The Jonah Kit by Ian Watson

Author:Ian Watson [Watson, Ian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science fiction
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Sixteen

A motorcycle gang with SATAN’S SLAVES painted on their fuel tanks in phosphorescent glitter had arrived at the barbed wire fence and were wheeling about, revving their engines and scattering dust. Tired soldiers watched them through binoculars from under the makeshift sunshades they’d run up on top of the half-tracks, while the off-duty soldiers sprawled dozing on camp beds in the three open-bottomed marquees.

Ruth and Morelli watched them too, sitting in the Sierra parked on the Mezapico side of the military vehicles.

Richard had left his binoculars in the glove compartment. Morelli used them to read off the Slaves’ name.

“See the worshippers gather, Ruth!” he exclaimed, with a grim note of vindication, triumph almost.

Sexuality stirred in Ruth as she stared at the motor cycle gang. She visualized the blond newsman as one of them, his crewcut grown long, green forage cap discarded in favour of a Nazi crash helmet; the scar on his cheek, result now of a raking with a cycle chain during some rumble of Angels…

But the helicopter that ferried in more soldiers, to match the build-up of pilgrims on the other side, had borne the blond man back to the City with some of the other newsmen.

A series of vivid cartoon stills of him raping her in Angel gear presented itself to her imagination. She closed her eyes to concentrate on the vibrating humiliation of it. The presence of the impotent, fiery Italian in the passenger seat beside her enhanced her fantasy. He was so much more poignant an escort than Richard Kimble. Gianfranco knew; he just couldn’t. His intense dammed-up energy wound a web of searing mental electricity around her that cocooned her for the time being from Paul’s new Promethean countenance…

Relaxing, she re-opened her eyes.

Morelli was staring at her intent, pinched, sweat-flushed face with revulsion and fascination.

Suspiciously she sniffed the air. At the height of her fantasy, she could have sworn she’d detected a tang of the blond newsman’s shave lotion… Gianfranco was wearing a splash of it. Her barbecue boyfriend had complained about the aerosol can disappearing from his luggage. So Gianfranco had stolen it? How comical! An inner laugh rocked her, giving her fantasy one last glorious twist. Where that man had been giving off the appropriate male musk for her, however, the Italian seemed to be wearing antiseptic.

Those Satan’s Slaves must stink of sweat and grease and marijuana and dried jissom—she was sure!

• • •

The Angels wheeled, scattering dust.

The desert resembled a vast inhabited used-car lot, with the hundreds of vehicles parked about at random off the road. Even carts and bicycles. Some shacks had been run up out of cardboard and corrugated iron, scavenged from somewhere. Really they were little more than roofs on poles, but people cooked in them, and sold enchiladas, tortillas, tequila, beer. An air of exhaustion hung over the mass of people. Those who weren’t dozing in cars or under lorries were squatting in hunched rows facing the wire and Mount Mezapico beyond as though waiting for a

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