we'd have if a big-name preacher was shot dead live on stage at the Garden."

"Or blown up."

"Exactly."

"We could try to get him to cancel the show."

"Proverb's got too much swagger for that. He'd go on regardless. He'd probably go on even if the LPs issued a public warning."

Harry Carlisle had a leg cocked over the corner of Captain Parnell's desk. He was leaning forward peering at the large, hard-copy floorplan of Madison Square Garden. Both men had mugs of coffee in their hands. Parnell had his own coffee maker. It made real coffee that was infinitely superior to the bitter, dark-tan liquid that came out of the vending machines. Harry tapped the plan with his index finger.

"We can't give him absolute protection in a place this size."

"That's right."

"So what do we do?"

"All we can do is play the odds. Before the show, we do the place from top to bottom with sniffers. We beef up the weapons and explosives searches on the entrances. We run spotter scopes on the crowd and push the images through a hostile motion filter. We position snipers around the stage and have plainclothes squads in high saturation around the most likely vantage points from where a sniper might operate. After that we pray." He glanced up at Carlisle with a half smile. "Of course, you don't pray, do you?"

"Not if I can help it."

"You're going to wind up in a camp one of these days."

"Probably."

"You think you can stay out of trouble until after this Proverb spectacular is over?"

"I'll try. What do you want me to do?"

"I want you to take charge of the plainclothes squads on the floor."

"How many men do I get?"

"As many as I can spare. Hopefully something around a hundred."

"How much help can we count on from the deacons?"

Parnell shook his head. "I really don't know. They're acting ambivalent. There's a fairly powerful faction that'd be quite happy to see Proverb knocked off. They believe he's a dangerous maverick who borders on heresy."

"So even if they show up, we can't really trust them."

"That's how we have to approach the situation."

Carlisle scowled. "Just great. What about Proverb's own security people?"

"They can deal with the stage and backstage area. That's what they do best. Those two big bodyguards, the Muslim and the cowboy, they can have the honor of shielding their boss with their bodies if anyone opens fire. They can have that all to themselves."

"Can I pick my own men?"

"Sure, as long as you leave me all the sharpshooters."

Carlisle put down his coffee cup and pushed himself away from the desk. "I guess I'll go and get started."

"There'll be a detailed briefing after tomorrow's roll call. I suggest you go over to the Garden and familiarize yourself with the place. Proverb's people are already in there setting up."

"I've worked the Garden before. I know it pretty well."

Carlisle moved to the door. He hesitated before letting himself out. "Can I ask you something?"

"You usually do."

"How does the NYPD feel about Aden Proverb?"

Parnell looked him straight in the eye. "Having a public figure killed in our jurisdiction can't do the department any good at all. Is that what you wanted to know?"

Carlisle nodded. Then he turned and left.

Winters

The theological advisory officer's steel-rimmed glasses were just sufficiently tinted to make it impossible to see his eyes. He could not have been past his early thirties, but his sandy blond hair was already thinning. Hie harsh white lights over the lecture room rostrum were reflected from his bald crown.

"Ostensibly we will be providing security backup to the NYPD, but in reality, we have a much more important mission at the Alien Proverb service at Madison Square Garden."

The TAO carefully placed the flat palm of his hand on the lectern in front of him. It was the ultimately controlled version of slamming down his fist.

"Heresy, gentlemen. We will be there to detect heresy."

He paused for a moment to let his words sink in.

"Shall we think about heresy, gentlemen? Heresy is the worst of crimes, worse even than rape, murder, or terrorism. These others, although they are in themselves sufficiently heinous to warrant the putting to death of the perpetrator, are crimes against person and property and as such are the legitimate province of the secular police. Heresy, on the other hand, is a crime against the Lord our God, and without the Lord, our civilization would fail, and we would be back in the Satanic darkness that we only so recently struggled out of."

There was nodding among the keener of the junior deacons, led off by Rogers and a couple of others. Winters joined in just a little late. The TAO went on.

"We are the defenders of the faith, gentlemen, and the heretic is the greatest enemy of that faith. The heretic is a contagion that must be rooted out wherever it lurks. I repeat, wherever it lurks."

He put particular emphasis on the word 'wherever'.

"We will be at the Proverb service to observe. As of this moment, there is no investigation and no crime. No complaint has been laid, and there are no suspects, but as you all well know, the agents of Satan can reveal themselves anywhere and at any time. We must be constantly on our guard, watching for heretics both among the audience and on the stage."

Although it had not been stated, the message was clean Proverb was wider surveillance. There had been rumors about Aden Proverb's lack of favor in Washington for some time. There ted always been a gulf between him and the Faithful establishment, but recently it had grown visibly wider. It appeared that Proverb was doing everything to maximize the schism. He was appealing more and more to the wild and wooliest of nonconformists and even attracting out-and-out unbelievers. Proverb was still far too powerful to be directly accused, but the oblique instructions were clear. They were to start quietly collecting evidence. It was the first stage to laying a case.

Junior Deacon Milton raised his hand. "What if we detect overt heresy at the service? Do we attempt to make arrests?"

"You do nothing. No matter what the provocation."

The TAO half smiled. On the scarce occasions that he showed an emotion, his face became almost skull-like, with the tinted glasses providing the empty, shadow-filled sockets. It was as if his skin had been stretched too tight by the constant contempt in which he held an imperfect world.

"This is an occasion when the virtue of patience will have to be cultivated."

Winters raised his hand. "Intelligence reports indicate that a large number of the Presley people will be present at the service."

The TAO was no longer smiling. "I have seen the intelligence reports."

"Could this not have the potential of becoming a mass demonstration of heretical behavior?"

"You have touched on a less than well defined area, Junior Deacon… what was your name?"

"Winters, sir." Winters always dreaded what might happen when a superior asked him his name.

The TAO nodded. "Our first problem, Winters, is that there has never been a definite consensus regarding the exact nature of the Elvi. It has never been finally decided whether they are legally heretical or simply an extreme form of nonconformist sect akin to the snake handlers. The confusion is compounded by the fact that attitudes to this kind of extremism differ sharply from region to region. Here in the somewhat better educated North, we seek a certain orthodoxy and tend to be a little appalled by " – his face took on a brief expression of mild distaste – "the idea of worship via reptile. In the South and West, however, they have a much greater traditional tolerance of the bizarre. I have my own opinions about what should be done to the whole pack of them, but these are personal, and I would have no place expressing them here. Until we have specific instructions, we also do nothing about the Elvi."

"Under no circumstances?"

"Under no circumstances whatsoever, Winters. I don't care if they are crawling on the floor and publicly fornicating. We do nothing except remind ourselves that our day will come and we will have everything."

The skull-like half smile came again.

Kline

She drank coffee and tried to pull herself together. She felt awful. If this was what fame was, it might well kill her. She rummaged through her handbag, looking for the piece of paper from the night before, the blue paper that the cocaine had come in. From the moment that she had seen the Lefthand Path symbol on the inside of the packet, fear had tinged her drunken haze. Now it was morning, and all that remained was the hangover and the fear. The apartment looked even more cramped and dingy than it usually did, and the sunlight seemed to be struggling to cut through the smoggy air. Indeed, the whole of life seemed to be a depressing struggle. It was bad enough having a couple of drunken lesbian strangers offer her a drug that could get her five years, but to see the symbol of her secret and highly illegal organization on the inside of the packet had brought her close to hysteria. Fortunately Longstreet had simply assumed that she was drunk and incoherent. He had, in fact, seemed quite amused by her situation. In the cold gray of the morning, she wondered if he thought he was corrupting her.

She found the blue packet where she had hidden it in the lining of her bag. The woman Webster had not wanted the packet back. With a conspiratorial grin she and her companion had gone, leaving Cynthia swaying in the black-glass bathroom, looking Wearily from the packet of coke to the infinite repetitions of her reflection in the multiple mirrors. With about the last shred of her presence of mind, she had sniffed up the remaining powder through the hundred-dollar bill and concealed the paper in the torn lining of her bag. The last thing she needed was to be caught with a quantity of coke.

She turned the paper over between her fingers. It seemed impossible that it could contain any kind of real message, considering the context in which it had been given to her, but she had to check. Standing up caused the pain in her head to increase sharply, and she had to stand still for a few seconds before going to the dressing table and searching through her jewelry box for the large antique dress ring with the huge fake ruby. With a practiced half twist she removed the stone. When she had been issued the thing back at the training camp there had been a lot of jokes about her secret decoder ring – but that was exactly what it was. She moved the microcode scanner across the surface of the paper. The first side was as blank as she had expected, but to her surprise, the second gave a positive reading.

"Damn."

She had truly hoped that this would not happen. The fact that the piece of paper contained a dot-coded message created a whole fresh set of questions. The prime among them was why she should be getting messages in a penthouse bathroom from a drugged-out party girl who was falling out of her dress. A close second was just how much trust she could put in a message that was delivered that way. She knew without being told that the organization had people in some very strange positions, but surely there had to be limits.

She loaded the dot data into her small laptop deck and ran a complex access code. The cipher program was hidden beneath a perfectly innocent-looking data management plan. The message that appeared on the screen was simple and to the point.

IT IS LIKELY THAT YOU WILL BE ASKED BY LONGSTREET TO GO TO THE ARLEN PROVERB SPECTACULAR AT MADISON SQUARE GARDEN. YOU WILL GO. IF HE DOESN'T SUGGEST IT, YOU WILL MAKE THE SUGGESTION TO HIM. WHATEVER HAPPENS, YOU WILL GO TO THE SHOW. YOU WILL BE CONTACTED THERE AND ISSUED WITH FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS.

Anslinger

Maude Anslinger could not afford to go to the Aden Proverb rally. The money simply would not stretch that far. The monthly payments from George's life plan bought so little after all the years of inflation. Why did George have to be taken so early? Why, of all people, did he have to go with lung cancer? She knew that God had a plan for all things and that she should not question the ways of the Almighty, but ft did seem a little unfair. Maybe she should be grateful that she still had the apartment. That was what President Faithful always said: Be grateful for your blessings and pray hopefully for the future. The trouble was that it proved to be so difficult merely feeding herself and Theodore that she felt her faith was being constantly tested.

At that moment, Theodore was curled contentedly in her lap. It had been a lucky week for the cat. Some strange fish stuff had appeared in the freezer cabinets at the market. Colored a peculiar pinkish white, it had come without either a label or a date stamp. She had bought it with a good deal of reluctance, but Theodore had fallen on it as if it were a rare delicacy. Afterward, he had shown no ill effects, so she had gone on feeding it to him and even considered eating it herself.

On TV, there was another commercial for the Alien Proverb rally. She wished that she had the forty bucks to spare for a ticket. There was no way that she could come up with forty that week, or any other week, for that matter. That was something else that did not seem fair. The really poor got to go. An allocation of free passes was set aside for the unemployed, but she did not qualify. The fact that she owned her home and received an insurance pension, no matter how inadequate, disqualified her. The commercial caused a dull ache in her heart, as did the 3D posters that were plastered all over the neighborhood. It was as if Proverb's eyes, which at the moment were staring out of the screen, could see right through her. She had always liked Aden Proverb. When George had been alive, they had gone to a number of Proverb's meetings. Of course, back then, they had been much smaller affairs than this huge spectacular at Madison Square Garden, but there had always been something warm about Arlen Proverb. Where President Faithful seemed so neat and controlled and maybe a little prim, even during his Sunday night fireside chats, there was a boyish energy about Aden Proverb, a certain exhilarating wildness. He could create the image of a Jesus who laughed and danced and who could smile at the frailties of his people. It was a much more comfortable Jesus than the one that President Faithful brought to life. His was a motionless Jesus who only sadly judged.

She was dimly aware that the Arlen Proverb commercial, an extended, three-minute Jonah, was one that she had not seen before. At first she was uncertain. She had really been doing the Jesus Wave a little too much. Then the screen started flashing.

The flashing words and urgent beeping were replaced by a young, smiling blond woman who explained the deal.

"Yes, friends – you, too, can see Allen Proverb, Sunday night at Madison Square Garden, absolutely free!"

That caught Maude Anslinger's attention.

"Now I don't in any way want any of you to be thinking that the Reverend Proverb condones gambling one little, teeny bit," the young woman continued. "The only reason that Alien Proverb has authorized this Instacontest is, well – " The blonde smiled coyly. " – it's like Allen always says…"

The camera cut to a laughing close-up of Aden Proverb, with sweat pouring down his face, filmed at one of his live shows.

"… figure the Lord has enough on his mind that he ain't going to be adverse to a little help now and again."

The image was replaced by a studio shot of Arlen Proverb.

"There may be some of you out there that aren't able to afford no tickets to my show and maybe others who aren't sure if they want to go or not. Either way, if the Lord really wants you to see this show, you're going to see it, because he's going to see that you win this special Instacontest. Of course, if you don't win, don't take it badly. The Good Lord has all kinds of plans for all of us."

A fast, scratchily distorted voice cut in. "Entry in this Instacontest requires a five-dollar service fee."

Maude knew that the contest was meant for her. She did not mind about the five dollars. After all, she so rarely responded to anything on TV. She was all but reduced to a watcher. Her credit on the shopping clubs and devotion houses had been canceled soon after George's paycheck had stopped coming in.

The smiling blond girl was back on the screen.

"Now, if any of you have forgotten the response codes on your particular set, we will get it to run a refresher for you."

Maude clapped off the refresher. She still knew how to make a response on her hook into the old Qube II.

The words were flashing again.

Maude moved slowly toward the big old forty-eight-inch monitor that George had bought after their wedding. She placed her hand flat on the touchfeel screen.

God was at least aware that she had tried. She waited, scarcely daring to hope. Then the screen greened out, and the monitor scrolled a personal message.

CONGRATULATIONS, MAUDE ANSLINGERI YOU HAVE WON A TICKET TO THE ARLEN PROVERB SPECTACULAR. TO HAVE A HARDCOPY PASS TRANSMITTED TO YOU, DIAL 9-800-7-900-555-111118.

Carlisle

The crowds outside the Garden started gathering a little before noon. The force of uniforms that waited for them was enormous, but the early arrivals were largely friendly. There was a certain nervousness among the squads of NYPD on the streets. Every cop who ringed the Garden, patrolled the back streets, or waited in reserve in the parked buses knew that the Garden was uncomfortably close to the scene of the recent supermarket riot on Eighth Avenue. It could be that there would be some who would use the event as the excuse for a rematch.

As the afternoon wore on, it started to look as if those fears were groundless. Despite high humidity, a gray, overcast sky, and the hammering of the constantly circling gunships, there was something close to a carnival atmosphere. The crowds bought hotdogs and sodas, radfex balloons, cotton candy, miniature Bibles, and mylar prints of Jesus. They streamed in and out of the big Roy Rogers on Seventh Avenue. Many just waited in long orderly fines. As Carlisle had expected, a lot of them were killing the time until the doors opened by staring into handheld Jesus Waves. He noticed that there was a good smattering of country people in worn blue jeans and threadbare dresses who appeared impoverished even by New York standards. Whole families, who looked as if they had been driving for days, made frugal picnics on the tailgates of their dusty, elderly cars.

Carlisle, Reeves, and Donahue made a slow circuit of the Garden in an unmarked car. They, too, were basically killing time until the crowds were let into the building. If anything went down on the outside, it was not their problem – they were concerned with an organized threat on the inside.

Reeves, who was driving, glanced back at Carlisle. "You want to go around again?"

Carlisle shook his head. "No. I don't even know what I'm looking for. All I've seen is a couple of gangs of kids who could be purse snatchers. Let's dump the car and go on inside with the others."

They pulled over to the curb. A burly, uniformed tac squad sergeant in full armor started to tell them that they could not stop there until they flashed their badges. Carlisle and Donahue left Reeves to park the car and walked toward the nearest entrance. They had to show their badges twice more, first to get through the final line of uniforms and then to pass the Garden's own rentacops. Once they were through the rentacops, Carlisle looked questioningly at Donahue.

"Have those guys been checked out? It'd be an ideal way to infiltrate a shooter. Hell, half of them are armed already."

"The uniforms ran their IDs and gun permits before they were allowed in to work."

Carlisle scowled. "And that was it? Anyone with half a brain could fake out a check like that."

Donahue shrugged. "It was out of our hands. Deacons were supposed to run background on everyone employed here. It all went to Virginia Beach. That's where the lists came from."

"Goddamn it."

"What's the problem?"

"The problem is, where this thing's concerned, we can't trust the deacons farther than we can shit."

With a puzzled look, Donahue ran a hand through his thatch of prematurely white hair. "Are you seriously telling me that the deacons might have a crack at Proverb themselves?"

Carlisle shook his head. "I doubt they'll go that far, but there's a feeling that they might well step aside if any third-party operator tried for the prize."

Donahue's expression hardened. "There's a feeling?"

"That's what I said."

"So where does that leave us?"

"It leaves us where we've always been. If Proverb gets it, it's our ass, and nobody's making our job any easier."

They had moved on to the main arena. Tech crews swarmed over the stage and towers, making last-minute adjustments.

"Did the deacons check Proverb's people, as well?" Carlisle asked.

"Proverb put a block on that. His own security is supposed to be one hundred percent watertight."

"Let's hope it is. In the meantime, make sure that our boys are fully aware that they can't look to anyone for support except their own team. You got that?"

"I got it, Lieutenant."

Carlisle had divided his force of a hundred plainclothes officers into four twenty-five-man teams. Two would operate on the main floor, while the others would spread out over the upper tiers. Before he sent them to their final positions, Carlisle moved around giving last-minute instructions and encouragement. All the time, he kept wishing that someone would encourage him. As he looked down from one of the top tiers, he realized that they didn't have a rat's-ass chance if someone was serious about getting Proverb.

The PA was counting down to the opening. "Doors will open in a half hour."

Someone picked that moment to bring down the house lights. Red swirling lasers blossomed from the overhead catwalks. In the darkness, Carlisle knew there was no point in pretending. Arlen Proverb would be an open target once the show got going.

Speedboat

The large number of cops outside the Garden made him nervous. Speedboat had arrived about twenty minutes before the doors were due to open. He had come early because he wanted to take a look at the layout before the lights went down and the show started. He had been given a ticket and a backstage pass, but he had been told not to use the pass until after the show. His contact for the travel papers had sounded as jumpy as he was.

The crowd waiting to get into the Garden should have been Speedboat's natural cover. He had expected Proverb's followers to be geeky, but he so seldom came out of the eastside ghetto that he tended to forget just how geeky geeky could be. Half of them were brain-canceled by those damned A-wave generators that they liked to stare into. It seemed as if half the world was in a zombie trance. The crowd did not make for very good cover. Speedboat stood out like a sore thumb with his parka and suede-head haircut. He did not belong out there, in what passed as the real world. He was sure that the cops had to be looking at him. The twelve hundred in cash in his secret pocket was quite enough to get him taken down to Astor Place if a couple of eager assholes decided to shake him down. They probably would not hold him, but the money would certainly vanish, and his efforts to get out to Canada would be back at square one.

He really had no option but to get in line and try to look as holy and inconspicuous as possible. He tucked himself in between a sad-looking country family and an excited bunch of Elvi. The country family looked bad: a defeated husband, a washed-out wife, and three hopeless dispirited children in patched and handed-down work clothes. They looked as if they had been living on the edge for years. He could not understand why they stayed in the boonies. There was nothing out there but hunger and desperation since the big food conglomerates had finished running the small family farmers off the land. Maybe they were just too plain terrified of what might happen to them in the cities. What baffled Speedboat most of all was why, after those people had been handed every shitty deal imaginable, they still maintained their ridiculous faith. They might be living on turnips and hot water, but they still thought that Jesus was looking out for them and everything would be all right in the end. It could only be the passivity of the terminally stupid, and Speedboat had no patience with it or sympathy for it. Those dummies could not even pull it together to vent their anger on the corporations like Agricon and U.S. Grain that had made them the way they were. They did not burn barns or trash harvesters – they just sat around on their sorry butts and bought the official line that the Jews had done it to them.

The Elvi were a total contrast. The bunch that were standing behind him sounded as if they came from Jersey; they probably worked in the electronics or chemical plants out around Elizabeth. The Elvi looked out for their own, and it was rare to see one of them that did not have a job. This bunch were definitely on a day out and determined to enjoy themselves. Speedboat had no time for their loony tune beliefs, but at least they seemed to have some spirit in them and to be somewhat in control of their own lives. The men wore the traditional pompadours, triangular sideburns, and mirrored aviator sunglasses, while the women were done up as if they were on their way to a high-school prom in the mid-1950s. The Elvi were as much locked into their particular timeframe as the Amish were in theirs.

Their beliefs were even more impenetrable to the average outsider. Everyone knew that the whole thing was a confused mishmash of UFO lore, Elvis Presley, and the Book of Revelations, but from that point on, the labyrinth of testament, epistle, and commandment became so complicated that only the faithful could even partially grasp what it was really about. Although technically it could be said that the Elvi had been born the night that Elvis Presley finally keeled over in his toilet at Graceland, the full-blown cult had not really taken hold until the mid-'90s. For a number of years, the media had gradually elevated obsessive fan behavior to a quasi-religion, but it was the publication of Dean Anthony's Book of the King that really twanged the string of fervent irrationality that appeared to run through all of the hard-core Presley fans. Dean Anthony was actually a drunken ex-rock writer who pulled together the mythology in the hope of making as much money as L. Ron Hub-bard. The fat, twelve-hundred-page tome contained everything from the power of positive thinking to the second coming of the King and the rise of Atlantis. It was shameless in its plundering of virtually the entire catalog of twentieth-century weirdness, but the Elvi swallowed it whole and began to reshape their lives according to its convoluted tenets. The doctrine had been truly nailed down when Anthony had been shot dead in a fight in an East Memphis barroom. His plan had been to build a giant pyramid on a landfill just outside the city. He had been locked in a protracted legal battle with both Elvis Presley Industries and environmental groups that feared that the weight of the structure would force even more toxins into the Mississippi River. Although the police report said that he had been involved in an alcoholically escalating argument with a neighborhood pimp, the true believers smelled conspiracy. That was understandable. The Book of the King was chock-full of interlocking conspiracy theories. Anthony was canonized as the first martyred prophet of the Elvi, and Elvis Presley Industries, as the prime target of Elvi paranoia, lost all control of the Elvis iconography and subsequently went bankrupt.

With the coming of the Faithful administration, the Elvi had been forced to weather a series of storms. There had been more than one attempt to have them labeled as heretics, and Vanson Crowell, a syndicated faith healer out of Bloomington, Indiana, had even gone as far as to organize burnings of the Book of the King. Crowell had been the first to learn the lesson that one did not screw around with the Elvi. The moment he started his campaign, his grass-roots following vanished like the morning mist, and his cash contributions dropped away to nothing. The intense competition in the God business did the rest. Vanson Crowell vanished from sight and the airwaves. The truth was that Middle America rather liked the Elvi. They were different, maybe crazy, but they seemed harmless and good-natured. They were also rooted in a phenomenon that, for over half a century, had been very dear to the heart of blue-collar America. They worked alongside everyone else on the factory floor. They bitched about the pay cuts and the rising prices. After work, they went to the bar. They were permitted to get drunk, arm wrestle, and hold their own in a fight. Anthony, renowned for his bleary, saloon macho, had allowed himself plenty of slack when drawing up the Elvi moral code. The Elvi religion, above everything else, demanded that its members be good ol' boys and gals.

A ripple ran down the line. One of the Elvi grinned amiably at Speedboat. "Figure we should be getting inside pretty soon."

Speedboat nodded. It did not cost anything to be civil to the natural cover. He held up his computicket. "Says the doors open at five."

The Elvi consulted a huge, antique Rolex that was strapped to his left wrist. "Five on the nail."

As they filed forward, the Elvi kept up a stream of small talk. One thing that Speedboat thoroughly detested was non-conversations with total strangers. It was made worse by the fact that the line moved excruciatingly slowly. This Elvi might have been good-natured, but he was also extremely boring. It was the fate of many with fixed beliefs. Speedboat felt that it was best to humor the man, but even his minimal grunted replies came to an abrupt stop when he was confronted by the battery of security equipment that was deployed around the entrance.

"Holy shit."

The Elvi smiled indulgently as if to signify that he had heard a few cuss words in his time. "They do seem to be taking real good care of someone. I guess there's all kinds of nuts about. They say that Elvis himself was kind of leery about the possibility of a sniper trying for him from the audience."

Speedboat was about ready to bolt. The only thing that stopped him was that by the time that he actually saw the battery of security checks, it was already too late. There was no way that he could turn back without attracting attention. He was carried into the process by the momentum of the crowd. He dropped his ticket into the hopper and had its genuineness confirmed. Next he passed between a double line of armed and armored riot cops who stared impassively from behind dark visors. Speedboat could feel himself starting to sweat. The sensor banks were mounted in a cylindrical aluminum and plastic frame that formed a tunnel through which everyone in the line had to pass. Speedboat recognized some of the equipment. The mass detectors that ferreted out concealed weapons were larger versions of the portable frisk units that the deacons used. There were these dull black ceramic tubes that he could only assume sniffed for explosives. There was other stuff he had never encountered before – multiple lenses like the eyes of insects, tremor scoops, and curved ceramic panels. He could not start to guess at their function, but he did not like the look of them at all. Finally he was through the tunnel. The last obstacle was a huddle of Garden rentacops who amounted to very little after what had gone before. And then Speedboat was on his way down the tunnel that led into the main arena. If everything went according to plan, he had passed the first short stretch of a road that would lead all the way to Canada.

Mansard

The crowd was coming in like a flowing disorganized mass, spoiling and humanizing the symmetry of the ranked tiers of empty seats.

Charlie Mansard sighed. "I guess it's time for the preflight." Jimmy Gadd placed his arm on the back of the coordinator's console chair and leaned forward so only Mansard could hear him. "You're certain you want to run the program yourself?"

Mansard scowled and nodded. "I want to run the program myself."

"You're sure?"

"I'm sure."

"You've been bitching all afternoon about how you can't do it because you're not up to it and you don't feel well."

"It's my way of psyching myself up for the show. Some people pace, others meditate. I whine and complain."

"You've got a couple of drinks in you."

"Did you ever know me to do a show without a couple of drinks in me?"

Jimmy Gadd shrugged. "Just checking."

"Stop treating me like you're my nanny."

"Did you hear anything more from the cops?"

Mansard slowly pulled off the two strips of fake plastic skin that hid the DNI input receptors behind each ear. "I didn't hear anything new. It's pretty clear they feel that Proverb is some major assassination target."

"How do you feel about that?"

"The money's in escrow. We're covered."

"But if it happens, it's liable to happen during the show while you're jacked into the board."

"So with my luck, I'll be in the middle of a straight D-interface. I'll overload, produce clear white light, and fuse both halves of my brain."

"And you're not worried?"

"It'd be a merciful release."

Jimmy Gadd shrugged. There was no talking to Mansard immediately before a show. "Have it your way."

"I intend to. Go and tend your business. Make sure those horsemen come up on cue."

Gadd gestured to the others at the effects control board. "Okay, folks, let's all get to our places. It's time to go to it."

Mansard held up the leads that were destined to fit into the plugs in his neck. He stared at the gold connectors and spoke to nobody in particular. "It's amazing, isn't it? The Russians are colonizing Mars. The Japanese have DNI, and the Home of the Brave has Jesus, nuclear power stations, and fake miracles." He eased the two plugs into his neck receptors. "Let's commit ourselves a felony."

Direct neutral interface – DNI – was a federal crime in the United States. The sin of cybercation could cost the perpetrator five to ten in a camp. Congress with a machine had been deemed to be an abomination in the eyes of God and legislated against accordingly. The fact that with the coming of artificial intelligence many machines were potentially smarter than Larry Faithful and the majority of his cabinet did not count for anything. In the new America prejudice prevailed. God-fearing folks did not run wires into their heads and turn themselves into some kind of Frankenstein monsters. The net result was that the country was becoming increasingly backward, a victim of its own ideological struggle with the Japanese.

Of course Mansard and the others in his crew who wore plugs were in no danger of arrest – not until the day came when they were really of no more use to the hierarchy. If or when that happened, it would not really matter. In that unpleasant eventuality, cybercation and neuromancy would be just two more charges way down on a long list of crimes that would be heralded by first-degree heresy. Even the Faithful administration was aware that software-based systems were pissing in the dark without DNI. The military had DNI, as did the major corporations, the remaining airlines, and even the deacons themselves. The real purpose of DNI prohibition was to stop potential kid cowboy hackers from interfacing their way beyond the reach of the thought control of Jesus.

Mansard experienced the unpleasant lurch of reality as he melded with the control software. It was a little too much like baring his innermost being to be strictly comfortable – it was a yielding to something bigger that himself. Each time he melded, he felt the loss of his strict singular identity. The physical leads that ran to the console and the mental channels that were opened to the whole of the complex system made him a component in an open-ended matrix that was part cybernetic and part human. That loss of self was, on its own, akin to a religious experience. Maybe that was why the hierarchy appeared so threatened by DNI. They probably saw it as competition.

What Mansard thought of as his second eyes came on and, with them, the exhilaration that followed the fear. The sheer depth of shared perception was what made jacking in such a source of pure excitement. He had been blind but now could see. The religious parallels always came thick and fast when anyone tried to describe the full depths of the DNI experience. Mansard was very much aware of the fact that, as the director of the whole operation. he occupied a unique position. They were his fantasies that were being projected as an illusion of light and form, and it was his will that directed the coordinated effort. He was the pivotal point around which everything else revolved. I am the cyberking; I can do anything. When anyone asked him how it felt to have that almost otherwordly power at his disposal, he had a stock reply. "From the top, you can see for fucking miles."

In a way, it was the absolute unvarnished truth. That was what the second eyes were really all about. Subjectively to the left and right of his physical vision, they provided an electronic overview of the entire control. "What can I tell you? I'm a visual artist, not a poet. It's like full-color radar – that's the only way that I can describe it." In that, he somewhat underplayed the truth. It might look like color radar, but it felt like playing God. His kingdom, the matrix, was laid out in front of him, a vast glowing landscape tailored to his hands and mind. If he thought it, it was done. The sense of omnipotence was all-consuming. About the only thing that rivaled it was the sense of the infinite. Although the second eyes did not show him anything but the single special-effects matrix, there was a awareness that, beyond the limits of his own universe, others existed. They were out there, glowing, distant things like island nebulae, linked by fiber optics or microwaves as surely as the stars are linked by mass energy and time. It was at that point that he envied the Japanese hardcore DNI ronin who had moved out in that space and freely roamed between the matrices. "One day," he told himself. "One day." In the meantime, even as limited as his circumstances were, he had enough consolations.

"Power!" Mansard broke the quiet in the control booth with a maniacal, mad-scientist laugh. "Let's bring up the power."

There were a number of smiles around the booth. The crew were all regulars and well aware of Mansard's flights of ego. Mansard moved back into the physical world and acknowledged the response with a nod. Then he was back to business.

"Bring the power up slow and be careful of surge. It's my brain in here."

He waited quietly while the crew built power and ran through the preflight. When his eyes had first come on, the image of the matrix had been a pale, ethereal thing, like a city in the dark, seen from a high and distant aircraft. Once power was fed into it, it came to shimmering life. As the dawnglow of first powerup surrounded Charlie Mansard, he realized just how big this job was. He had never handled anything this huge. It had looked manageable on paper and even in the miniaturisations, but now that he was confronted by the full-scale reality, he was not so sure.

"I'm going to need a drink after this sucker."

Jimmy Gadd was inside his head. "You always need a drink."

"Get out of my head, Gadd."

"Just reminding you that you aren't the only one who's jacked in."

Mansard sighed. In some respects he was the only one who was actually jacked in. He was the one in control. Most of the others on the crew who were on DNI would go through the show in a blissful half trance as they ran their functions. As more and more power was fed in, he started to move toward the center of the matrix. The control functions came to him as he moved forward. This was the subjective perception of entering the full interface.

"Damn, this really is big."

He was not even trying to run the Four Horsemen set piece himself. That would be controlled by its own program. Maybe he should have split the unit and used two controllers. He was almost at the center position. It was far too late for second thoughts, and what the hell, anyway. If he could not hack his own show he deserved to die trying.

There was a babble of audio at the periphery of his perception. Proverb's sound crew was syncing in. An alarm tone sounded, and the matrix flashed. That was immediately followed by an override voice.

"Showtime in ten minutes."