Ascendancies (48 page)

Wolverine opened the passenger door and climbed down, with arthritic awkwardness. The tires stank direly of scorched rubber. “I'm sure that I can call a taxi here, young man,” she told Starlitz, hanging to the door like a drunk from a lamp-post. “Never you mind about little me…”

Starlitz was fiddling with his broadband scanner-set, below the dash. He looked up sharply. “Right. You clean now?”

“What?” Wolverine said.

“Are you
holding?”

“I beg your pardon?”

Starlitz gritted his teeth. “Do you have any
illegal drugs?
On your person? Right now?”

“Oh. No. I gave them all to you!”

“Great. Then stick right by the payphones till your taxi comes. If anyone gives you any kind of shit, scream like hell and dial 9-1-1.”

“All right,” Wolverine said bravely. “I understand. Anything else?”

“Yeah. Shut the door,” Starlitz said. Wolverine closed the door gently. “And lose that fuckin' ugly hat,” Starlitz muttered.

Vanna heaved the leaky stuffed toys into Wolverine's arms, kissed her cheek briefly and awkwardly, then ran to the back of the van. “Split!” she yelled. Starlitz threw it into reverse and the rear doors banged shut.

Wolverine waved dazedly as she stood beside the florist's dumpster.

“I'm gonna take 26 West,” Starlitz announced.

“You're kidding,” Mr. Judy said, clambering into the front passenger seat. She tugged her harness tight as they pulled out of the mall's parking lot. “That's miles out of our way! Why?”

Starlitz shrugged. “Mystical Zen intuition.”

Mr. Judy frowned at him, rubbing a bruise on her thigh. “Look, don't even start on me with that crap, Leggy.”

A distant trucker's voice drawled from the scanner.
“So then I tell him, look, Alar is downright good for kids, it kills pinworms for one thing
…” Starlitz punched the radio back onto channel-scan.

Mr. Judy bent to turn down the hiss.

“Leave it,” Starlitz said. “ELINT traffic intercept. Standard evasive tactics.”

“Look, Starlitz,” Mr. Judy said, “were you ever in the U.S. Army?”

“No…”

“Then don't
talk
like you were in the goddamn Army. Say something normal. Say something like ‘maybe we can overhear what they say.'” Mr. Judy fetched a pad of Post-It notes and a pencil-stub from the glove compartment.

“I think our fax just blew a chip,” Vanna announced mournfully from the back. “All its little red lights are blinking.”

“Small wonder! Mr. Zen Intuition here was driving like a fucking maniac,” Mr. Judy said. She groaned. “Remind me to wrap some padding on those goddamned metal uprights. I feel like I've been nunchucked.”

An excited voice burst scratchily from the scanner. “
Where is Big Fish? Repeat, where is Big Fish? What was their last heading? Ten-six, Salvation!
”

“This is Salvation,”
a second voice replied.
“Calm the heck down, for pete's sake! We've got the description now. We'll pick 'em up on 101 South if we have to. Over.”

“Bingo,” Mr. Judy exulted. “Citizen's Band channel 13.” She made a quick note on her Post-It pad.

Starlitz rubbed his stubbled chin. “Good thing we avoided Highway 101.”

“Don't be smug, Leggy.”

The CB spoke up again.
“This is Isaiah, everybody. On Tenth and, uh, Sherbrooke, okay? I don't think they could have possibly come this far, over.”

“Heck no they couldn't,”
Salvation said angrily.
“What in blazes are you doing over into Sector B? Get back to Sector A, over.”

“Ezekiel here,”
said another voice.
“We're in A, but we surmise they must have parked somewhere. That sounds reasonable, doesn't it? Uhm, over…”

“No air chatter, over,”
Salvation commanded. His signal was fading.

“‘Salvation,' ‘Ezekiel,' and ‘Isaiah,'” Vanna said. “Wow, their handles really suck!”

“I know, I know,” Mr. Judy said. “Mother of God, the bastards are swarming like locusts. I can't understand this!”

Starlitz sighed patiently. “Look, Jude. There's nothing to understand, okay? Somebody must have finked. That little coven of yours has got an informer.”

“No way!” Vanna said.

“Yes way. One of your favorite backwoods mantra-chanters is a pro-life plant, okay? They knew we were coming here. Maybe they didn't know everything, but they sure knew enough to stake us out.”

Mr. Judy clenched her small, gnarled fists and stared out the windshield, biting her lip. “Maybe it was Wolverine's people that leaked! Ever think of that?”

“If it were Wolverine, they'd have hit us at the docks,” Starlitz said. “You're being a sap, Jude. Your problem is, you don't think there's any pro-life woman smart enough to run a scam on the sisters. Come on, get real! It doesn't take a genius to wear chi-pants and tattoo a yin-yang on your tit.”

Mr. Judy tugged at the front of her jersey. “Thanks a lot. Creep.”

Starlitz shrugged. “The underground-right are as smart as you are, easy. They know everything they wanna know about the ‘Liberal Humanist Movement.' Hell, they've all got subscriptions to
Utne Reader.”

“So what do you think we should do?”

Starlitz grinned. “This gig of yours is blown, so let's forget it. Brand-new deal, okay? Let's card us a big rental-car and call the New Caledonians.”

“No way,” Mr. Judy said. “No way we're losing this van! Besides, I draw the line at credit-card theft. Unless the victim is Republican.”

“And no way we're calling any Polynesians, anyway,” Vanna said.

Starlitz dug in his vest for a cigarette, lit it, and blew ochre smoke across the windshield. “I'll trade you,” he said at last. “You tell me where the kid is. You can borrow my van for a while, and I'll rent a V-8 and do the Utah run all by myself.”

“Fat chance!” Mr. Judy shouted. “Last time we trusted you with our stash, we didn't see you for three fucking years!”

“And we're not telling you anything more about the kid until this is all over,” Vanna said firmly.

Starlitz snorted smoke. “You think
I
got any use for a wimpy abortion drug? Hell, RU-486 isn't even
illegal
in most other countries. Lemme deliver it—heck, I'll even get you a receipt. And when I'm back, we all go meet the kid. Just like we agreed before. If that goes okay, I might even throw in the van later. Deal?”

“No deal,” Mr. Judy said.

“Think about it. It's really a lot easier.”

Mr. Judy silently peeled the Post-It and slapped it on the scanner.

“Don't you make trouble for us, Leggy,” Vanna spoke up. “You don't know anything! You don't know who we're meeting. You don't know the passwords. You don't know the time or the place.” Vanna took a breath. “You don't even know which one of us is the kid's real mother.”

“You act like that's my fault,” Starlitz said. “That's not the way I remember it.” He grinned, a curl of ginseng smoke escaping his back molars. “Anyway, I can guess.”

“No you can't!” Vanna said heatedly. “Don't you dare guess!”

“Forget it,” Mr. Judy said. “We shouldn't even talk about the kid. We shouldn't have mentioned the kid. We won't talk about the kid anymore. Not till the trip's over and we've done the deal just like we agreed back at the commune.”

“Fine,” Starlitz sneered. “That's real handy. For you, anyway.”

Mr. Judy cracked her knuckles. “Okay, call me stupid. Call me reckless. I admit that, okay? And if me and Vanna hadn't both been
incredibly
stupid
and
reckless around you three years ago, pal, there wouldn't even
be
any kid now.”

Starlitz said nothing.

Mr. Judy sniffed. “What happened that time—between the three of us—we never talk about it, I know that…And for God's sake, after this, let's not ever talk about it again.” She lowered her voice. “But privately—that thing we did—with the tequila and the benwa balls and the big rubber hammock—yeah, I remember it just as well as you do, and I blame myself for that. Completely. I take that entire karmic burden upon myself. I absorb all guilt trips, I take upon myself complete moral accountability. Okay, Leggy? I'm responsible, you're not responsible. You happy now?”

“Sure thing,” Starlitz said sullenly, grinding out his cigarette.

They drove on then, in ominous silence, for two full hours: through Portland and up the Columbia River Valley. Vanna finally broke the ice again by passing out tofu-loaf, Ginseng Rush, and rice cakes.

“We've lost 'em good,” Mr. Judy decided.

“Maybe,” Starlitz said. There had been no traffic on Channel 13, except the usual truck farmers, speedballers and lot lizards. “But the situation's changed some now…Why don't you phone your friends back at the commune? Tell 'em to dig up my arsenal and Fed-Ex us three Mac-10s to Pocatello. With plenty of ammo.”

Mr. Judy frowned. “So we can risk dope
and
federal weapons charges? Forget it! We said no guns, remember? I don't think you even ought to have that goddamn pistol.”

“Sure,” Starlitz sneered, “so when they pull up right next to us at sixty miles per, and cut loose on us with a repeating combat-shotgun…” Vanna flinched. “Yeah,” Starlitz continued, “Judy here is gonna do a Chuck Norris out the window and side-kick 'em right through their windshield!” He patted his holstered gun. “Fuckin' black belts…I've seen acidheads with more sense!”

“And I've seen you with a loaded Ingram!” Vanna retorted. “I'd rather face a hundred right-to-lifers.”

“Oh stop it,” Mr. Judy said. “You're both making trouble for nothing. We lost 'em, remember? They're probably still hunting us on 101 South. We got a big lead now.” She munched her last rice cake. “If we had any sense, we'd take a couple hours and completely change this van's appearance. Vanna's pretty good with graphics. We can buy paint at an auto store and re-do our van like a diaper service. Something a lot less macho than white pearlized paint with two big chrome TV logos.”

“It's not
your
van,” Starlitz said angrily. “It's
my
van, and you're not putting any crappy paint on it. Anyway, we've
got
to look like a TV van. What if somebody looks in the window and sees all this equipment? You can't get more suspicious and obvious than a van full of monitors that's painted like some wimpy diaper service. Everybody'll think we're the goddamned FBI.”

“Okay, okay, have it your way,” Mr. Judy shrugged. She put on a pair of black drugstore Polaroids. “We'll just take it easy. Keep a low profile. We'll make it fine.”

They spent the night in a lot in a campground near a state park on the Oregon-Idaho border. The lots were a bargain for the TV van, for its demand for electrical power was enormous, and rental campgrounds offered cheap hookups. Judy and Vanna slept outside in a hemispherical, bright pink alpine tent. Starlitz slept inside the van.

Next morning they were enjoying three bowls of muesli when an open-faced young man in a lumberjack shirt and overalls meandered up, carrying a rubber-antennaed cellular phone.

“Good morning,” he said.

“Hi,” Mr. Judy said, pausing in mid-spoon.

“Spend a pleasant night?”

“Why don't you guys install proper telephone hookups here?” Mr. Judy demanded. “We need copper-cable. You know, twisted-pair.”

“Oh I'm sorry, I don't run this campground,” the young man apologized, propping one booted foot on the edge of their wooden picnic table. “You see, I just happen to live in this area.” He cleared his throat. “I thought we might counsel together about your activities.”

“Huh?” Vanna said.

“I got an alarm posted on my Christian BBS last night,” the young man told them. “Got up at five a.m., and spent the whole morning lookin' for you and this van.” He pointed with his thumb. “You're the people who import abortion pills.” He looked at them soberly. “Word's out about you all over our network.”

Mr. Judy put down her muesli spoon with an unsteady hand. “You've made a mistake.”

“Don't worry, I won't hurt you,” the young man said. “I'm just a regular guy. My name's Charles. That's my car right over there.” Charles pointed to a rust-spotted station-wagon with Idaho plates. “My wife's in there—Monica—and our little kid Jimmy.” He turned and waved. Monica, in the driver's seat, waved back. She wore sunglasses and a head-kerchief. She looked very anxious.

Jimmy was asleep in the back in a toddler's safety-seat. Apparently getting up early had been too much for the tyke.

“Our group is strictly nonviolent,” Charles said.

“Gosh, that's swell,” Starlitz said, relaxing visibly. He splashed a little more bottled goat-milk into his muesli.

“Violence against the unborn is wrong,” Charles said steadily. “It's not a ‘choice,' it's a
child
. You're spreading a Frankenstein technology that lets women poison and murder their own unborn children. And they can do it in complete stealth.”

“You mean in complete privacy,” Vanna said.

Mr. Judy knocked her cheap plastic bowl aside and leapt to her feet. “Don't even talk to him, Vanna! Leggy, start the van, let's get out of here!”

Starlitz looked up in annoyance from his half-finished cereal. “Are you kidding? There's only one of him. I'm not through eating yet. Kick his ass!”

Mr. Judy glanced from side to side, warily. She glared at Charles, then hitched up her pants and settled into a menacing kung-fu crouch. “Go away! We don't want you here.”

“It's my moral duty to bear witness to evil,” Charles told her mildly, showing her his open hands. “I'm not armed, and I mean you no harm. If you feel you must hit me, then I can't prevent you. But you're very wrong to answer words with blows.”