The Night of the Long Knives

oul, as in th

foul, strange

am

very slowly rolled over and there she was, sitting on the corner of the blanket not two feet from me, combing her

former were rolled up to her knees and the

ing me you might say, quite dream

d back

as l

had to be someth

Just a solitary trifle-not

gs can sometimes be the most

nuation of her forehead scar deep back across her scalp. Now with a movement that was swift though not hurried-looking

ht us closer. And she shouldn't have stopped smiling at just that moment. Didn't she realize I loved that blaze on

What right had she to know about the nearly-healed ulcer on my left shin?-that was a piece of information worth a man's life in a fight. What right had she to cover up, any

le coffee inside me, or even if there'd been some hot breakfast to eat at that moment, I'd have

day ahead of me in which there'd be an opportunity for me to straighten out my feelings

even rarer commodity in the De

t she was merely being amusingly coquettish about her bald streak and her hair, that it was nat

ple to get along together in the Deathlands, even for a while, is never to hide anything and never to make a move that doesn't have an immediate clear explanation. You can't talk, you s

r gaucheries, she was unscrewing the comb from her wrist-an

mine any more than she was showing hers, except for her stopping smili

in. That's the trouble, you know, with sex as a solution to the problem of the two urges. It's fine while it las

but Old Urge Number One would be there and growing, mostly under cover, all the time. Of course there were th

t a pitfall for their alky-powered jeep and wrecked it and them, how when our haul turned out to be unexpectedly big the four of us left from the kill chummied up and padded down together and amused each other for a while and played games, you might say. Why, at one point we even had an old crank phonogr

killed off her last set of girlfriends, or

s the white sands, wailing? Did they still have free love in Pacific Palisades? Did she know there'd been a pitched battle fought by expeditionary forces from Ouachita and Savannah Fortress? Over the loot of Birmingham, apparently, after yellow fever had finished off that principality. Had she rooted out any "observers" lately?-some of the "civilized" communities, the more "scientific" ones, try to maintain a few weather stations and the like in the Deathlands, camouflaging them elaborately and manning them with one or two impudent characters to whom we give a hard time if we uncover them. Had she heard the tale that

re going particularly well, even take a chance on talking a little about our childhoods, about how things were before the Last War (though she was almost too young for that)-about th

techniques of surviving and staying sane or at least functional-that would be too imprudent, it would go too much against the grain of any player of the murder game. Would I tell her, or anyone, about how I worked the ruses of playing dead and disguising myself as a woman, about my trick

tured" communities, memories that were nothing but melancholy given concrete form. The melancholy is easiest to bear when it's the diffused background for everything; and all garbage is be

e'd replaced the comb with an inoffensive-looking pair of light pliers and was doing up her hair with the metal

hat way. Her face was a little flat, but it was you

c this morning, my mind as clear as a bottle of White Rock you find miraculously unbroke

clutch (I gave myself that pat on the back), and that she wouldn't have to be plagued and ha

me and a protector, knowing she was kidding herself, that it was the

woman, what whetted my interest, so she could keep that roused as l

asonable expectations by virtue of some incalculable resistance to the ills of radioactivity, quite often find we've escaped sterility too. If s

a man and so had always better be sure she gets in the first blow. She would be thinking that I was a realist myself and a smart man, one able to understand her predicament quite clearly-an

cted yourself a week or a month into the future and you can't live the intervening time any more because you've already imagined it in detail. People who live in communities, even the cultural queers of our

o a one night stand. Oh, there was no question about it, this girl and I were finished, right this minute, as of

t of tools for her stump, which like any good mechanic she'd lined up neatly on the edge of the blanket-the hook, the comb, a long telescoping fork, a c

from the start, though it sounded as if it were very dee

t. Elmo's fire! Three times it glowed that way, so bright we could see

e last moment, paradoxically,

I were buddies again, buddies to be relied on in a pinch, for the duration of the threat at least. No need to say so or to reassure each other of the

s and boots, slapped in my teeth, thrust the blanket and knapsack into the shallow cave under th

f so it made a sling for the maimed arm-I wondered why but had no time to waste guessing, even if I'd wanted to, for at that moment a small dull

along with it her dart gun. I caught her idea

ed when one of its very stubby wings or vanes touched a corner pillar of the cracking plant. The plane was moving in too slow a glide to be wr

t landed on the freeway with a scuffing noise not fifty feet from us. You couldn't exa

opped blond hair, face and hands richly tanned, the rest of him covered by trim garments of a gleaming gray. He must have weighed as much as the

gy muscles and ulcers and half-rotted stomachs and half-arrested cancers, he had to look kind too-the sort of man who would put you to bed and tak

s, the girl and I scrambled up onto the freeway and scurried toward the man from the plane, cunningly swinging away from each other so tha

s all twisted, but at the same time she was accidently showing her breasts-I remember thinking you won't distract this breed bull that way, sister, he probably has a harem of six-foot heifers. I had my head thrown back and my hands stretched out supplicatingly. Meanwhile the both of us were babbling a blue streak. I was rapidly croaking something like, "Mister for God's sake save my pal he's hurt a lot worse'n I am not

closer to this guy, which was all that counted. He pointed his gun at me and then I could see him hesitate

of hooting at us and waving us off with his le

ept that we'd been all set to kill each other when he dropped in. Our muscles and nerves and minds were keyed for instan

I'd stop dead, as if completely cowed by the threat of his weapon, and as he took note of it she'd go in a little further, and as his gaze shifted to her she'd stop dead and I'd go in another foot and then

. I could tell, you see, that he'd finally steeled himself and we still weren't quite close enough. He wasn't as tame as I'd

cracking plant, it had a note of anguish and warning, yet at the same time it was weak and almost faltering you might say and squeaky at t

ray for in the act of shooting me down he

what his gun did to you. My right arm, which was the part he'd covered, just went dead and I finished my lunge slamming up against

with a slow slash, thank God, but with a high, slicing t

fan of blood sprayed

at happened to come handiest at the time. The point went through his flesh like nothing and jarred against his spine with a violen

his back, giving his skull a murderous crack on the concrete for good measure. He lay t

ugh obviously not being directed by him as of now. And

e he'd dropped it, to make sure she got it ahead of me. She snatched, yes-an

scent puddle. A rill of blood snaked out from the pool around his hea

chemical explosives, though I already knew it operated on other principles from the way it had been used to paralyze me. More to the point, it showed t

ke the blood-as we shifted our gaze back from the puddle to the dead man, we saw that at three points (points over where you'd expect

f learning to absorb shocks stoically-right at my elbow it seemed to

Deathlander if I ever saw one. He had a shock of bone-white hair, the rest of him that showed from his weathered gray clothing looked

he went on brightly, "Neat job too, I give you credit for