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HENTY'S FIST 1: GAUNTLET RUN birth of superhero

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"Wild but exciting. A grand job with plenty of irony."

New York Times on André Jute

"The fast lane just got faster!"

Dr Benjamin Pitman on Dakota Franklin

"Totally convincing fiction."

Colonel Jonathan Alford, Director, Institute for Strategic Studies/BBC World at One on Andrew McCoy

HENTY'S FIST 1: GAUNTLET RUN

birth of superhero

The Gauntlet Run is the toughest race ever run by man: across America with every man's hand turned against you from the statue of Liberty to the old US Mint in San Francisco. There the prize awaits you: $10 million and a full and free Presidential Pardon.

The Runner is marked for all to see by an indestructible Fist, keyed to his metabolism. If the Fist is removed without the key from the Mint in San Francisco, he dies. Between the Runner and the key stand the ruthless bounty hunters, the Syndicate's lethal odds fixers, the sinister Organ Bank chasers, the Humble & Poor Hunt, the US Air Force, and mobs of good citizens, all turned into bloodthirsty savages by the magnificent prize for tearing the Fist from the Runner — and the Presidential license that nothing done to the Runner shall be illegal.

Henty needs two million dollars to send her son Petey to the Artie stericlinic for treatment that will save his life. The care of The Caring Society is exhausted, her chicken farm already carries a second mortgage. Hopeless. But beautiful young Texas widows don't just give up. There is still the Gauntlet Run. To qualify, you have to be a criminal — so Henty robs a bank...

No woman has ever Run the Gauntlet. No Runner has ever survived the Gauntlet.

*

HENTY'S FIST 1: GAUNTLET RUN

birth of superhero

André Jute • Dakota Franklin • Andrew McCoy

*

CoolMain Press

HENTY'S FIST 1: GAUNTLET RUN

birth of superhero

Copyright © 2012, 2013 André Jute, Dakota Franklin, Andrew McCoy

The authors have asserted their moral right

First published by CoolMain Press 2012, 2013

http://www.coolmainpress.com.

This edition published at Smashwords 2014

Editor: Lisa Penington

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced by any means without the written permission of the publisher.

HENTY'S FIST 1: GAUNTLET RUN

birth of superhero

André Jute • Dakota Franklin • Andrew McCoy

*

CHAPTER 1

Time and again the history of the west proves that women can endure hardship better than men. — Michael Davie

The operating table and what was visible of the small body on it were intensely lit but immediately beyond the central glare the surgeons and nurses were in shadow and in the viewing gallery it was pitch dark. One half of the polished glass infuriatingly reflected Henty's face. The other half she could see through. Not that she wanted to look at the unspeakable things they were doing to Petey but she forced herself. If he could bear up bravely to the prospect of yet another operation, the least she could do was to look.

The chief surgeon threw a piece of Petey's flesh in the bin — like a butcher trimming fat from steak, thought Henty — and said something to his assistant before heading for the sterilock, his arms already coming out of his smock.

Henty stayed in the observation gallery only long enough to be certain they were putting Petey together again, that they hadn't lost him under the anesthetic. Henty had seen enough of hospitals to know that the calm tenor of the operating theatre would not be rippled because they lost one nine-year-old. They probably lost twenty or thirty people in that theatre every week. It was in the "Permanent" wing of the hospital. Henty grimaced for the twentieth time at the gravedigger's humor, or insensitivity that had promoted the choice of so inappropriate a euphemism for "incurable". Henty saw the second surgeon tell the anesthetist to take Petey down. She left the gallery quickly.

The chief surgeon was in the shower when she got to the locker-room next to scrubbing-up. His golf clubs stood in the corner. He came out of the shower. Henty politely turned her back to him. "Well?" he said.

"You're the doctor." She could almost feel him shrug irritably. He didn't say anything. "Dammit, he's only nine!"

"Yeah."

"It didn't work?"

"It worked all right. But there are new complications."

Henty sighed. Always new complications. "You mean another operation?"

"No. Henty, can't you give up?" The surgeon came and massaged her shoulders.

"No. He's all I got."

"Uh-huh. He's got a year.

Henty sagged and he held her by her shoulders for a moment, then turned to his golf clubs. Henty held on to the wash basin, then, seeing a shoe stand, sat down on it. "You don't pull any punches, do you?"

The surgeon looked at his feet. "Bastards will steal your clubs right out of your car in the basement." He hefted the bag over his shoulder. "Strangers I lie to, it's easier. Friends I tell the truth, get it over with. There's nothing more we can do for him except to give him a quick way out."

"No!o!o!o!o!" Without knowing it, Henty was shaking him by the lapels of his jacket.

Gently he disengaged her hands. "Don't be in such a hurry to decide. It's his pain, not yours." Henty reached out a hand to touch him as he turned away again, then jerked her hand back. "Please, isn't there anything you can do?"

He sighed deeply, took one more step, then turned decisively to her. "Maybe I shouldn't tell you this, but there's a long shot. The—"

"You can save him! Fantastic!"

"Not me. The man I studied under now has a stericlinic at Athabasca in the Arctic Circle. Mostly he handles bad radiation cases. But he's been trying his treatment on a few kids with a better than even success rate. I only heard about it last week."

"Hey, that's the best news I've heard in a long time!" Henty threw her arms around the surgeon and kissed him on both cheeks.

"Linda sends you her love too," he said drily.

"Yeah, Right, and this one is for her." She kissed him on the mouth.

They stood there grinning like teenagers caught necking behind the clubhouse. Then Henty resolutely pulled the strap to heft the golf clubs up on his shoulder and pushed him from the locker, saying, "Save some for Linda."

The bad news came a week later.

Petey was still in pain: they were keeping it down but Henty was watching carefully to make sure they didn't turn him into a junkie. Chris and Linda — she'd been a nurse before she married Chris — had told her how tempting it is for the nursing staff to make life easy for themselves by doping up the patients, even more so when they could rationalize their actions as making life more tolerable for the poor unfortunates.

Petey was so determined to be cheerful that she had a hard time not bursting into tears every time she saw his young face strained by lines of pain.

The smile slid from her face as she came out of his room to the insistent broadcast announcement that this was the last warning, all visitors must now leave or be penalized. A woman of about fifty with pink hair and a pink dress was standing in the passage, waiting for Henty. The woman held a clipboard in her hand and one foot encased in a pink oxford up against the wall. She was totally at ease but Henty stiffened when she saw her, then looked expectant.

"You've been here often enough to know better than to overstay official visiting hours," the woman reprimanded her primly.

"Sorry," Henty said contritely. "I'll try to do better."

"You don't know how fortunate your kid is to find a bed here. There's not a hospital for two hundred miles where the waiting list is less than three years."

Henty felt like saying. All right, all right, don't rub it in! Instead, she swallowed and said, for Petey. "I know and we're very grateful. You got news from upstairs?"

The pink woman pursed her lips as if faced with an impertinent, curious child. "The Administrator decided resources do not presently permit us to send you son to the Arctic Circle."

For a long moment Henty was too stunned to say anything and when she recovered her breath all she could manage was, weakly, "But...when?"

The pink woman was shocked. "We don't question The Caring Society's decisions!"

"Petey's got less than a year to live," Henty insisted. "If he doesn't go soon, he'll die!"

"Don't you understand?" snapped the pink woman irritably. "Your son has worn out the care of The Caring Society."

"His name is Petey. Would it hurt you to say it?"

The pink woman looked as if she'd just won a big bet on the week's Gauntlet Runner. "He's holding up a bed that's needed for somebody else," she said silkily, spitefully.

"You mean, the sooner he dies, the better?"

"The President told us: People are our most plentiful asset."

Henty pulled herself together. Arguing with this harpy would get her nowhere. "What's the appeals procedure?"

"There isn't one." The pink woman savored the words. "The Administrator's decision is final. Good citizens don't question the decisions of The Caring Society. It always does what's best for people. For all the people."

"Can I speak to the Administrator please?"

"Under no circumstances," said the pink lady with obvious satisfaction and turned on her heel.

"Hey!"

The pink woman turned impatiently, rejection pursing her mouth. "What is it now?"

"You really should change your dressmaker. That dress looks like a prison warder's uniform."

On the pink woman's scrawny bosom her pink and blue badge of office glinted: around the outside the words The Caring Society, across the middle her rank: Supervisor. She glared venom at Henty, then spun and stalked off, her hard heels beating an echoing tattoo in the hospital corridor.

Henty's shoulders drooped. "Oh damn," she said. "Damn. Damn. Damn!" She beat her forehead against the wall three times to the rhythm of the curses.

CHAPTER 2

Henty's bank manager was a professionally jolly fat man. Usually she didn't mind him, even though he was a groper and a pain. Henty believed in live and let live.

But today he was deciding not to let Petey live. She knew it by the way he refused to meet her eyes and kept punching at the terminal keyboard and studying the screen long after he knew everything he needed to know.

"We can't extend our limit," he said at long last.

"What about the farm?"

"There's already a second mortgage on it."

"Well—"

"And you already owe the hospital another $85,000."

"How do you know that?"

He punched some buttons and watched the screen. "The normal way. Their computer told our computer."

"That's illegal, sharing memory banks."

The fat man smiled grimly. "Most people think so. But it's legal for the government and for government-sponsored or -guaranteed organizations. All the banks are guaranteed by the government, so we can find out anything we want to know about you." Now he was staring hungrily at her.

"What about the hospital giving out infor—"

"They're in The Caring Society, so it's legal for them. There's almost nobody it's illegal for."

"I got to have the money. Petey's dying."

His eyes slid over her like eels in a tank. "You're overextended right now. Can you meet the note due day after tomorrow?"

Henty just shook her head. He knew she didn't have the money, just as well as she did.

"See?" He snapped his terminal off. "Sorry," He grunted as he struggled out of his chair. Henty couldn't remember him ever standing up before. It was respect for the soon-dead.

Henty backed out of his office. At the door she stopped. "Please, isn't—"

The bank manager shook his head, his eyes on her breasts, and sat down. Her audience with him was over.

In the main hall of the bank, Henty paused to look at it, really to look — for the first time in years. When she was a little girl, there had been counters with customers on one side and clerks on the other side. Now there were only desks at which clerks talked on the phone or communed with their terminals. Through a haze of tears, Henty saw the open door of the vault in the far wall.

Petey would die because she was the only who cared whether he lived or died and she couldn't raise the money to keep him alive. "I wish Pop were alive," Henty said aloud. That gave her an idea and she almost ran out of the bank to her decrepit old truck.

CHAPTER 3

Henty skidded the truck to a halt outside the feed battery that served all the co-ops. As she jumped out, Old Sam. her helper, looked out from under his hat where he was dozing in the shade of the hopper.

"Oh, it's you. What's the hurry? The chickens aren't going anywhere. How's Petey?" He settled his hat back over his eyes.

"Dying." She watched him for reaction. Nothing. She prodded him with her boot.

"I heard you," he complained without taking his hat out of his eyes. "But what can I say to that? It's not polite to mention such things."

"Where did Pop keep the shotgun?"

He took the hat off to squint up at her. "Drugs would be less noisy and a lot kinder."

"Not that. The bank is going to foreclose in three days."

"That's different. It's in the box under your grandma's milk churn. Shells too."

"Thanks."

"A pleasure. Anything to help." Old Sam settled his hat back over his eyes. Henty was halfway to the truck when his brain caught up with his mouth. He shot up like red ants were invading his pants. "Goddammit, you don't! Standing up to the sheriff's bailiff with a gun is a hanging offence."

Henty couldn't suppress a smile but was careful to wipe it before turning to him. "I'm not that stupid. Sam, while I'm away, visit Petey in hospital, okay? And tell him I'm doing it for him."

"Sure. Always did like the boy. But what are you going to do with your daddy's shotgun?"

Henty smiled and shot off in the truck. In the mirror she could see Old Sam, taking off his hat and pulling at his lower lip as he stared after her. He was a good man and the new owners wouldn't be able to manage without him spannering the hopper.

Unless they mechanized everything, even the hopper... The half smile fell from her face. She stopped the truck between the sprawling old frame house her great-grandfather had built and the dairy her grandfather had built and which was still in use when she had been a little girl, before agribiz put any herd smaller than ten thousand cows in milk out of "the biz" as the agriweeklies called it. She took a step towards the dairy, hesitated, turned and went into the house. The next time she passed through here — if ever — it would belong to someone else. Agribiz would put a bulldozer through it the day after the bank sold them the land.

She wandered up to a small room under the eaves. A doll in a blue dress sat on a table. She hugged it to her.

"Cindy. Oh Cindy, how I wish I was six again!" Through the haze again over her eyes, she saw her golden mother giving her the doll, her father in the background stepping back from lighting the candles on the cake, using the same match on his pipe.

Hurriedly she put the doll down and stumbled from the room and down the stairs.

Petey's room. Comics. Model aeroplanes, one a model of the plane his father flew in the war from which he never returned. How brave he had looked in his uniform, how hard she had tried not to let the fear in her heart show on her face. Petey had been so small, he didn't even remember what his father looked like and the 3-D personrep on his bedside bureau showed only a handsome young man, nothing of the essential decency and strength.

Henty had to push hard at the door of her parents' bedroom. It was dusty; the old four-poster covered with cobwebs, an unused room in a too-large house. The last time she had been in it, her mother was dead and her father said as they stood beside the body. "Death can be beautiful." He had squeezed her hand and walked out and shot himself with his shotgun. After the bodies were removed, she had closed the door and never entered the room until today.

In her own, smaller bedroom, she stood just inside the door. She looked at the double-bed in which Petey was conceived because she and Jake had not had the money for a honeymoon away and were too proud to accept one as a gift from Pop. She smiled wryly at that young pride. She wasn't all that much older but now she would do anything for money. Anything.

Where she was going, she would need nothing from this room.

Through the window she saw Old Sam running up the dusty road. He had finally worked out her intention. She walked resolutely from the house, steeling herself not to look back. She passed the truck and went into the disused dairy. In here everything was covered with a layer of dust but she ignored that and hefted the heavy creamer from the wooden box on which it stood. The shotgun was inside the box, with cleaning equipment. And shells.

She took everything and carried it out to the truck. The shotgun she rested in the passenger foot well. The cleaning cotton and rod she put on the seat next to her

She drove out of the yard just as Old Sam came running up. He was puffing and his face was contorted with the urgency of stopping her.

Henty gave him a cheery wave of the hand as she drove out of the yard and took the turning to town. She never once looked back, though the temptation corded the muscles in her neck. There was parking right opposite the bank.

Henty sat in the truck, cleaning the shotgun. Once a sheriff's patrol car rolled past and a deputy shouted, "Hi there, Henty!" She raised a hand from her work to wave at them. She went to school with both of them. She finished cleaning the shotgun, loaded the repeater clip with shells, then opened the door of the truck.

CHAPTER 4

Nobody seemed to find it remarkable that she cradled a shotgun as she walked into the bank. In the main hall, she walked up to the desk with the sign, Chief Cashier.

"This is a stickup." She pointed the shotgun at him.

"Don't be silly, Henty," he said. "You know we don't keep any actual money here."

She turned to be certain the Watcheyes in the corners of the room got a good picture. "Take me to the vault."

"Is that thing loaded?"

"You better believe it." Henty swung the shotgun around and fired one shell into the floor at her feet.

"Shit! You're serious!"

"You're catching on fast." She swung the barrel to point at his stomach. The hubbub that arose when she attracted the attention of all the other square-eyed clerks by firing her shotgun now died down to an awed silence.

A white-haired clerk said. "Hey, I ain't been held up since we carried real money. Don't you know, Henty, we only keep credit cards in the vault?"

"Blank credit cards," Henty said for the benefit of the silently recording Watcheyes. "Take me to the vault," she repeated to the Chief Cashier, jabbing the shotgun at him. He scurried before her.

"You won't get to use them with your face plastered all over network vidi," the white-haired clerk said as Henty passed his desk. "Put that gun down and tell us it's a joke, huh? We all love you."

"And I love you, Frank. But this is business."

"Jesus!" The Chief Cashier was shaking but not so frightened he couldn't speak. "You're crazy. Here, take all the cards you want, just point that thing somewhere else."

"Hand me a box."

He reached inside the vault and gave Henty a box. She tucked it under her arm and started backing out. "Thanks."

"It's still not too late to call it a joke," Frank called to her, running his hand distractedly through his white hair. "You don't know the penalty for social hooliganism, do you?"

"I know."

"It's death, Henty. Think, goddammit!"

"I've thought, Frank, but thanks anyway. You got the alarm button?"

"Yeah. I got it."

"Hit it."

When he looked up from pressing the button, she was gone.

The patrol car caught up with her just over three miles from town. First Henty led them a bit of a chase on that narrow road, blocking them every time they tried to pass, by sashaying the tail of her truck across the snout of the patrol car. Then she heard the first shot. She looked in the mirror. The pistol was pointing skywards. It was the two deputies who greeted her in town. In high school, everybody called them Tom and Jerry because they were so unlike each other, yet inseparable. Another shot into the air. Henty decided it was time to pull over.

Jerry gunned the patrol car past her truck while she still slowed. Behind them came another car, this one with a Thompson threatening her from the passenger window, plus a riot gun from the rear seat. Behind the truck, two more sheriff's cars screeched to a halt. Armed deputies piled out and fell flat on the road to aim riot guns, pistols, tommies, teargas grenade throwers at her. Also a scoped sharpshooter's rifle from about ten feet away.

Henty sat tight, keeping her hands in clear view on the wheel, moving not a muscle, not even blinking. She didn't want some nervous rookie deputy to drill her.

When everybody was in place, Sheriff Jenner — another fat man but, thank god, not a jolly one — waddled up to the door of the truck, shouting, "Now don't shoot me in the back, you dumb mothers." To Henty, he said, "You just keep your hands in sight when you get out, huh? We don't want any accidents, do we?" He opened the truck door and stepped back.

"No. Sheriff," Henty said dutifully. She climbed out slowly, without sudden movements, keeping her hands high and away from her body.

"Now why would a nice girl like you want to do a silly thing like holding up a bank?" Sheriff Jenner asked her sadly. "You tell me that."

Henty didn't answer. But she smiled brilliantly at him.

CHAPTER 5

The easiest paths to take all head into a slough of despond: recession, confusion, apathy.

As far as we can see, it will be very hard to get to the desirable future, called "exuberant democracy" and much easier to get to an authoritative form of state concentration on social control, called "ceasarism." — Norman MacEachron

"Guilty as charged," said the foreman of the jury.

The lawyer The Caring Society had appointed for Henty sighed melodramatically for the network vidis. He fancied himself something of a crusader but had a hard time reconciling the ideals he would prefer to defend with his ambitions for political office.

"Before I pass sentence," the judge asked Henty, "do you have anything to say?"

Henty shook her head. "Let's get it over with."

The judge nodded but Henty's lawyer was on his feet. He waited for all the cameras — the ones from local and network affiliates as well as The Caring Society in the corners of the courtroom - to turn to him before he spoke. "Your Honor. I have stated before that my client is obviously insane and should be given permanently into the keeping of The Caring Society."

"Oh, sit down and shut up," Henty told him. "You're the one with the divided head. I know exactly what I'm doing"

The lawyer waited impatiently for Henty to finish.

The judge said. "Medical opinion tends to agree with the accused, Counsellor. She is sane. She knew what she was doing. She knows what she's doing now, though you and 1 have so far failed to perceive what's in her mind."

Henty nodded. This terrifying old man was a lot smarter than the young lawyer: he knew how to wait.

The lawyer didn't know when he was beaten. "Your Honor, I will let the record stand there on the subject of my client's sanity for review by any superior court to which judgment may be appealed."

The judge raised an eyebrow at Henty. "There will be no appeal," said Henty firmly.

The lawyer shouted. The judge shouted louder. He also had a gavel. Finally the lawyer shut up. The judge told the stenographer, "Strike the accused's remark about not appealing. All right. Counsellor, you have more on your mind."

"Thank you, Your Honor. May I be permitted to enter a plea for mercy?"

"Counsellor, you know as well as I that once the accused is found guilty of social hooliganism, no mitigating circumstances are allowed for in law."

"All the same, Your Honor, she attempted to rob that bank to raise money to take her dying son to the Arctic Circle for treatment that could save his life, one defenseless...

Henty whirled to face the lawyer. "This is demeaning. Sit down and wait, will you. Please!"

The lawyer subsided reluctantly, arranging his best long suffering profile to the cameras. Among other things, the judge said, "This is a clear cut case of social hooliganism. There was an attack on property, to wit a bank and, what is more, a bank guaranteed by the government and therefore part of The Caring Society. The accused confessed to the crime and that she knew the penalty when she committed the crime. We have seen film of the commission of the crime. None of the facts in this case are contested. The accused has been found guilty of the crime of social hooliganism. The law is clear. No mitigating pleas are permissible and the only admissible defense is that the accused is of unsound mind, in which case the only option is lifetime confinement in one of the sanatoria of The Caring Society. Expert medical opinion has found her sane, so that avenue is not open to us. I shall now deliver the only sentence the law permits. The accused will stand to receive sentence."

Henty stood. She looked around the courtroom without really listening. She had seen this popular entertainment many times on vidi.

When next she paid attention, the judge wore a black skullcap and was reading from a card the clerk held up for him. "...For which the penalty is death. You shall be taken from here to The Caring Society's Place of Eternal Life where within three days you will communicate to the Administrator your preference for entering the eternal life by electrocution, lethal injection or downing with your own hand the pill of permanent sleep as atonement for your crime upon and against society." The judge looked up. "Leave is given to appeal this sentence to the State Supreme Court."

The lawyer beamed.

The wardress touched Henty's sleeve. "Come along now."

CHAPTER 6

"Hold it!" Henty said in a voice that rang through the courtroom. She shrugged off the tugging hand. "There's a bit you didn't read, Your Honor." The judge, already on his way out, turned back to her.

"What?"

"You didn't read the whole formula."

"No, that's true. You have a right to hear the whole formula and, if it will make you happy, I will read it."

"It would make me happy."

Henty's lawyer put his face in his hands. He had finally caught on. The judge arranged himself, standing in front of his chair. The clerk came back from where he was already holding the door for the judge and picked up the card again. His finger pointed the place to the judge.

"In lieu of appealing this sentence, as final admission of your guilt, and to atone for your attack upon society by helping to assuage the bloodlust inherent in the upright ape in an overcrowded world, you may petition the President of the United States to allow you to run the gauntlet of the nation's disapproval."

Here the judge looked up. "You know, we don't read this out when sentencing women."

"Do I petition now or do I wait until you finish reading?" Henty enquired sweetly.

"Do you need any more proof she's crazy?" the lawyer demanded without rising.

The judge nodded absently to the lawyer and found his place on the card. "If the President graciously permits, you will run, a marked person, hunted by all right-thinking men and women, across the nation from New York to San Francisco. Should you reach San Francisco, there at the Old United States Mint awaits you a fortune beyond imagination in cash plus that which is beyond all earthly value: a full and free Presidential Pardon. The same prize awaits whoever should take the mark from your body and present it at the Mint. The petition must be made within three days of sentencing."

"I petition the President of the United States most humbly to let me become a Gauntlet Runner," Henty said immediately. The judge nodded. "Your petition is noted. I can see your plan now."

The judge sat down. "For the record, you are advised that no convicted criminal has ever reached the Mint in San Francisco to collect the ten million dollars and the Presidential Pardon. For myself, I will comment only that I consider the Gauntlet deplorable, a sickness of our society that turns us all into bounty hunters. That the running of the Gauntlet was instituted as a spectacle of entertainment rather than correction is signaled by the fact that the President also pardons all crimes committed by the convicted criminal en route to San Francisco and that courts in all States have precedents that the Gauntlet Runner under any and all circumstances has acted under provocation and attack and therefore in self-defense."

The judge waited for the gasps of the audience and their angry murmuring at his daring heresy to die away. "The Gauntlet Run," he continued inexorably. "is the gladiatorial Roman arena modernized. I condemn it as uncivilized and barbaric." The judge turned to stalk out.

"But an opportunity of last resort for one dying boy," Henty said as he came by her box.

"Good luck," she thought she heard him say.

CHAPTER 7

They wouldn't let her see Petey again: She was now a convicted, certified danger to society. But she had expected that. Petey would understand. Henty fretted through the ten days of tests the doctors required to decide whether she was fit to run the Gauntlet.

"We got to be sure you'll give the viewers a good run for their money," one young doctor told her.

"And the bounty hunters," Henty said, making conversation.

"Nah, they don't count."

"Except to hunt me."

"Sure, but they're all solidly for the President. Therefore they don't count. It's all those millions of viewers who turn on every night between nine and ten that really count, see. The President needs them docile."

"How? He's already elected?"

"So was the last one until the mob killed him. And you know why the mob killed him?"

"He wasn't winding down the war in Europe fast enough, they said."

"They said, yeah."

"Those rioters didn't look to me to care one way or the other about the war."

"Spot on! That was just the official excuse. What distinguished the reign of that particular President?"

"A lot of Gauntlet Runners who never made it out of New Jersey?"

"Yah. You learn right smart. He was unpopular because people were bored. Who was the most popular President we ever had?"

"Lyndon Milhaus Kennedy," Henty said without hesitation. "The Sole Begetter of The Caring Society."

"And of the Gauntlet Run," said the young doctor. "In his time, a couple of Runners even made it as far as California."

"Sure, when I was a little girl. But the bounty hunters weren't so well organized then."

"Never mind that. People don't ask the reasons. They just remember that a lot Runners got all the way across the country instead of getting wiped out in Newark. People want to see the Runners run. They don't want repeats of the Runners of the good old days filling in for Runners who didn't even live past Monday night's broadcast."

"That's show business."

"If the show's dull, people blame the producer. The President is the boss-producer of the Gauntlet Run. If the Runners lack guts, people get bored with the President and kill him."

"And that's your theory of why mobs storm the White House and kill Presidents?"

The young doctor grinned. "You got a better theory?"

"Aren't you worried that kind of talk will go on your record?" Henty pointed to the Watcheye in the corner of the ceiling.

"I wish somebody would pay attention long enough to give me a grant to research the whole question."

"You could try the Pentagon. They got to guard the White House, so maybe they're interested in why people want to knock off Presidents. Especially since the last three were generals."

"That's treason." The young doctor struck a pose, holding his profile to the camera.

"Vanity won't get you any grants. Am I going to pass? I feel fit."

"You're fit." He unstrapped the sonic probe from her arm. "You got a game plan?"

"If I had, I wouldn't broadcast it."

"You're going to be on camera almost every inch of your Run." He was scornful. "There's nowhere public there isn't a Public Safety Watcheye. So you lose nothing by telling."

Henty merely smiled enigmatically.

CHAPTER 8

A succession of visitors came to see Henty.

The woman from Beverly True Loves said, "You run our vidibooks, don't you?"

"Sorry. I don't have much time left over from raising chickens and visiting Petey in hospital. But I know your company. Weepies."

"We prefer to call it non-violent, life-affirming entertainment," the woman said with a smile. "Your story is a real tear jerker. We'll pay a quarter-million for the rights."

"I haven't time to film a vidibook."

"Don't worry, we'll get a ghost writer and a lookalike actress."

"You aren't to bother Petey in hospital."

"That's all right. The public doesn't like to see really sick people either. We'll get a child actor who looks interestingly pale without specifying exactly the wasting disease etc."

"Okay. It'll help pay Petey's hospital bills for a while."

Next came a man from the Syndicate, who told Henty, "Numbers on the Runners is now the biggest biz in bigbiz."

"So I've heard," Henty agreed politely. This guy wore green alligator shoes, so he must be something important in the Mob. He had a matching briefcase and two flunkies to carry it; maybe, Henty thought, they took turns.

"Let me not bore you with statistics, let me just say categorically and without fear of contradiction that the Gauntlet Numbers is bigger biz than the Pentagon-Silicon Valley complex together."

Henty whistled. She didn't know it was that big.

"A biz that big needs protection. You still with me?"

"I think so. If you don't fix it, you could lose your shirt."

"For that kind of blunt speaking, I'm not surprised you're in trouble."

"Sorry. I didn't mean to offend you."

"Okay. I'll let it pass this time." He waved his two strong arm men back to their positions against the wall of the interview room. "Now here's the deal. You're never going to make it to the Mint in San Francisco. So—"

"Oh, but I have every intention of collecting my ten million dollars and the Presidential Pardon right there at the Mint."

"Don't be stupid, woman. You can't do better than real tough guys like Louie 'Cement Shoes' Albertone and Frankie 'The Strangler' Nocheiones. And they never made it past Nevada. You gotta taka fall and your best deal is to take it with us. That way your take to your heirs is guaranteed. Forty-nine out of the last fifty Runners took their fall where we told them. Their relatives are rich. We stay in biz by keeping our word. Like it says in our vidiverts. We get our dues or we get our man." He stopped to give her time to digest this.

"What's your offer?"

"You take your fall to our people where and when we say and your son gets ten per cent."

"You want to pay me a million dollars for letting you kill me?" Henty kept her voice business-like.

"You got it in one, Sister. You gonna die anyway, so why not make it easy on yourself, huh?"

"That's a million over and above the ten million?"

"No. That's ten per cent of ten million. One million."

Henty decided to return to the money after satisfying some other areas of curiosity. "Where will you want me to give myself up to you?"

"That's it. You're the first woman ever accepted to Run—"

"I haven't been accepted yet."

"You will be. We're fixing it, okay? Now don't interrupt me again. You're the first woman ever to Run. So we reckon most punters will bet on you going down early. Maybe not even making Chicago. So we want you to hold out all the way to Nevada."

"And what if a freelance gets me before then?"

The man from the Syndicate shrugged. "You can't win 'em all. We'll make a dollar wherever you go down but if you make Nevada, we hit the mother lode."

Henty slid a letter across the table to him. "I need two million dollars to send my son to this clinic in the Arctic Circle for three years. That my price, win or lose, whether some freelance gets before Nevada or whether I turn myself over to you in Nevada."

He sat back in his chair to consider her. But not for long. "You got it all wrong, Sister. You don't make the terms. We do. Take it or leave it. First, if a freelance gets you before Nevada, you get nothing. Second, the flat rate for the job is ten per cent, one million bucks, capish? If we pay you more, every petty crim will think his price has gone up. You'll spoil the market for us."

"But you're going to get ten million from the government for killing me. And you're going to take billions in bets. What's an extra million to you?"

"It's not the million bucks. It's the precedent we don't want to set. You're being stupid, throwing away your life for nothing. Take the million."

"Sorry. It's not enough."

"The smaller outfits will offer you more, sure, but they won't pay after they bag you."

"Then I won't make a deal with them. I'll make my deal direct with the President of the United States. At the Mint in San Francisco."

The man from the syndicate snapped his green alligator briefcase shut. Both his flunkies jumped to grab it. There was a brief struggle before one got it.

"Maybe you boys should take turns," Henty suggested. They glared at her. Their Boss looked up from making a mark in a small green alligator bound book. "Don't interfere! I make book with myself on who gets it how often."

"Are you ahead?"

He scowled at her and stood. "If you change your mind about taking your fall with us, just tell the Administrator. He'll call me."

"You're not planning to fix it so I don't Run?" Henty asked anxiously.

"Nope, we're already taking more money on you than on any Runner ever before. Either way we can't lose. We just want to scoop the whole pot."

Henty's next visitor was from the Chaser Organ Bank. He was a pleasant enough appearing young man but he gave Henty the shivers before he even started his pitch.

"None of us want our existence to have been for nothing," he said confidentially, earnestly, pulling the chair closer, leaning forward for emphasis. "You are uniquely in a situation to help your fellow man, and woman of course, by donating your organs to the—"

"That's ghoulish. I'm not dead yet."

"Well—"

Henty didn't mind gangsters and tearjerkers telling her she was going to die but this man was trying to make a profit out of hypocrisy.

"How much?" she asked bluntly.

"We will give the remainder a decent burial without any charge whatsoever. The Chaser Bank is proud of—"

"The last Runner got a hundred thousand for his organs."

The young banker looked pained. "It is of course a delicate matter. Fifty thousand."

"I'm younger and you have a shortage of female donors for your organ bank. Quarter million."

For a moment he looked as if he would argue, then he said "Done!" so explosively that she knew it was suppressed triumph. She could have held out for more. "How will you find the body?" she asked out of genuine curiosity.

He filled in the amount and pushed the clipboard at her.

"We already filled in your son Peter's name as the beneficiary."

She checked the amount, signed her name next to each of the penciled crosses and gave the clipboard back.

"We'll know where you are." With the contract signed and in his briefcase, his tone changed. Now he was gloating openly. "We're in The Caring Society. We'll have you on Watcheye every step of the way. Anyway, we got our own hunter. You see, too often we get the bodies in very ragged condition. We like to take care of our property in our own way."

"Get out."

"A pleasure to buy you," he said as he backed out.

CHAPTER 9

That night, as she lay on the floor of her cell. doing her exercises — "Pull till it burns. Baby!" — she watched Gauntlet Runner on vidi. The week's Runner had not lasted past Tuesday morning and all three channels were using the public service law and order hour from nine to ten to give her a big build-up. She saw herself being visited by the publisher, the man from the Syndicate and the man from the Chaser Bank but someone had decided to call the man from the Syndicate her "financial adviser" and their words were edited to support the lie. Henty snorted. One of the commercials for the Chaser exhorted women to follow Henty's example.

"To rob banks?" Henty asked the vidi. She exercised until she couldn't move another muscle. It was the only way she could sleep.

She didn't want to die.

But she kept refusing all the offers from religious promoters to be a sponsored symbol of their particular — and some very peculiar — brands of salvation. One spot on Gauntlet Runner showed a Runner who stuck his Fist aloft like the statue of Liberty and declaimed, "We who are about to die, salute the True Cross." A rerun of his exploits showed him smashing an old lady in the face in Chicago. He'd also hijacked a plane in Denver but on the way to SF a private pilot had shot the airliner down, killing everybody in it, including the Runner. The indestructible Fist survived, though someone else took it from the intrepid red baron not too long afterwards.

Henty knew little more about Imperial Rome than can be gleaned from old movies, but "We who are about to die" rang a bell with her: the only time the judge who sentenced her had ever come to life was while inveighing against the gladiatorial practices of the new age. And it wasn't that she was letting pride come before Petey's life. The reverends weren't offering hard cash; instead they promised free tickets to their various mutually exclusive heavens. All of them had been inordinately shocked at her suggestion that they pay her for advertising their message.

CHAPTER 10

On Saturday, they fitted Henty with the Fist. First, the Administrator told the cameras a rehearsed speech about how the Fist was "society's mark of her evil. And whoever shall cut it from her and carry it to the Mint shall earn ten million dollars and a full and free Presidential Pardon direct from the White House."

Then they positioned her hand to clamp the Fist on.

"Hey! I'm a southpaw. If you clamp that thing on my left hand, I'll be helpless. It's my best hand."

"Don't be stupid," the young doctor whispered urgently in her ear. "You can hit anything with it and you won't feel a thing. If you let on, they'll put it on your right hand. I'm trying to help you."

Henty shut up.

They closed the form on her left hand and forearm. There was a brief stinging sensation and then she felt the power surging through her as the thing keyed to her metabolism. If she tried to take it off before she received the key to unlock it at the Mint in San Francisco, she would die.

CHAPTER 11

Who runs the place? — John Gunther

The work of domestic progress is controlled by a score or two of individuals who have shown a capacity to manage it. The work of internal government has become the task of controlling these men, who are socially as remote as heathen gods, alone worth knowing but never known, and who could tell nothing of political value if one skinned them alive. Most have nothing to tell, but are forces as dumb as dynamos, absorbed in the development of power. — Henry Adams

The Gauntlet Run started from the Statue of Liberty.

In the beginning, they had sent the Runner off at noon but soon the crowds became unmanageable. Attempts to start the Run from some quiet, more easily controlled small town had met with fierce resistance and the toppling of one President.

Literally: the mob threw him from the roof of the Capitol Building in DC.

Of the other venues suggested as starting points, only Liberty Bell found popular approval and crowd control would have been even more difficult. Now, to make it easier for New York's Finest, the Five Families charged by congress with keeping the Peace in the world's most populous city, among the world's most intransigent population, the Runner left in the early hours just before dawn when the metabolism of the metrops was sluggish.

"Listen," said a grizzled capo in full bulletproof gear, clutching his gas helmet in the crook of his arm. "It's especially bad because you're a woman, see?"

Henty nodded. "I saw them from the chopper as they brought me in. I thought the idea of starting in the middle of the night was so they wouldn't turn out."

"It's 'cos you're a woman, see?"

She looked up at the monitors showing the restless crowds with them on Liberty Island and waiting for her on the Manhattan, Brooklyn and New Jersey banks of the Hudson.

"Really taking the city apart. Mayor's been on phone twice already. Heads are going to roll," the capo added darkly. Henty had to concentrate to understand him: to her Texas ears his English was a foreign dialect delivered machinegun-fast.

"As long as it isn't my head," Henty said brightly. "I need it to get to the Mint in San Francisco."

The capo ignored the levity. "We gave them an extra ration of coke yesterday to keep them quiet but somebody must've slipped in some bad dope to het them up. There's people don't want you to get out of New York."

"But not you?"

"We got a big contract with New Jersey to get you out of here alive. I can't fail, I got a wife'n kids."

"That bad, huh?" I really should stop feeling sorry for gangsters. Henty told herself. I have troubles of my own.

"Yah. But don't worry; we'll do the job we contracted. You just do as I tell you and do it quickly, huh?"

"Sure."

"That's what I like to hear." He slapped Henty on the back and gave way to the vidirector who was hovering anxiously.

The vidirector put out a hand to steady Henty. "He doesn't know his own strength," he lisped admiringly. He pulled his glance back from the capo's broad back. "Now, here's how you stand, with the Fist up high, looking respectfully at the President, okay?"

He didn't wait for her reply but hurried away to where a holograph was being flashed into a circle on the floor.

"No, no! That's the president before last. The present Pressy is the one in the dark blue suit, in can 3C."

A girl brought Henty a cup of soup and offered her a pill.

"Thanks. Just the soup."

"You gonna need it." The girl held out the pill.

"Never take them."

"What're you, some kind of a freak?"

"I guess so."

The assistant stuffed the pill into her own mouth as if she feared Henty would change her mind. Immediately she seemed to grow three inches. "Don't say I didn't offer it to you."

Henty was suddenly tired of all these people. "Go play out your fantasies somewhere else." She turned to watch the President, the current one this time, walk out to his circle. She looked down to be sure she was standing in her own circle.

It was nearly time to go. She looked up fearfully at the monitor on the wall behind her. Outside the walls of Fort Wood there were fires on Liberty Island, and on both the New York and New Jersey shores, as the mob waiting for her became impatient and struck out at whatever was nearest. The absence of sound made the scenes of violence all the more frightening. The scene cut from a general view to the detail of a woman being raped; in the background two men were fighting with what looked like scythes. Henty wondered what New Yorkers could want with scythes.

"They doped my soup," she said when the irrelevance of the thought to her present dilemma struck her. She would still have to pass through that ugly crowd.

CHAPTER 12

The master monitor flashed up Grover Cleveland's dedication to the Statue, and a deep, meaningful voice read the words with feeling:

"We will not forget that Liberty has here made her home, nor shall her chosen altar be neglected."

The President pointed a finger at her. Henty stiffened.

"You were an evil person. Now you are an evil symbol. The Nation will hunt you. If you survive the Gauntlet, you will get a new start with money and a free Presidential Pardon signed by me. Now raise the Fist that is the mark of your evil so that all the people may see it."

Henty raised the Fist as she had been told. On the monitor she could see herself standing in front of the Statue of Liberty, her figure exactly the same shape as the great statue which had somehow become left-handed; the President was still pointing sternly at her. It was a viditrick, because they were deep in the bowels of old Fort Wood beneath the Statue of Liberty.

"Whoever will punish her evil against Society may bring that mark to the Mint in San Francisco," the President continued. "And receive the new life of a cash start and a free Pardon signed by me at the White House."

The President breathed deeply to expand his chest. He jerked the finger still pointed at Henty. "Nothing a citizen shall do to you will punishable as a crime. Now go and receive your punishment from the People of this great Nation!"

Henty realized this was it. The floor tilted to start her running. Her feet started moving as if of their own accord. As she ran out of the studio, a row of monitors lined the passage. On them the President said, "This is your President saying be good and goodbye for now." Immediately a credit flashed up: A PUBLIC SERVICE PROGRAM SPONSOR THE CHASER ORGAN BANK.

On an angled runway, New York's Finest awaited her. There was a huge reinforced glass structure standing on skirts of Lexan polycarbonate. The door stood open.

"It'll survive anything short of an atomic hit," the capo told Henty as she trotted past him.

The door slammed behind her. Henty faltered, then kept running as the glass cage moved to center itself over her, adjusting its speed to her pace.

Before her huge double doors swung open. The soldiers and button men of the Five Families had cleared the crowd back a hundred paces. A three-deep human chain held the mob there. The line surged forward, then was thrust back. Henty could almost feel their hatred reaching for her. Despite the protection of the glass walls, she shivered in fear. She looked over her shoulder but the big doors were just clanging shut. There would be no return to safety. She stumbled, heard the crowd roar, recovered her pace in the face of their bloodlust. One man vaulted right over the three-deep cordon of the Finest. He waved a placard. UNFAIR TO NOO YORK — WE WANT TO HUNT TOO. There was a zap of light from the cordon and the man with the placard fell.

The cordon broke and the crowd crashed over the bodies of what had moments ago been a human chain. Henty tried to outrun them but they were all around her. Her fear communicated to them, drove them to a frenzy. The first ones to reach her flung themselves upon the armored glass to claw for her, then were crushed against the glass by the weight of the bodies still surging forward behind them.

Henty reared away from them but there were more behind her, on her left, on her right.

"Just keep running." The capo's voice was in the capsule with her. "They can't get in."

Henty was still frightened almost witless but it was true. No matter on which side the mob was momentarily stronger, no matter how Henty cringed from some particularly hating, blood lusting face, the cube arranged itself dead center over her.

On one side a bunch of big men with long staves beat the mob back. When they cleared space along one side of the cube, some of them remained to hold the mob off while others came to run beside the glass wall. At a shouted command from their leader, they bent in unison to hook their fingers under the lexan skirts sealing the cube to the ground. Their intention was clear: they were going to overturn the glass cube and expose her to the crowd.

Henty screamed.

Almost immediately her fear turned to horror as bleeding fingers, palms, even forearms, popped into the cube to share her precious safe space with her .

"Don't worry," came the capo's voice. "A million gravities hold your cage down."

"Cage," Henty gasped. She was an animal in a zoo, branded by the President himself as dangerous and to be hunted.

"They're Hickorymen," the capo's voice explained. "They come back every Monday morning with the new recruits. It's their religion, see. You gotta admire their discipline."

"What about their stupidity in not learning from experience?" Henty shouted her outrage at the waste.

"Don't shout. I can hear you fine."

Henty looked up, wondering in which of the choppers he sat. Above the choppers circled the Air Force jets which kept the bounty hunters from bombing the Statue of Liberty the minute the President declared the Runner open game. Earlier in the year one dropped a tenmeg atomic device into her brazier but it failed to detonate. The crowd found a new interest and turned away from Henty.

Henty sighed her relief and kept running.

The glass cage stopped. Henty ran into the front wall.

"Ouch!" She rubbed her nose.

"Watch there you go," said the capo's voice.

A chopper circled in careful inspection, then landed. Even though the mob had disappeared, the capo in his heavy gear ran to the glass cage. The door swung open just as he reached it and crashed shut again behind him.

"Move it!" he snapped at Henty. "They won't be distracted long."

"What—"

"Sit on the ledge, grab the handles." He pushed her. She hadn't noticed the little ledge because it too was glass, as were the handles. The ledge caught her behind the knees and she sat. It was only nine inches wide. The capo sat next to her.

A chopper dived at them and Henty screamed, in her mind cursing the Air Force for letting through the bounty hunter.

CHAPTER 13

The glass cage jerked and rose into the air with the chopper. Henty nearly fell out in her surprise. The capo grabbed her arm. Henty snatched at the handles. She tried to scrunch herself onto the narrow seat and into the glass wall as her feet swung free over the dark, terrifying void.

"I told you, hang on," the capo shouted above the rush of air. "Keerist! I'm glad this pilot got it right. Last week the idiot forgot to switch off the gravity lock and instead of lifting the cube, the cube pulled the chopper down. Splat!"

"What happened to the mob?"

"We're burning the boats they came in. There's a battle at the quay." He took one hand from its handle to point.

To Henty, the battle was mainly spurts of fire around the eleven points of old Fort Wood. From this angle, the Statue of Liberty looked odd. "There were so many of them," she said.

"One of these clays a mob's gonna tear the Statue down just to have standing room." The capo didn't seem greatly concerned.

Part of the crowd either realized the battle at the quay was a diversion, or couldn't get near enough to fight the Finest on that narrow front. They ran underneath the free winging glass cube, throwing up lighted torches. When one struck Henty's foot, she suddenly didn't think they were flying too high. A man in the mob started shooting at them with a machine pistol. The capo hung on with one hand while trying to get the attacker lined up with his zipgun. The glass cage swung wildly as the inexperienced chopper pilot took it up vertically. Bullets were crashing around inside the cage. At last the capo managed to single out the attacker and get a bead on him long enough to zap him.

"How long did the fool think he'd keep the Fist before the mob tore him apart?" the capo raged. But now Henty was more concerned with the dogfights in the sky above them. "Does your chopper jockey know not to take us up into that? I don't want to be shot down by my own side."

"Yon ain't got no sides, Sister. Everybody's against you. Don't forget that or you'll lose me my bet."

"You bet?"

"Hundred credits ay-en-oh." ANO — parlance for the Runner making it to Arizona. Nevada or Oregon but not into California. Henty was so delighted, she nearly let go the handles to clap her hands — and now they were really high, just underneath the dogfights in the tricky light of the dawn sky. "Hey, the Syndicate inside betting is I'll make Nevada. huh?"

"Yeah."

"Cover yourself with a bet I make it all the way to the Mint," Henty said bravely.

"Naw ain't nobody ever made it." He ducked instinctively as a fighter in WWII camouflage dived at them from the melee above, cannons blazing, tracer passing perilously close. "Down!" he shouted into his throat mike at the chopper pilot.

The glass cube dropped sickeningly. From nowhere a USAF jet appeared, seeming to throw incandescent lines of smoke forward as it fired both rockets. Both rockets scored, blowing the bounty hunter's surplus plane out of the sky. It was so close to the glass cube, Henty watched in horror as pieces of the shattered plane crashed right next to her face. The Air Force pilot, only feet away as he pulled out of his dive, gave her a big toothy smile and a split second later was gone, zooming back up to the fray overhead.

"The vidi never shows this bit, where the government keeps the Runner from being killed," Henty said shakily.

"Course not. All the people got a constitutional right to hunt the Runner, but Liberty Island and the Mint are the only fixed places the Runner absolutely got to go. Stands to reason, if the government don't rearrange things a little, all the Runners'll get themselves killed in New York and nobody else gets a go, see?"

"I just never looked at it like that."

"You're going to have to look at a whole lot of things different, Sister. Where do you want to be dropped?"

Henty tore her eyes from searching the skies for more lucky bounty hunters to look at the carnage on the New York and New Jersey shores. "I can choose anywhere—"

"—reasonable."

"Intersection of Interstates 80 and 95," Henty said promptly.

"Trying to shoot straight across on 80 ain't so smart. It's been tried plenty times and nobody ever made it."

"All routes have been tried, nobody made it by any of them," Henty said. "I reckon 80 is the shortest route with the least exposure."

"There's The Trouble."

"I thought you said you weren't going to drop me in New York."

"Yeah, sure. But last week we had a big battle with The Trouble and drove most of them across the river."

"But there are three million of them!"

"Naw. that's just vidizaggeration. Maybe mil."

"And the Finest beat them?"

"Sure. Those kids are only programmed to destroy; we're trained to destroy efficiently."

"And now they're between me and ten million dollars and a free Presidential Pardon?"

"Don't get paranoid. It just happened. One of my men caught an unlicensed drug pusher and cracked his head and there was a riot and then they burned a bank and we had to act and from there it just escalated out of nothing and all of a sudden it was a pitched battle for survival, us or them."

"So where are they now?"

"Well, the Syndicate didn't want any million-and-a-half unemployed juveniles wrecking their sweet state, so they pushed some into Pennsylvania and they're negotiating with the Mayor for us to take some back. Meanwhile, New Jersey is tough."

"What about cutting into upstate New York for a bit and turning back into Pennsylvania behind the problem?"

"Thing is, they didn't want The Trouble upstate either, so the state troopers are dug in all along the borders with New Jersey and Pennsylvania, together with the National Guard. You go up there, you're just looking to be hunted by disciplined and organized men."

"Okay. Drop me as far south as you can and then I'll turn west again. What about them?" Henty jerked her head up at the planes still whirling above them.

"The flyboys will take care of them. They're just amateurs. The real pro bounty hunters with planes will pick you up later."

"How?"

CHAPTER 14

"That Fist. It broadcasts to the Public Safety Watcheyes on a secret frequency that ain't no secret. A lot of bounty hunters got receivers, so if they know the general area you're in, they just wait until you come on the air. Then they pinpoint you with RDF."

"What's that?"

"Radio Direction Finding."

That would hurt. It took Henty a moment to think up the next question. "What can l do about it, short of cutting off my hand?"

The capo gave her a tight little grin. "The transmission range is only about two miles, so you got to stay away from the Watcheyes so they can't get a general fix on you from The Caring Society."

"You mean The Caring society tells bounty hunters where to find me?"

"Who else?"

"Any other tips to help me get to Nevada and win your bet?"

"Yah. Don't be a hick. Don't trust anybody."

"I got that."

"Kill anybody who gets in your way."

"I couldn't do that. I hurt when I have to kill houseflies."

"Suit yourself if you want to be old fashioned and dead. Just remember, a whole lot of people aren't going to wait until you're dead to cut the Fist from vou."

Henty shuddered. She had seen it many times on vidi, bounty hunters cutting the Fist from Runners obviously still alive; mobs tearing whole arms from still fighting Runners...

"I'll tell you something else. That Fist's got power."

"The doctor who fitted it told me it's indestructible."

"More. To help the Runner get as far as possible, the Fist has real power. So much that they took fright and started putting it on the Runner's left hand instead of the right just to cut back a little on the damage Runners did."

"Why not just reduce the power? How much power?"

"Bureaucrats. Open the Fist and look at that handle." Henty opened the Fist and looked at the handle. Then she looked at the other handle. The one held by the Fist was worn and cracked, the other one absolutely pristine.

"This glass is supposed to be indestructible," the capo said. "You saw it taking direct hits off that exploded plane and not a mark on it. But the Fist crunches it."

Henty dosed the Fist and watched the glass powder between her fingers until they met...

"Hey, what you want to do that for? It's government property and I got to account for it. Show a little respect, huh?"

"Sorry. Just testing. You told me, trust no one."

The glass cage was being lowered to a busy intersection beside which armed men stood in a circle around a parked chopper. The cage settled and the capo, his eyes rolling like marbles in their sockets to check that everything was safe, held the door.

The man from the Syndicate waited for them amid his soldiers and button men. "Good work, Joe. Delivery accepted."

Henty realized her conversation with the capo must have been monitored in the chopper, with messages relayed to bring Mr Greenshoes here.

"You want to deal now?" Greenshoes asked her, flashing a legal-looking document. "You had a sample of our efficiency."

"How much?"

"Standard price. Ten per cent. One million."

"I hear the Syndicate statisticians give me all the way to Nevada," Henty said.

"Thousand to one ANO, sure. But the price for taking your fall to us is the same."

"What help are you offering me to get to Nevada?"

He was staggered. "Help? No help. We just guarantee not to change the odds on you before you get to Nevada, that's all. Don't you know the rules of the game?"

"Then I'll make my own rules," Henty said easily and, calling "Thanks for the ride, Joe," over her shoulder to the capo, she trotted away.

CHAPTER 15

Freedom from scruple, from sympathy, honesty and regard for life may, within fairly wide limits, be said to further the success of the individual in the pecuniary culture. — Thorstein Veblen

"Get her!" the man from the Syndicate shouted. His soldiers and button men leveled their zipguns and he screamed. "Don't shoot. Get her back here!" The confusion gave Henty just that moment she needed to push her way through the men and gain a few paces. They thundered after her but Henty had been a track star in high school and the work on the chicken farm had kept her fit. Henty vaulted a storm drain and landed on the eastbound carriageway. A twenty-four wheel haulier shrieked its air horns and air brakes and Henty rolled frantically to get away from the monstrous, thumping wheels. As she rolled she saw flashes of the driver's contorted face alternating with visions of Syndicate soldiers and button men falling into the storm drain.

Henty frantically stopped herself rolling before she cannoned into the next lane. The lights of the hurtling trucks blinded her. She had to get to the westbound carriageway. East would return her to the metrops. Horns shrieked. One played The Star Spangled Banner. The Syndicate thugs were climbing out of the storm drain. They were now only the width of a single lane from Henty. Twelve feet. She could see them between the trucks.

One was tempted by her proximity and ducked into the traffic. A huge truck splatted him against its armored windshield that reached almost to the blacktop. Automatically jets of steaming, detergent-foaming water sprayed from the nozzles and the huge pantograph wipers flashed into action to remove his remains from the driver's vision. The driver didn't even touch his brakes.

For a moment Henty stood horrified, her hand to her mouth, big trucks whizzing twelve inches either side of her, rocking her in the crosscurrents of air they set up with their bulk and their speed. Then she saw the Syndicate soldiers and buttons through the moving fence of trucks, standing there, judging their speed, preparing to dash into that deadly maelstrom to grab her.

Henty turned. For a moment her nerve failed her. If she misjudged any one of the three lanes she still had to cross she was going to be splatted against a windshield and wiped off like a bug.

She looked over her shoulder. A Syndicate thug hunched himself, then launched bodily through the gap between two speeding trucks towards her.

Henty had been planning to let the gap in front of her pass and take advantage of the next one. Now the optimum moment to dash forward between the hurtling goliaths had passed. But if she delayed, the button man would cannon into her and they'd both go under the merciless wheels of the onrushing juggernaut.

Henty squirted forward, the big truck clipping her heel as she pulled herself up sharply in the narrow safety between the lanes. Behind her she heard the splat! as the haulier collected the button man. Involuntarily she looked over her shoulder. Of the button man so recently sent to the infinite silence of Omerta there was no sign: the truck had carried his remains with it. But no fewer than five Syndicate bullies had made it across the first lane and were watching her through the gaps between the speeding trucks with burning, calculating eyes.

They moved. Henty moved.

Close up she saw the distorted face of a driver, lines of fatigue stretching from his eyes like a highway map. He didn't even notice that she came within thousandths of an inch of sudden death against the panoramic windscreen of his truck. At the regulation hundred twenty-five miles per hour his gaze was hypnotically fixed on the brake lights of the truck thirty feet in front of his own nose. He was looking out for his own life.

Henty felt a jerk at her jacket. One of the button men had caught up!

As she turned to try and free herself, the next truck tore him away. But already another had arrived to take his place. Without looking, panicking, Henty headed into the fatal traffic-stream, shouting at the top of her voice and not knowing it. For the first time in her life she knew real fear.

She was alone, without a friend in all the world, hunted even by those who had every reason — money — to help her.

"Yaaaargh!" Henty shouted and bounded the lane in one concerted spurt of careless speed that carried her right over the divider and on to the westbound lane where she halted her impetuous momentum a millisecond short of annihilation by the speeding mass of malevolent metal. She stood swaying, trying to catch her balance and keep it.

The syndicate thugs, now reduced to four, scrambled over the divider.

Henty screamed in fear and rage. She didn't want to be forced to run the gauntlet of these four lanes as well but none of the trucks even slowed to her frantic waving.

The button closed on her. One reached for her, his fingers squirting towards her like a living fire hose.

CHAPTER 16

Desperately, Henty started running alongside the trucks, in the direction they were going, Westwards. Still they whizzed past her but she was gaining on the button men again. But then she saw another contingent of Syndicate fanatics ducking and weaving through the Eastbound traffic to cut her off. Some were splatted but others were getting through and if even one made it, she was caught. She knew she was no match for a trained enforcer.

The standout mirror of a passing truck just brushed Henty's shoulder but the slight touch was enough to spin her around. As she spun, she could see the button men behind her cut in half the distance she had opened up. The break in her stride also ensured that the men crossing the opposing traffic to get in front of her would definitely cut her off. As if that wasn't enough, two choppers came overhead with Syndicate soldiers and button men clinging to the skids, ready to jump on her the moment the pilot brought the chopper low enough.

At the very instant that the first button man scrambled across the divider five paces in front of Henty to cut her off, one of his comrades from behind her put on an extra spurt of power and grabbed the back of her jacket.

Henty spun with the leverage of the man's hold and instinctively hit out at her attacker. Because she was left-handed, she reacted with her left hand. With the Fist. It smashed his face and lifted him clear off the ground and carried him back three or four paces, his momentum being such that three button men who had been on his heels could not stop his accelerating mass and were carried back with him, falling in an untidy bundle of arms and legs at odd angles.

For a very brief moment Henty held up the Fist to stare at it. It was no Supertool but it had been built to magnify all movements. And, as the material itself was indestructible and protected the hand inside from all feeling, great force could be applied to be magnified. It was one of those bureaucratic puzzles why the government should fit the Gauntlet Runner with such a potent weapon and then insist it be put on his least effective hand... if the young doctor had not wanted to help her by fitting it to her best hand, if the capo had not told her of the Power, she might never have found it.

Henty's respite was brief. There were more syndicate men. And, as everybody knew from the Syndicate's relentless vidivertisements, the Syndicate never gave up: "We always get our man, we always collect our dues."

They came at her regardless of injury and casualties, secure in the knowledge that the Syndicate would look after their families "ten times better than The Caring Society". From her front and her back and her sides, dropping from the sky, they were on four sides of Henty, only the ground under her feet and the small space between her back and the thundering trucks being free of Syndicate button men. Over-zealous buttons were being splatted like religious fanatics in a jihad but there were more, always more.

Henty scythed sideways with the Fist, through the hands and wrists of the men who held her in many places, then grabbed at the mirror stand of a truck whizzing by. The Fist closed on the sturdy steel pipe and Henty felt a wrench at her shoulder and thought her arm had been torn from her body and then she was flying, a button man hanging on her ankle.

Henty looked down. The button man grinned up at her. Then he slipped from her ankle and was gone under the wheels of the monstrous truck, even as she reached out a hand to pull him up.

The haulier was going so fast, Henty's feet were streaming out behind her. The mirror stand was jerking around in the Fist. Henty ignored that and concentrated on getting her other hand onto some firm purchase as well. She flung her hand forward, over arm, and managed to grab the post. Now she concentrated on pulling herself forward against the airflow to get her feet on something firmer than rushing air.

The truck jockey was mouthing obscenities and imprecations at her. She could hear nothing but his face was contorted and he was jiggling a lever on the console to jerk the mirror this way and that in an effort to dislodge Henty from his truck.

CHAPTER 17

Henty's feet found purchase and she hunched her body and held on with all her might as the driver flung the truck into a series of swerves to rid himself of her. From all round came the sound of grating, tearing metal.

A window whirred down an inch beside her head. "Gerroff my truck!" he screamed at her.

"Please help me!" she shouted over the wind.

"Gerroff!" He swung the wheel violently and Henty nearly lost her balance.

She grabbed at the window with her right hand and involuntarily closed her other hand. The Fist squeezed right through the mirror-stand and now Henty was hanging on the window by one hand. The driver leaned over to swat at her knuckles with a length of sausage from his lunchbox.

"Ouch! You maniac!" Henty reached out with her left hand, with the Fist to grab something — anything! — before her arm was torn from its socket or the wind tore her from her uncertain hold to be smashed on the blacktop and trudged into it by the speeding tonnage of the trucks. The Fist connected with the window and went right through and grasped the windowsill and Henty pulled herself through the window, scarcely conscious of the jagged shards of glass reaching out bloodthirstily towards her.

The truck jockey kept shouting at her to get out of his truck. He also kept beating her about the head and shoulders with an eighteen-inch length of Polish sausage.

"If it didn't hurt so much, it would be funny," Henty said to him as she settled herself in the passenger seat while simultaneously trying to ward off the blows raining on her head. "Goddamn it, I'm not going to steal your food. Stop!"

That was when she flung the Fist up to protect her face because the other arm was smarting too much from the blows with the sausage.

The truck driver didn't so much see the Fist as take it into himself by reaching his eyeballs towards it. In that moment Henty saw the fatigue on his face.

The driver swept some pills from the fascia into his mouth and in the same movement opened the door beside him and jumped. "Hey, there's no need for you to go!" Henty said.

But there was no time to worry about the driver. He was beyond her care or even that of The Caring Society inasmuch as they were never going to find enough of him to give him the free reconstitution to useful basic nitrates in one of the Society's ovens which was the guaranteed right of every good citizen. She was in a juggernaut travelling hundredtwentyfive milesperhour high up on a roundy-round intersection with one juggernaut thirty feet in front and another thirty feet behind and juggernauts to the left and the right — only her juggernaut didn't have a driver!

Henty picked up the driver's sausage and put it on the fascia, then jumped over the console to sit behind the wheel. It was like the cockpit of a jet but for a start there was a steering wheel. Steering wheels Henty knew. She grabbed it — too hard. The enormous power assistance twitched it to one side and she sideswiped the pantechnicon next to her. Turning away from the impact, she again applied too much force and sideswiped the one on the other side.

"This is a lot more difficult than it looks," Henty said. "You want to be careful, my girl." She touched the brake tentatively but it was too much. The monster behind her crashed into her and her head jerked painfully. Out of the corner of her eyes she saw her trailer coming up fast beside her, bashing the juggernaut beside her. Henty pressed on the accelerator — hard. Too much again. The intercoolers hissed, the turbochargers whined, the monster under her jumped forward and banged into the one in front which promptly jack-knifed.

Henty swung the wheel frantically to avoid the wreckage as the truck in front of her shot off into the dense inner-lane traffic. Her truck scraped the divider guardrail. There wasn't space to get her whole truck through but she most certainly wasn't going back into the carnage in the middle of the highway. Metal screeched and pieces flew as she bulled the big carrier between the guardrail and the hurtling disaster-in-the-making on the other side.

The tail of a trailer flashed past the nose of her truck. Henty turned the wheel, smoothly she thought, and stepped on the brake, except it was the accelerator. The intercoolers hissed, the turbocharger second stage cut in like a hurricane and the big truck pushed the trailer from before it, a hurricane in a hurry.

Henty watched the glass bend in front of her but didn't lift her foot from the accelerator. Then the trailer was gone and the glass was whole and there was a road and a sign — INTERSTATE DEFENSE HIGHWAY 78 — and Henty spun the wheel and saw the trailer coming up beside her again and spun the wheel the other way and tried to tromp the loud pedal right though the floor. Suddenly she was heading down to 78.

"Phew!" said Henty. And, "Defense against who?

CHAPTER 18

From high up in the Syndicate chopper, the massive pileup on the intersection, already spreading in all directions, looked like a bunch of toy trucks artistically arranged by an especially destructive child. Only the truck drivers who had survived the pile-up, who were now fighting a gun battle with the Syndicate button men and soldiers who had survived their assault on Henty, demonstrated that it was altogether to human scale.

"That babe's got a real talent for destruction," the Capo said admiringly, "Mark me a thousand she makes it all the way."

"The Syndicate insures nine out of every ten trucks across the nation, " the man from the Syndicate said primly. "That down there's ninety per cent our damage. Millions."

"Yeah. It's tough all round. You taking the bet?"

"Sure. She's so reckless, she'll never make it out of New Jersey. That means we'll lose a lot of money. Curse that woman!"

"My wife reckons it's wrong to make a woman Run the Gauntlet." Another thought struck him. "Hey, you're not going to take her out early just to spite my bet?"

The Syndicate man shook his head. "No. But we gotta find a way of dealing with her, of making her see reason. She just gotta do things our way, that's all."

By now Henty's truck was just a pinprick in the hazy distance of that uncertain dawn as she streaked alone down the middle of that broad highway.

CHAPTER 19

"San Fran-cis-co, here I come!" Henty sang at the top of her voice as she streaked down the middle of that empty highway, heading West, to the Mint in San Francisco, to ten million dollars for Petey and free Presidential pardon directly from the White House for her.

For breakfast she gnawed a large chunk of the sausage. The residue of the driver's pills she threw out of the window. "Junk!" She sniffed his thermos carefully and then poured the contents out of the window too. "Doped coffee. Ugh!" Then she boiled up some water in the minimicrowave in the console and, after tasting his instant with the tip of her finger, decided to risk it. "Breakfast isn't complete without Hickory's Coffee'n'Chicory," she read from the label.

With the huge truck on autocruise, she looked around for something else to eat. There was nothing. The manifest papers told her she was hauling a truckload of Polish sausage to Chicago. So the driver had robbed a box or been given a sausage. Otherwise he seemed to have lived on pills and Hickory's MoreChicoryThanCoffee.

Henty turned on the radio and instantly sound surround hit her deafeningly. Hurriedly she turned it down. The music stopped and the deejay hit her with a message.

"Fed up with an enforced twenty hour week, tired of subsistence wages? Want to find out about a job where there's no limit to the overtime you can work, where men are men and some have gotten rich in as little as five years of hard work? Then call the Teamsters. Backed by the Syndicate, a part of The Caring Society, the Teamsters won't limit your earning hours. Call the Teamsters today, drive a luxury truck tomorrow!"

Henty punched in an MP3 chip to shut the man up. When she looked up, there was The Trouble.

There was time only to reflect that she should have asked why that good broad highway was completely empty except for her own truck... She must have passed a checkpoint somewhere and the cops were too lazy to come after her once she was past them.

She punched IS-78 on the console route finder and the warning message and beeps flashed her: NOGO WARZONE NOGO. There was also a skull and crossbones just in case she couldn't read, together with a no-entry sign.

Too late.

She was already in the middle of the battle zone. Up ahead there were puffs above the ground as somebody exploded anti personnel shrapnel bombs for maximum killing effect. To her right she could see shaven-headed punks with pink or yellow socks showing below stovepipe trousers setting up a baby katusha that would fire twenty-one rockets from a ring of launchers — all at once. To her left a group of The Trouble were running through the field, bent low. But they were city hooligans, unused to the country and made a lot disturbance of the shrubbery and, anyway, most of them showed above it almost all the time. They were easy game for the state trooper behind the mortar in the spotter chopper.

"Ouch!" said Henty when the mortar hit the little group of punks square-on. She looked away.

The chopper spotted her and somebody blasted her on the civilian safety frequency that overrides the radio.

"Hey, you in the truck! Turn back immediately! If you deliver arms to The Trouble we will shoot. Repeat, we will shoot! Now get the hell out of here."

Henty stomped on the brake and swung the wheel to turn that huge truck almost in its own length and—

There was nowhere to go that way either. A tank clunked onto the highway. It was a huge thing and it was two hundred yards from her: wherever she steered the big truck, the tank would be in a position to blast her from so close even the shaven-headed punks controlling it couldn't miss.

Anyway, they couldn't be that incompetent if they had taken the tank from the National Guard, whose insignia was roughly painted over in pink and yellow stripes.

Henty swung her truck around again. Another tank was clanking onto the road in front of her. This one had one pink and one yellow sock tied to its aerial.

"Aw hell," Henty said as she brought her truck to a standstill with the windscreen only inches from the threatening nozzle. She swung the door open and jumped down, taking the rest of the sausage with her.

"Hey, it's another Sheila!"

The tank commander in the turret was a female Trouble. They were worse than the males. Henty flashed into a run but a whole tribe of jeering faces arose ahead of her from the brush beside the road. She stopped.

"What you got in that truck?" the girl in the tank turret wanted to know. "Guns?"

"Food," Henty said. "Polish." She threw the half sausage she held in her hand to the girl.

The female Trouble caught the sausage and took a bite from it. While she chewed— Henty stole a quick glance at the copperchopper hovering over the horizon. The thing could blast them with a mortar or a rocket any minute and it was sure to be calling up wholesale reinforcements. This was the end of her Run. She felt like crying. It was so stupid to be caught like this when, if she had paid attention, she could have turned the hell off 78 long before this.

"We'll take the truck," the Girl decided, "You Boys can have her."

CHAPTER 20

The Boys from the scrub started closing on Henty. She backed up until she had one of the truck's huge wheels - nearly as tall as she - behind her back.

"I'm warning you, I'll fight," Henty said, hoping her voice didn't shake too much.

"She's warning us!" one of the punks laughed and grabbed for Henty's blouse. He was quick but Henty's hand in the Fist was quicker.

He screamed when she caught his wrist. She immediately let go and looked in horror at his limp wrist and hanging hand. "Ohmygod I'm sorry!"

"She's sorry! She's sorry!" they jeered and made a concerted rush for her. "We gonna sorry you," one snarled in her face. Henty fought like a wildcat but there were too many of them and she hesitated really to use the Fist because she didn't want to kill any of the kids. In the end they pinned her.

Suddenly there was a deafening blast. In the silence that always follows the discharge of a really big gun, even on a battlefield, the Sheila commanding the tank shouted.

"Are you mothers blind? Can't you see the Fist? She's an outtie, just like us. Let her be!"

"Oh yeah?" a boy jeered. "She's meat and she's ours."

The Sheila lazily raised her zipgun from her side and zapped him in the face. "I got plans for her," she said.

Henty sighed at the temporary reprieve and shrugged off the few obviously slightly-dumb male Troubles still clinging to her. She pulled her clothes straight.

"Aren't you boys ashamed of yourselves?" she asked.

Some looked blank, some amazed, some outraged.

"Shame is what you do in private," the girl commanding the tank said. "When the Government Watcheyes see everything, you have no privacy and no need for shame."

Then Henty saw what two gnome-like Troubles were doing under the truck. "Hey" she grabbed one by the ankle and dragged him out. "That's high pressure hydraulics, you idiot. You cut through it, it'll blow you away." He tried to stab at Henty with the knife still in his hand but she caught the blade in the Fist and wrenched the knife from him. She flung the knife down and he scurried away like a kicked dog.

"You can have the food but do you mind if I keep the tractor?" Henty asked the dominant girl.

The girl hesitated, then said. "Sure, why not. You'll make a nice big target for the fuzz to shoot at." She jumped down from the tank and marched around to the back of the trailer.

"You're fighting the wrong way," Henty said. She jerked her thumb over her shoulder. "New York's thataway."

"We changed our mind about New York," the girl said. "We're heading for California."

The doors were sealed and double locked. The Troubles shot the locks off without even bothering to try the handles to see if they would open. Many of them piled up into the trailer and started flinging out boxes of sausages.

Just then the reinforcements Henty had thought the State Troopers were calling up arrived. Six National Guard choppers and four copperchoppers came hurtling down out of nowhere at the tempting concentrated target. The katusha ring went off like a double-barreled sneeze and the heat seeking rockets got all but three of the choppers. A rocket from one of the copperchoppers got the tank while the barrel was still elevating to meet the onslaught. The blast flung Henty to the ground.

The only thought in her mind was to save her truck. She was in the middle of a battlefield and she needed the mobility even if the truck did make a big, tempting target. She was running for the cab before the concussion of the exploding rocket stopped ringing the metal of the truck and the trailer.

The leader-Sheila scrambled up into the cab after Henty and clambered over her and the console, shouting, "Straight ahead!"

"But—" Henty shut up when the zipgun jammed into her ear. She hit the starter and pushed the lever into AHEAD and stepped on the loud pedal. In the mirror she could see heavily armed Troubles scrambling into the trailer. The big combination rolled forward gently at first, its mass resisting acceleration. Then the engines came on the cam and the turbos screamed into their power band and suddenly the whole thing blistered forward with smoking tires. In the mirror Henty saw Troubles still trying to scramble aboard the trailer being flung in all directions by the force of the acceleration as the trailer snaked behind the tractor unit.

Then they were away from the knot of Troubles on the road around the wrecked tank.

A copperchopper was diving at them.

Henty twitched the wheel but the pistol ground into her ear and she twitched it back, sending more Troubles flying out of the back of the trailer. The Troubles were throwing boxes of food onto the road and Henty could see other Troubles dashing onto the road to fetch the food and then dash back again. This was no isolated skirmish. She was in the middle of a full-scale battle which would start as soon as the opposing army of National Guardsmen and State Troopers finished lining up.

The copperchopper fired its pair of rockets. Henty saw the puffs of smoke as they left the chopper. They fell lazily to only ten feet above the ground, then aimed themselves at the truck and accelerated blisteringly towards it.

Henty panicked and stood up on the brake. The tractor came almost to a dead halt, the trailer didn't. It swung around and jack-knifed the horse the other way. The two rockets hit the trailer simultaneously, ringing the cab and deafening Henty.

Henty used the confusion to grab the Trouble Sheila's gun out of her ear, out of the Sheila's hand, and to throw it out of the window. The Sheila scrambled for the zipgun the suicidal doped-up driver had left in the cab but the Fist was too quick for her and that went out of the window too.

"What you gonna do without a gun?" the Sheila wanted to know. "Man, you crazy." With that, she opened the door and jumped.

In the big mirror, Henty saw the Sheila roll, come upright for a moment, then disappear over the side of the road like she never existed.

There was a turnoff and Henty took it, seeing in the mirror the remains of the trailer being shredded and disintegrated against the blacktop.

She punched the large query on the route finder. It told her, YOU'RE ON US-206 HEADING NORTH FOR NETCONG. Then it flashed and beeped her: US-206 NOGO WARZONE NOGO, complete with skull and crossbones.

"Everywhere's no-go," said Henty, and put her foot down.

CHAPTER 21

Eastward I go only by force, but Westward I go free. — Thoreau

"This sure ain't no lonesome road," Henty told the voice on the radio, which immediately switched to an exhortation to Turn Back to Philadelphia. "Never been to Philly either," Henty told the voice and ducked instinctively as a katusha blew its ring of rockets to her left. They whooshed overhead and exploded on her right. A voice came on the radio to tell her to get lost and she switched channels to lose it.

"Sister, you're driving down the middle of a battlefield," a much more relaxed voice told her on the new channel.

Henty punched the CB alive and waited a moment while it locked onto the voice addressing her. "Yeah?" She peered up through the windscreen but there were too many choppers in the sky to make out which one was interested in her. "Which way is out?"

"You're right in the middle. Stop the truck and run to your left. Our troops will cover you."

"Thanks but no thanks. That's like from the frying pan into the fire."

"Suit yourself. One casualty more or less isn't going to bother us."

Click!

The radio was back on, telling her how they would love her if only she would "come back to Philly". Henty tried to put her foot harder into the floor. A hovercraft gun platform glided across the road in front of her on its rubber skirts and one of the guns swiveled towards her. Henty turned the steering wheel to head straight for the hovercraft and the driver lost his nerve and accelerated the thing off the road just as the gunner fired, throwing off his aim. Henty ducked again as the tracer headed over the cab.

"Hey! I'm a civilian," she screamed.

Every indicator-band on the dash instruments was showing red. A stern voice came at her. "This is your truck speaking. You are wrecking me. Please ease off."

"You wouldn't understand," Henty told it. "So I'm not going to argue with you too."

A big red light on the dash started flashing at her. Henty smashed it with the Fist.

Then, suddenly, just like that, she was out of the battle zone.

The route finder beeped her. US-206 NORTHBOUND NOW CLEAR

"I know, you electronic moron," Henty snapped at it. She saw the sign and swept the big tractor-unit onto Interstate 80. "This is the way to San Francisco!" Henty shouted.

CHAPTER 22

Henty's next test came at Portland. Pa. Unbeknownst to Henty, the previous evening a Pittsburgh puddle stopper called Chet Radenoffsky had been calling around his friends, repeating the same conversation with minor variations.

"Yah?"

"This is Chet. Whatya doin'?"

"Nuffin'. They got heavies on the box. One guy just tore the ear off the other guy and ate it."

"It's all fake."

"Yah, so you keep saying. But I already worked my two days this week. You got sometin' goin'?"

"Whatya doin' tomorrer?"

"Watchin' the Yankees. Fuckin' losers."

"I got ten credits 'gainst them."

"All it's worth. Whatyagot on this woman Runner?"

"Hundred credits says she don't make it out of Pennsylvania. Whatyagot yo'self?"

"Hundred she don't make it outta Noo York."

"You done your dough already."

"Howzat? She ain't started Running yet."

"My father-in-law has this cousin with the Families and he says they'll never let her into Noo York."

"Yah?"

"He says they never do."

"Yah? So how come every once a while a Runner gets what's coming to him in Noo York, did he tell you that, the wiseass?"

"Yup. He did. They let one in every ten loose in Noo York and they get killed there. The other nine they take straight from Liberty Island to Noo Jersey. You done your hundred credits."

"Uh-huh. We'll see tomorrow."

"Sure. But instead of just hangin' aroun' infronta your box getting' a beergut, why doanya do sometin' about your lost hundred credits?"

"Like write my congressman?"

"No, knucklehead, like grabbing this Runner and sharing in ten million smackers."

"She's gonna come pose in my backyard so I can take my wife's carving knife to her? Or maybe hang aroun' while I clean my twelve-bore? Chet, you're off your rocker. She could go anywhere. Anyhow, the professional bounty hunters'll get her 'fore we do."

Chet sighed heavily. "Lissen, you wentaschool same as any other citizen. What'sa border 'tween here'n Noo Jersey?"

"The Delaware River. But she can come in from Noo York state which has a long-long-long border with—"

"No, she can't. You wanta watch the newscasts sometimes insteada all-in-wrestlers. That whole long border is closed tighter'n a play-monkey's ass."

"So, all right. But that's still twelve-fifteen bridges."

"Lissen, are you bored shitless watching the box or what?"

"I sure wish we haddena shot all those ducks'n'geese'n'deer."

"And your fair share of other hunters."

"They were accidents. So how do you pick your bridge?"

"The obvious one. Interstate 80."

"So obvious, olla other hardhats hunting her'll be hanging round like a steelworkers' convention. You wanna do sometin' useful. Brace the man to give us another day's work."

"Maybe next week," Chet said. "It's getting tough. Letting guys work more'n their share is not only agin' union rules but agin' the law too."

"Yah!"

"Yeah. Lissen, waiting for her on 80 is like a double bluff. The other guys will think it's too obvious and wait somewhere else, huh? You comin'?"

"Anybody else in it?"

"Justabout alla guys on our shift."

"Okay, I'm in any little fun you think up, Chet, you know that."

"Bring plenty of beer."

"You bet!"

CHAPTER 23

Henty leaned forward to peer up through the windshield at the sky. The bridges over the Delaware were where the bounty hunters would try to pick her up. The sky was clear. She saw no other traffic on the road but that was no big deal — the road only led to and from a battle zone.

She held the Fist up and wondered exactly what the range of its built-in transmitter could be. The New York capo had told her it broadcast to The Caring Society's Watcheyes, but in what range? All she knew about radio transmissions was that FM waves travel in a straight line and are no good over fifty miles while the others follow the curve of the earth.

She scoured the earth on either side of the bridge but could see nobody. She had to get across that bridge. She had slowed the truck down. Now she speeded up. "Que sera sera," she told herself aloud. She had the truck back up to its normal cruising speed of hundredtwentyfive milesperhour when the hardhats rose over the sides of the bridge and shot out both the front tires with shotguns at pointblank range. Henty didn't have a chance even to swerve and it was just as well, or she might have crashed the truck over the side of the bridge and into the river which is wide and fast-flowing. Henty had been a track star in high school, not a swimmer.

The truck dug its nose in and somersaulted over it. Henty held on for dear life. The truck slid on its roof for quite a way, slowing its mass and momentum with friction. Henty stared at the parapet coming up fast to the windshield and wrestled with the safety belt to release her but it had locked fast.

The windshield smashed. Henty threw up her arms to protect her face. The thumb of the Fist hooked into the recalcitrant belt and snapped it like it was cotton thread. Henty fell onto the roof lining of the cab, among the glass shards. Below her she could see the water, far, far away. The truck was see-sawing sickeningly half over the water, half on the road.

Henty reached hurriedly for the door handle — with the Fist. But she had forgotten the strength of the thing and instead of pulling the door handle it ripped it bodily from its fitting.

"Damn!" Henty looked at the door handle for a moment before casting it from her through the hole where the windshield had been. Even that small movement tilted the truck towards the water. Henty dived for the window in the door. The edge of the window hit her in the knees and for a moment it seemed as if she would be dragged down with it, then she rolled on the blacktop, towards the middle, away from the water, until something stopped her.

When she opened her eyes, she was staring at the biggest pair of boots she had ever seen. Her hand reached around the back of her neck to feel what the pressure there was. It was most definitely a gun barrel.

"Twelve bore," a rough voice said above her. "Get up nice and easy, Huh?"

Henty was still pushing herself onto her knees when a hard hand grabbed the back of her collar and hauled her unceremoniously erect. Other rough hands grabbed her elbows and pinioned them behind her. The one in front of her with the shotgun did no more than breathe on Henty but she flinched from the warm beery gust. They were all wearing their hard hats and were red eyed, sunburned and drunk.

The one in front of her jammed the shotgun into her stomach.

"Lissen, you can take it nice and easy and we'll let you live. Or you fight and get it with this first."

"How can I fight so many big men?" Henty asked, smiling.

"Okay. Where's the saw?" he shouted at some men who were running up from the end of the bridge.

In reply, one of the men pressed a button on the implement he carried under his arm and. just as they came to a halt in front of Henty, the chainsaw buzzed angrily into action.

Henty reared back in desperation but she was no match for the large solid men who held her. Two of them grabbed her left arm and by main force pulled the Fist away from her to straighten the arm.

"Hold her still, dammit!" the man with chainsaw shouted. "Give it to her in the elbow," said the one who appeared to be in charge. "But get on with it before somebody comes!"

Henty was struggling frantically but they held her and the saw buzzed nearer and nearer, the man wielding it putting his tongue between his lips to concentrate on cutting her arm off right in the joint, obviously oblivious to her screams.

So intent were they on cutting the Fist from Henty, none of them heard the chopper until it was almost on them. The skids were almost on the ground and the man sitting in the open hatch had already jumped down before any of the hardhats caught on. The man with the shotgun turned it towards the newcomer, then saw the zipgun pointed towards him and stopped the transverse of the barrels so that they pointed halfway between Henty and the man from the chopper.

In their surprise, the hardhats slackened their hold on Henty and she jerked free, in the process grasping the wrist of one of the hardhats. He screamed and looked in disbelief at his crushed wrist.

"Oh, I'm sorry!" Henty said feelingly. "I really got no control over that thing."

The newcomer laughed hollowly._ "Don't feel sorry for them; they were going to operate on you without anesthetic."

Henty recognized him. The cold young man from the Chaser Bank. She had signed her organs away to them. He had said they had a bounty hunter of their own. "Hi. You didn't say you were the Chaser's bounty hunter."

"Best part of my job." He smiled twistedly, then raised the zipgun to aim at her.

CHAPTER 24

Henty ducked instinctively but the man with the shotgun was also acting: he swung the shotgun towards the man from the Chaser. The young banker deflected his aim marginally and zapped the hardhat, then turned back to Henty, the slight sneering smile still on his face.

"She's ours!" the man with the chainsaw shouted but, stupidly, instead of attacking the man with the zipgun, lunged at Henty with the saw.

Henty stepped back but the slow heavy bodies were still behind her. Desperately, she grabbed in front of her with her hands and the Fist dosed on the brutally whirring teeth. There was the sound of machinery in extreme pain, then the saw stopped. The hardhat, surprised into immobility, let go. Henty stood, holding the chainsaw by the chain.

Henty stared dumbly at her hand, expecting the palm and fingers to fall one way, the chainsaw to drop straight down, and her truncated arm to start spouting blood at the wrist. For several long seconds nothing happened.

"Show's over," said the banker. He raised his weapon. If he had not spoken gloatingly just then, he might have bagged Henty immediately. But the words unfroze her and she flung the chainsaw from her as if it were a red-hot iron. In midair the chain started whirring again as the superior restraint was taken off the motor.

By accident rather than design, Henty threw the chainsaw in the direction of the man from the Chaser. The screaming, biting chain went straight for his knees and, as he dived clear, the open door of the chopper behind him beckoned.

Henty was too desperately frightened to need two invitations. While the hardhats still stood like the wife of Lot in their wonder at how she stopped the chainsaw and then flung the heavy machine as if were a softball, Henty was away and running, jumping over the hurdle of the banker, rolling through the helicopter door.

Inside the helicopter, Henty kicked the door shut on its runners and turned to—

"Hey!" said the pilot. "You can't come in here. My contract is only to carry you once he's zapped you." He looked in vain behind Henty for the young banker. Then he saw his boss rolling over and up right underneath his perspex bubble. "What've you done to him?" he accused Henty.

Henty was less interested in the pilot's sense of the fitness and proper arrangement of Runner-hunting than in the zipgun the banker was even now pointing at her past the pilot. The perspex would not stop it.

"Up!" Henty shouted at the pilot. "Up!"

The pilot saw the muzzle of the zipgun; it appeared to be pointed directly at him. He took them straight up and then away in a hurry. His urgency was much enhanced by the holes that appeared in the bubble, so much so that he pulled the throttle/pitch lever so far back that it broke clear of its mountings. He looked distractedly at the lever in his hand, then threw it on the floor.

"This chopper belongs to the Chaser Bank," he told Henty severely. "The Chaser Bank is a registered Organ Bank and therefore a part of The Caring Society. Hijacking it is an act of piracy and punishable by Eternal Sleep."

Henty was lying against the rear bulkhead, where she had been flung by the pilot's sudden, violent evasive maneuvers.

"I should care," she said bitterly. "The Caring Society is trying to kill me."

"You sold your organs to the Chaser Bank, didn't you?" the pilot demanded, twisting round in his seat to stare incredulously at her. "You can't welsh on the deal now."

"I said they could get my organs when I'm dead. They didn't bother to tell me until I signed that they were going to kill me for my organs."

"Caveat emptor."

"Huh?"

"Latin for Let the buyer beware."

"Well, Mr Smartypants, I hope that piece of the chopper you threw on the floor isn't necessary for landing this thing again."

The pilot looked at the console between the seats from which the lever had been torn, then scrambled frantically on the floor for the lever and foolishly tried to press it back. It fell back to the floor. "I— I— Oh my god, what are we going to do!"

"Pray?" Henty suggested tentatively.

"You stupid woman, you got me into this." The pilot pulled his safety belt loose and walked over to the door and jerked it open to look out. "Better to squash than to burn," he said to Henty and stepped into the void.

Henty rushed over to the door with her hands outstretched and nearly fell out herself in her hurry to save the pilot. But he was gone. At the very last moment Henty grabbed the doorpost and pulled herself back from that awful never ending hole through the sky all the way to the hard earth. She held on for a moment until she caught her breath, then slammed the door firmly and turned to sit in the pilot's seat.

The first thing Henty saw was the fuel gauge, which read three-quarters full. Next she saw the rev counters, which both had needles in the red. There were other dials, several with needles in the red, including one that was labeled "Oil Pressure".

"Tch!" said Henty. "I've had my share of crashes for today." She looked around the instrument panel but the route finder was a lot more complicated than the one in the truck. All the same, she punched up the query mark.

"What do you want to know?" a voice asked her.

"How do I get this thing to slow down?"

"You mean the chopper."

"What else?"

"Just answer yes or no."

"Yes, this chopper."

"You close the throttles slowly and with the same control alter the pitch and—"

"Which is the throttle and pitch control?" Henty asked with a sinking heart.

"It is situated between the seats."

"It is broken off."

"It that's true, it's malfunctioning severely."

"How can I repair it?"

"Take it back to base and send it for service complete with the required number of copies of Form 318SV."

" Thanks!" Henty said bitterly. "Is there anything else I can do to save my life?"

CHAPTER 25

"Look out for water and jump."

"You're almost human," Henty told the many dials in front of her.

"I am," said the voice. "I'm a ham radio operator and your Fist is broadcasting your whereabouts so you'd better switch off."

"Hey, don't go away. How do I switch the Fist off?"

"You can't. But its range isn't more than a couple of miles. It's using the chopper radio to broadcast. You switch the chopper radios off above your head."

"I meant. How can I switch the power of the Fist off. It's already hurt several people."

"Sister, are you stupid? You need all the help you can get and I got a thousand credits that say you make it LWC."

"Level with Chicago?"

"Yeah."

"Cover yourself with a bet I make it all the way to the Mint. Thanks for your help."

"Hey, now I know you're stupid!" Click!

Henty thoughtfully turned the row of switches above her head off to stop the Fist broadcasting through the chopper's systems. She peered through the bubble but could see nothing. On the radar screen there were three dots dosing fast with her chopper.

Henty punched up I on the console keyboard. "1 Phantom jet, private, armament rockets," it told her. And, "1 Starfighter jet, private, armament rockets", and, "1 P51 piston-prop fighter, private, armament .50 machine guns".

There could be no doubt the bounty hunters had found her.

Even if the chopper wasn't out of control, and even if she could fly it, she'd never get away from three fighter planes.

"Curse the government's surplus equipment sales program," Henty said.

Then one of the jets came into view and there could be no doubt that the wisps of smoke under the wings were made by rockets accelerating towards Henty's stricken chopper. She could actually see the rockets themselves.

Frantically she pushed pedals and pulled every handle she could see, including a big heavy one at her side. The chopper dropped upside down and fell alarmingly towards the earth. The rockets merely changed course and continued closing with the chopper. Above her Henty saw a second jet appearing and below her she saw blue.

Blue? Blue!

Without giving it any further thought, Henty rolled across the canopy and kicked at the hatch. It wouldn't open. The rockets were now heading straight for her, coming obscenely head on, seemingly only feet away and accelerating blindingly. Henty screamed and scathed the Fist through the plexiglass of the hatch. Her body followed her arm through the hole as chopper tumbled over again. For a moment she was stuck and wriggled like a fish in a net. Already she could see the markings on the rocket: a rough stencil saying "US Government Surplus'. She punched upwards with the Fist.

Henty fell free.

She daren't look down to see if she was still over the water. From on high it had been only a speck of blue. She was probably long past it now. Instead she looked up to see if the rockets were following her. But they headed straight for the pilotless chopper, which was still tumbling over and over. With the chopper still appallingly near her, both rockets lit at once.

The blast rocked Henty And set her body tumbling. She spread her arms to steady herself. She ended up spread-eagled, floating face down, or so it seemed for a second. Then she realized she was falling, and falling faster every second.

There was the water she had seen! But it was away underneath her, on her left. Henty whirled with her arms but that only sent her tumbling straight down to the streets of the city now underneath her. She stopped the awful whirling by spreading her arms and legs again.

"Stop and think what you're doing," she told herself but didn't think it was funny. But it gave her a moment of respite from the panic.

Henty grabbed the skirts of her jacket and held them wide. Her weight and speed was too great for the small area to serve as much of an air-brake but she could at least direct her body nearer the water, the blessed water...

Nearer but not quite. She was still accelerating with terrifying g-force and she was going to crash into the streets of the city below her. She hoped she didn't fall on anyone.

"I'm sorry. Petey," Henty said aloud as the top of building rushed up at her.

CHAPTER 26

Assemble a mob of men and women previously conditioned (by drugs, propaganda, alienation etc.), treat them to amplified music, bright lights, and the oratory of a demagogue who (as demagogues always are) is simultaneously the exploiter and the victim of herd intoxication, and in next to no time you can reduce them to a state of almost mindless inhumanity. — Aldous Huxley

The man from the Syndicate, the one with the green lizard skin shoes, was called Jimmy Twoshoes. He had been christened James Baldwin Shoosmith by his father, a noted liberal judge, and his mother, who was noted for her charities. They were both still alive and thought he was a wheel in insurance: in a way, he was — he insured that the Syndicate couldn't lose. Jimmy Twoshoes was indulging in charity now.

The pink supervisor of The Caring Society stood in the passage, transfixed by her awe of this man and his rough looking minions. He took her hand from her side and pressed a slip of paper into it. Her hand closed convulsively.

"I'm all paid up," she said, her voice rising hysterically.

"Open it," he ordered.

She opened the slip of paper. "But— but I didn't take any ten thousand credit bet on that woman Runner. I haven't got ten thousand credits!"

"Look again," he said soothingly. "It's all paid up."

She looked. "What do you want?" she asked hoarsely. Then she looked at the slip of paper again. Her awe and fear and greed turned to shrill anger. "Look here, this bet is for her to get zapped in Nevada. I know her, she's marshmallow right through. She'll never make it to Nevada."

"She got out of New York and across New Jersey and right now she's in the air over Pennsylvania."

"How do you know?...Stupid question. Okay, but she still won't make it to Nevada."

"We're going to give her an inducement. That's where you come in."

"Anything I can do to help," the pink woman said eagerly.

"In which room is her son?"

"Come. I'll show you."

CHAPTER 27

Petey was watching The Nation's News on CBS and the anchorman was just saying— "And here's the latest flash from the Gauntlet Run. This week's Runner, a lady chicken farmer from Texas, was heavily tipped not even to make it out of New York. But we can reveal to you exclusively that already she has arrived in Akron, Ohio. Here's where The Caring Society Public Safety Watcheyes picked her up in the air over Akron."

Then the pink supervisor marched in and planted her back firmly to the fisheye lens built into the vidi so that the staff could keep a twenty-four hour watch on the patients. In the process she also blocked half the picture so that Petey could just see his mother falling, falling, falling—

—as Jimmy Twoshoes' henchmen grabbed him and carried him out, trailing life support tubes.

He craned his neck to look around the pink witch. The last he saw was his mother falling.

Petey screamed—

CHAPTER 28

—Henty screamed, though she didn't know it. She was heading straight for a roof of many glass panels. She didn't want to be cut up but the deadly fascination of the glass was such that she couldn't fling her body around to crash through back first. Either way, she thought, she would be dead.

At the very last moment she straightened her left arm to lead through the glass with the Fist. It was just as well because she would otherwise have cracked her head on one of the crossbeams. But the Fist sliced right through without any effort, though it jarred her all the way up the bone of her arm so that her teeth gritted.

"This one's our perpetual honeymoon bed," the salesman was saying to the young couple. He bent to bounce the waterbed and got a faceful of water for his trouble as Henty crashed straight through. For a long moment he stood looking stupidly at the hole in the floor through which the waterbed was being sucked. Then the bride-to-be started screaming.

That was when Henty, the aim of Fist deflected by the floor and therefore on her back, hit the trampoline on the floor below and came through the furniture floor again with the Fist leading. The salesman started screaming too and led the rush for the elevators and fire stairs. They just made it to the floor below when Henty bounced a last few times, lay still for a moment, patted the trampoline in grateful affection, and swung herself over the side.

"Hi," Henty said to the open-mouthed staring crowd.

The bride-to-be started screaming again and the salesman joined her and the rush was on. Henty looked after them wonderingly, then sniffed her armpit suspiciously. Smelling nothing more than a little honest exertion, she shrugged and trotted to the elevators.

But at the elevators she stopped. She didn't really want to be locked up in another metal cage. As she turned to head for the stairs, her attention was caught by a display arranged to catch the customer's eye as he came out of the elevator. The thing looked like a bathtub on eight fat balloon-tied wheels. The sign said. "ARGOCAT The ultimate cross country 8-wheel-drive amphibian.

Henty glanced at the sign next to her. "9th Floor: Sporting Goods."

"Never did like walking down too many stairs," Henty said as she hopped into the Argocat, turned the key and grabbed the two levers. She pushed them both forward and the thing jumped forward. She pulled them both back and it reversed with startling rapidity. One lever forwards and the other back and it would turn right around in its own length. While Henty was getting the hang of it, she demolished several other large displays but that couldn't be helped. When she felt sure of the controls, she headed for the stairs and set the Argocat whizzing down them.

"Whoopee!" Henty shouted as she took the first landing with satisfying precision. She pressed both handles forward as far as they would go for the tumultuous descent of the next flight. Almost immediately she caught up with the fleeing crowd.

"She's following us!" the bride-to-be screamed and pulled the prospective bridegroom down and stepped on him in her hurry to get away. That started a panic and the crowd disappeared like candyfloss at Disneyland, some onto other floors, and some merely over the railings, just in their mindless panic.

"What funny people," Henty said wonderingly and whizzed on down the stairs. She didn't even even notice the security guards zapping at her with their zipguns but their aim wasn't very good.

At the door of the store, the manager stood with outstretched arms. "Stop! You haven't paid!"

"Charge it to me care of The Caring Society," Henty shouted and pushed the levers further forward.

"You gotta wait to sign the docket," the manager screamed but Henty wasn't stopping and, at the last moment, he jumped for his life. Then Henty was free and out on the street.

And into an angry crowd.

A woman ranted from the back of a pickup... "It's not just the price going up. We know that's why they put aspirin on prescription, to put the price up, to give the medicos an extra cut. What is worse is that you can't get as much as you want. Sisters, we've heard some terrible, heart wrenching stories of withdrawal symptoms from persons who couldn't get their regular dose of analgesics. Are we going to stand for this invasion of our privacy? They say housewives pop analgesics from pure boredom. Well, so what? It's our right!"

The women roared their agreement.

Henty felt very sorry for them. But, all the same, they were blocking her way and behind her, she had just seen in the mirror of the little Argocat, the store security guards were setting up some kind of a weapon on a tripod. Henty edged the Argocat into the crowd and at first they parted for her. It was an ugly crowd and its mood was not improved by being pushed apart and packed denser still by the passage of the Argocat.

"Hey, can't you look where you're going," a woman with the haggard face of the professional neurotic screamed at Henty, spraying her with spittle.

Henty raised her hand to wipe the spittle from her face and the Argocat, with only one hand one the controls, turned in its own length, crashing lustily into the protesters just as their leader was shouting hoarsely into the microphone, "...and the only thing they notice is the destruction of property, so, Sisters, let's wreck a little!"

It was hardly surprising that those bruised by the Argocat should decide to wreck Henty's vehicle and her first.

"She's not one of us!" another haggard woman shouted and that was patently obvious, for Henty, despite what she had been through, was a shining, fresh faced, smiling person, very unlike this collection of harridans.

"You're probably very nice people to meet in the daytime," Henty said. But now darkness had fallen and the torches they carried to aid their wrecking work cast evil shadows upon their ravaged faces.

She wasn't like them.

Henty felt them jerk at her to get her out of the Argocat. Long, blood red fingernails tore at her face. Henty screamed but there was so much noise, they probably didn't even hear her.

CHAPTER 29

In desperation Henty, even as they lifted her bodily out of the Argocat, kicked both levers straight ahead for full forward. The Argocat roared and. since she was off balance and not pushing equally with both legs, swung around. It knocked her assailants flying and then roared off into the crowd, knocking witches this way and that, rolling over them with those soft chunky tires — but it did them no harm except to their dignity, for they rose again after its passage to curse and scream and rush after Henty with vengeance in their hearts.

Henty was on the back of the seat, her feet bracing her by kicking the levers as far forward as they would go. She didn't have any time for anything except trying to keep her balance and not fall out of the Argocat into that witches' cauldron of analgesic junkies.

Henty windmilled her arms for momentum and finally managed to fling herself back in the seat and get her hands on the levers. She was out of the crowd of crazed females. But, when she looked back anxiously to make sure she had hurt no one, a whole pack of the harridans were on her trail, baying like Baskervilles.

Henty pushed the levers forward again. She wondered how much fuel there was in the Argocat and looked anxiously over her shoulder.

She should have paid attention instead to where she was going because just then she came to a T-junction and the Argocat mounted the sidewalk and shot through the open door of a supermarket and straight down the aisle and through a plate glass window at the back almost before most of the customers had time to let their mouths drop open and before any of them had time to jump clear, including those who landed under piles of cans tipped by the Argocat. Henty deftly caught a two-pound barbell of cheese and started eating it the minute she took the Fist back from the duty of protecting her face from the glass.

She was racing through the parking lot when she saw the other crowd. The first thing she saw was a sign saying, "Militant Minorities Unite!" Then she saw the other signs, most of which said things like, "Equal Rights for Rapists" and she noticed that the whole crowd was composed of men, some of the men had seen her and were shouting and the whole crowd turned towards Henty. Just then she had to jerk both levers sharply back as she was coming up against a fence. She turned right and there was a stream.

And at that moment, to add to her troubles, the Women's Anti-Prescription League came through the supermarket, still racing after her.

But the Argocat was amphibious, so Henty set it straight at the stream. The problem was, it was nowhere near as fast on water as it was on land and both groups of assailants closed on her before she could get to the other side. They splashed into the water behind her, some swimming strongly towards her. Henty jumped out of the Argocat for the far bank.

When she landed, she turned for a moment to see how close her pursuers were. Very close. The "Rapists' Rights" boys were reaching for her. Henty had an idea. "Look! Women!" she shouted, pointing at the Anti –Prescription Leaguers. "Go unite with them!"

The "Rapists' Righters" paused to look at the women and in that moment Henty was off and away and when she looked back, the women had transferred their hatred of her to the men and were latching into them with great enthusiasm.

"Everybody gets what he deserves," Henty said and turned to trot away at an easy pace. "Those boys deserve those girls." Contentedly she munched her cheese. It was the first food she'd had since the suicidal truck driver's left-over sausage.

Around a corner she ran into the Anti-Prescription League again. The authorities had finally called out the Pacifiers and the women were battling them in the street and getting the worst of it. They were no match for the men with their glass shields, protective clothing, truncheons, electric prods and teargas canisters and had made no preparation to fight them though they must have known that they couldn't start wrecking downtown without the Pacifiers being called out by The Caring Society. Perhaps they are masochists, Henty thought. Then, Of course they're masochists, otherwise why should they hook themselves on aspirin?

Henty stood in a doorway, munching her cheese, waiting for the battle to be over so she could go on her peaceful way. Off to one side The Caring Society's medics had set up in their portable emergency center and were bandaging up hurt Anti-Prescription Leaguers and Pacifiers alike — in the ratio of about ten Leaguers to everyone Pacifier — and sending them out to do battle again. Ambulances were carting off those too badly hurt to fight on.

Their demagogue was still on the back of her truck, exhorting her followers to greater sacrifices — or greater pleasure.

"Get the ringleader!" a grizzled veteran Pacifier told a younger version of himself.

"Can't. She wearing armor."

"Then use your brain and get a marksman with a scope to zap her in the head."

"Yes sir!" The younger man trotted off.

The senior cop shook his head sadly. "I dunno what they give the youngsters for brains these days," he said.

Henty was leaning against the door and to her surprise, it swung open behind her. She found herself looking into the living room of the occupant of the house. The occupant himself was watching The Gauntlet Run. For a few moments Henty was fascinated by the wildly exaggerated reports of her day's doings. She was amazed at how many times The Caring Society's Watcheyes had caught her.

"And there she is now, right at this moment in the present time," the announcer said gleefully.

And there Henty was, eating the last of her cheese—

"She's standing in front of 71 Silvester Drive, Akron, Ohio. Remember, you heard it first on NBC!"

—and looking up at the camera—

"She's staring directly at you and isn't it a delicious thrill?"

—and grinning and then looking back into the room at her own face on the vidi and at the man sitting there riveted to the set when he could see Henty by just turning around.

On the vidi, in the background, behind the picture of herself, Henty could see the marksman run up with his rifle and take his orders from the senior Pacifier. While he was aiming at the Anti-Prescription League's leader and zapping her, his boss was listening to his wrist walkie-talkie. He whispered something to his men and then pointed at Henty's back. Since Henty was watching it all on Goggle-eye's vidi, it took her a moment to realize that the zipguns and the rifle were being turned on her. The bullets took chunks out of the doorjamb.

CHAPTER 30

Henty swung the heavy bulletproof door closed.

"And now," garbled the announcer, almost beside himself with excitement, "She's in the home of Mr Jerome L. Feodor, of 71 Silvester Drive, Akron. Ohio and you're watching on NBC through The Caring Society Watcheye on Mr Feodor's vidi!"

Henty gave her vidi-likeness a quick look and tucked a stray strand of hair back off her forehead.

"Hey, whatya doin' here?" Mr Feodor had at last realized he was in the middle of real live action. "Being shot at," Henty said, cocking an ear to the patter of zipgun fire on the door.

"Soon they're gonna bring up the heavy stuff, maybe a bazooka," Mr Feodor said avidly. "Then they gonna getya."

"They'll get you at the same time," Henty said reasonably.

"Oh yah? Yaaaah! You can't stay here!"

"Show me the back way and I'll be gone," Henty said. "Look". The box showed, courtesy of The Caring Society's Public Safety Watcheye outside, the two Pacifiers running up with a heavy cannon-like weapon between them.

"Aargh!" said Mr Feodor. He almost fell over himself to lead her the back way out. In the kitchen Henty paused. She surveyed the piles of encrusted dishes stacked on every available surface. "My wife went back to her mother six months ago," Mr Feodor said apologetically. "I eat teeveedindins."

"Have you anything clean I can drink out of? I'm thirsty."

"You can drink out of the can, like me." He swung the fridge door open. It was full of beer. Nothing but beer.

"Water," Henty said firmly.

"Water? You wanna drink water?" Mr Feodor demanded incredulously and threw her a beer. "With the Pacifiers outside the door with a cannon, you wanna drink water? With the Pacifiers outside— Here, have a six-pack."

He threw the six pack at her and Henty caught it in her other hand and consequently had no spare hand to fend him off when he came at her with the carving knife. The Fist squeezed the six-pack so hard, the cans of beer popped with tremendous force, hitting Mr Feodor bruisingly with their tag-tops and blinding him with hops-spray.

Henty took the knife from his unresisting hand.

"You really should wash the cutlery before you attack guests," she said sternly. She threw the knife back in the clutter and, popping the single beer in her other hand, trotted out of the back door drinking it just as the Pacifiers' bazooka took out the steel front door, Mr Feodor's living room, and that part of the kitchen she had just been standing in. As he came charging over the rubble, the chief Pacifier almost casually pacified Mr Feodor permanently.

From up the street, Henty looked back to see the whole apartment building take on a list towards her. There was also a loud creaking noise. There was a medicenter standing there deserted and in passing Henty grabbed a roll of white bandage and wound it around the Fist as she ran. It wouldn't hide the Fist from The Caring Society's radio receivers and transmitters built into every street corner Watcheye but it would stop casual discovery by what Henty still thought of as innocent bystanders. But she'd already seen how the prospect of $10,000,000 turned even the most innocuous of vicarious bystanders into knife wielding rippers. She wouldn't invite any more attacks if she could help it. Next time she might not be carrying a handy six-pack to fend off the assailant.

She saw a cab and hailed it.

"Hey, hey, hey!" said the cabbie over his intercom. "I ain't heard a piercing whistle like that since— hey, hey, hey, I dunno since when. Wherya' headin', my beauty?"

Henty looked anxiously out of the cab's rear window. The building could still topple on them. The Pacifiers could come out of Mr Feodor's hack door any moment.

"Towards Cleveland."

"Hey, hey, hey! Mrs Van Winkle, whereyabin? Cleveland's off-limits to Whitey."

"Towards Cleveland. Take me as far as US-80. Just get a move on!"

He pulled out then, just as the building fell. A monster viditenna on top reached greedily for the cab and Henty screamed as a tentacle of the thing thrust through the window.

"Hey, hey, hey! I got you now. You the lady chicken farmer become lady Runner."

"Oh dear," said Henty.

"You think you won't get recognized just because you wear a bandage round your hand like some neurotic biddy what got pacified?"

"Well, I was hoping—"

"Lady, your'n the most famous face in the nation this week."

"Oh," Henty said again, weakly. "Listen, I'll—"

"Never mind the tip. Hey, hey, hey! You really are a chicken farmer. You go Gauntlet Running and you tacka cab."

"What's wrong with that?" Henty bridled at the condescension, no matter how well intentioned.

"Hey, hey, hey! I tell you! You see the little vidi the cab company provides as a free gratis bona fide service to customers at no extra cost because by law they must?"

Henty looked down at it. The sound was down low but there was no off-switch on it. Worse, her face stared back at her from it. She was sitting in the back of a cab, looking at herself sitting in the back of a cab.

"Every vidi," the cabbie insisted on the obvious, "has a Watcheye."

Henty covered the fisheye with her hand and the screen went black for just a second before the announcer said, "And now she's put her hand over The Caring Society's Watcheye."

"Yes," Henty said tiredly. "I get it."

But the cabbie insisted on spelling it out for her. "Wherever I drop you, every bounty hunter in the nation will know where you are."

CHAPTER 31

Impulse and pleasure alone are real and life-affirming. — Daniel Bell

It was only an empty hospital room but it jerked Henty out of her tired dejection. Instinctively she knew it was Petey's room. She scrambled to turn the sound up. "Quiet!" she told the cab jockey.

"...disappeared without a trace at exactly 7.52 pee-em tonight! Now here's a rerun of exactly what happened, filmed live by ABC's public service program Gauntlet Runner!"

The vidi showed Petey in his bed, dozing. Then there was a flash of pink at one side of the screen and the screen went black. There were clanks of metal, the dragging of plastic tubes, and the scuff of shoe leather on the hospital-linoleum. Then the screen showed the empty, rumpled bed, with a flash of pink disappearing to one side of the screen.

"Of course it was an inside job," the announcer said. "A Caring Society spokesperson for the hospital said their security is excellent."

"Yes," Henty told him, "and I know who did the dirty 'on the inside'."

"They got your boy, have they?" the cab jockey asked.

"Yes."

"Hey, hey, hey! That's a foul. You know who did it?"

"I know who helped them. I'll find out in good time who did it because they'll want something."

"I can tell you who done it."

"Oh yeah? Who do you think did it?"

"Not think. Know. The people with most riding on you."

"The Syndicate?"

"You learn fast." He slewed the cab to a halt. "Now get out," he ordered her.

"But this is nowhere near Eighty!" Henty was outraged. "You can't—"

"Don't you dare tell me who I can carry in my cab, out!"

He hit the lever to swing the door open. "Out!"

Shattered by his sudden change from friendliness to hatred, Henty backed away fearfully. She was in a scrap yard. He had brought her here to kill her. How could she have been so stupid? When she was into the shadows of a rusting diesel engine, she turned and ran.

The cabbie took his zipgun and walked at a leisurely pace into the scrap yard. He had marked the direction in which she went. He was only about five feet high but he wasn't frightened of Henty: despite all the propaganda about the evil Runners, he knew a harmless person when he met one.

Henty thought she would be invisible in the darkness under a derelict bulk grain carrier sticking into the air at an acute angle. But the cabbie had spent years on night duty: he spotted her with ridiculous ease. For a moment the ten million tempted him as all the easy options for his family flashed by his mind's eye, but he was a man content with his lot and his wit and he had never killed anyone.

He put the zipgun down and stepped back from it. "I can see you," he called. "The zipgun is for you."

Henty nearly called, No thanks but stopped herself just in time in case it was a trick.

"Anyhow," the cabbie went on, "Going up to Eighty after you broadcast where you was heading woulda bin suicide. I din wanna tellya in the hearing of the Watcheye because the thing listens as well as watches. Just behind you there, a coupla hundred paces, is the railway yard. To your right as you stand now is West."

"Thanks," Henty called involuntarily.

"It's okay. A whole lotta people admire what you're doing for your kid."

"Take the zipgun," Henty said.

He came forward and picked it up and turned and walked away. From a good way off she heard him call, "Hey, hey, hey!" And then, almost inaudibly. "Good luck!"

CHAPTER 32

Across the nation, while Henty slept with only her head sticking out of a load of brown rye and so travelled effortlessly through most of Ohio and all of Indiana and into Illinois, men and women figured the odds on Henty staying alive. Some figured that, with Henty telling the whole world where she was heading, directly on camera in the Gauntlet hour, what with all the bounty hunters and hopeful amateurs converging on Akron, she would never make it out of that city. Or that, since she was so stupid that she let herself be pinpointed by The Caring Society's Watcheyes during the Gauntlet hour, even if she by some luck made it out of Akron, every manjack who could muster a rifle across the whole breadth of Ohio would be gunning for her and goodbye Henty. Almost nobody thought she would get across Indiana as well and as for reaching Illinois — the Syndicate didn't take many LWC (level with Chicago) bets that night.

By dawn, they had all lost their money, for Henty woke up amid the shunting yards and stock yards and grain silos of Chicago.

Henty wiggled half out of the rye and rubbed the sleep from her eyes. "Half my kingdom for a cup of coffee," Henty said.

"Here, try this instead."

Henty would have whirled around but her lower half was still covering with the grain. When she did manage to turn around, she saw an elderly gentleman with a bibulous nose he could have used for a lantern in the dark, dressed in neatly pressed Uncle Sam gear of tailcoat, stiff collar and top hat. He was holding a flask towards her.

"Thank you but I never drink alcohol," Henty said. "And on an empty stomach..."

"It's tea, child, the stuff for which this great nation first rebelled against our brutish British overlords and tax collectors." He unscrewed the top of the flask and poured, then held the cup out to her. "There's no milk, of course, but this is a fine effusion of Orange Pekoe and only a barbarian would put milk in it."

"You talk like the Wonderful Wizard of Oz," Henty said between small sips of the steaming liquid. "Or like a college professor."

"Alas, you are wrong and you are right." His tone changed. "I'm rodding the rails, as they used to say, exactly because, when I was a professor, I was no wizard with cures for this nation's pains and ills"

"This is very good tea," Henty said politely. "Do you hope to find a solution by travelling on grain cars?"

"Bless you, child! But no, I travel on goods trains for the solitude."

"Oh. I'll get off when the train stops."

"No, I don't mind persons, individuals. It's crowds I can't stand. And to think I was once a sociologist..."

Henty nodded. In her experience sociologists were grim looking folk called to Washington to tell the President what to do next. They couldn't be very successful because every season there was a new bunch looking sternly out of her vidi.

"You try hard but your expression still shows you don't hold sociologists in high regard." He stilled Henty's protests with raised hand. "No, no, no! You are right. The reason the social sciences cannot possibly make any further advance lies in the statistical nature of the very phenomena they seek to study. The French mathematician Mandelbrot told us long ago that uniqueness cannot be the subject of scientific study. But we weren't listening," he concluded sadly.

"You mean we can't succeed however hard we try?"

"Indeed that is what I mean with regard to the study of our society's disease."

"I know a doctor who says correct diagnosis is half the cure."

"A wise man. But the disease itself, aah! The disease is caused by the fact that we have succeeded too well."

"How could that be?" Henty asked. "The President says there's no such thing as 'too much'."

"He would, poor man, because he needs to be re-elected. He doesn't understand that the more progress succeeds, the harder it is to propagate the drive to success."

"You mean we did so well for ourselves that now we are slowing down?"

"Yes. But more, I'm saying the drive to achievement is itself a desirable attribute or at least that its lack is highly undesirable."

"Oh, come on, Professor. Everybody knows freedom from want is a good thing. That's what The Caring Society is all about. I don't mean be disagreeable but everybody knows that much."

"On you, child, a little disputation sits well. But let me give you an example of how affluence destroys."

"Oh boy, this I got to hear!"

"For years we studied the Polynesians but never drew the right conclusions."

"Tahiti and those places?"

"Yes, Tahiti and the rest of the Lotus Islands. Some two thousand years before Christ, people from somewhere in South East Asia launched themselves into the infinite Pacific. The feats of those people are totally beyond belief. They must have been truly driven Faustian men."

"Faustians. You mean they were Mormons?"

"You force me to digress, than which no activity is nearer the educationalist's heart. No. Faust has nothing to do with the Mormons. You see, the Faust of the legend exchanged his soul for the Devil's promise that he would make scientific discoveries, that he would be an achiever. It is only modern perversion that credits him with a lust for beautiful maidens. The Mormons are derogatively called 'Faustians' because they still believe in achieving things, in striving after progress, in standards whereby men who do things are most highly regarded by their fellows. So, these Polynesians were achievers — 'Faustians'."

"Okay, you persuaded me," Henty laughed.

"Right. They settled the Polynesian islands and then there was a change. They introduced some form of birth control; population was stabilized; worry about the next meal became unknown; they achieved a steady-state society. The Europeans, when they arrived, found a beat society."

"Like hippies?"

"Indeed. It was not the same on all islands. Cook, who discovered them, found that the more lush the conditions, the more beat the people. On Tahiti, for instance, they were taking dope almost all the time; they had overthrown all conventional ideas of sex. A typical hippie scene, as you say."

"Uh-huh."

"In New Zealand, on the other hand, a temperate rather than tropical zone, with larger and more challenging islands, the Maoris were still pretty rugged — though not in comparison with the Europeans. What's more, the Maoris were the only islanders who still had artistic forms."

"And what should we learn from that, Professor?"

"That an affluent society without intellectual problems left to solve inevitably goes into decline."

"Yes," Henty said, "but most people won't believe you when you say having no problems is the problem."

"Your quickness on the uptake does your parents and teachers credit, child. Of course, the society we have built for ourselves aggravates rather than alleviates the evil effects of universal affluence. A predecessor in my Chair at Harvard, Daniel Bell, said we are a divided society in which the economy and technology become increasingly organized on the principles of functional rationality — meritocratic, technocratic and so on — while alongside the industrial superstructure exists a culture that becomes increasingly apocalyptic, anti-intellectual and sensuous, that seeks only the new and experimental and has rejected all traditional bourgeois notions of rationalism and sobriety, a culture in which instinct is all, in which impulse and pleasure alone are real and life-affirming."

"Wow!" said Henty. "You must have thrilled your students."

"The few who could be bothered to listen rather than talk," the professor said sadly.

"People can still fight the system," Henty said.

CHAPTER 33

"The System is part of it. With the Watcheyes everywhere, there can be no privacy, no guilt, no shame, no standards. The System connives at and furthers the disease, like a surgeon implanting pleasure-diodes in the brains of degenerates. There is an intensely adverse relationship in our society and the only outlet for people's natural urges is not in achievement but in violence."

"Yesterday I saw The Caring Society medics bind up protesters and Pacifiers side by side and send them out to fight again."

"You learn fast, child. It is to everyone's benefit to channel the violence only in politically approved ways. Look at you: you wanted to provide better medicine for your son than The Caring Society is willing to afford. That makes you a striver after achievement and a criminal. In turn you become a Gauntlet Runner and a focus for the nation's violent hatred."

So enthralled was Henty by this sage that she didn't even look to see if the Fist was uncovered or wonder how he knew she was the Runner.

"It was much better when our energies were guided towards conquering hunger or increasing the gross national product or even the conquest of space, an otherwise useless activity. Now we are the victims of our own boring success," he concluded and poured more tea.

"Thanks," said Henty. "Don't stop now, just when you're going well."

"What a delightfully perceptive child you are. All right then. Let us take the police. They are a prime example of how an institution in a technological society can become distorted when it follows the example of machines and adopts efficiency as its only goal. What do the police do?"

"They protect society against criminals," Henty said promptly.

"Indeed. And to do so efficiently, they must anticipate and forestall crime. And to do that, they will keep as many citizens as possible under surveillance. They will also tend to become independent, forming a closed, secretive, autonomous organization in order to operate in the most effective way and not be hindered by subsidiary considerations like the law or privacy or liberty. They will create an atmosphere and an environment, a model of social relations in their own image. And to ease their task, they will induce a climate of social conformity, again in their own violent image. And, once the politicians surrender control or worse, encourage police "efficiency" as the ultimate aim... well, you've seen the results. You should read Jacques Ellul's 'La Technique'. Oh dear, what am I thinking of. You have other things on your mind and anyway you don't read French."

"No," Henty said. "But thanks for flattering me all the same. Tell me, Professor, why are you heading for Chicago?"

"That's easy. In my youth, Chicago was the crossroads for all us fashionable speakers on the lecture circuits. My own specialty was the danger of the police state." He laughed hollowly. "Except I was looking for it in the wrong place. I thought affluence was our first and finest and ultimate guardian against an American police state."

"I'm so sorry."

He screwed the nested cups back on his thermos and packed it away in the cane picnic basked that seemed to be his only luggage. "Thank you. We must leave this train before it actually stops," he told her and pointed.

Henty turned around to look.

"Grain robbers," he told her.

She stared for a moment at the crowd overturning the grain trucks and burning them.

"Why do they want wheat? I thought nobody went hungry in The Caring Society."

"In theory, you're right. In practice, a few slip through the interstices of the bureaucracy and die of starvation all the same."

"Poor people!" Henty exclaimed. "But then why burn the grain?"

"These aren't starving or even hungry. It's this week's fad in Chicago, wrecking grain trucks. See those little bags they carry? It's to take home some wheat to prove to their friends they were here. Most of them will leave before the Pacifiers come."

Henty rewound the bandage around the Fist. "All the same, I'm not keen on mobs."

"I think we're going slowly enough now to get off," the professor said. Immediately he suited words with action by swinging over the side of the carrier with his picnic basket and disappearing from sight.

Henty followed him.

He was standing beside the track, waiting for her when she rolled and jumped up. "You've done this before," she said.

"Practice makes perfect. Sadly, we must now part. Don't tell me where you are going. What I don't know the bounty hunters cannot extract from me. I hope you do get to the Mint and that your son gets better." And with that he ducked under the still rolling wheels of the train and out the other side in one superbly-timed smooth motion.

Henty clapped her hands in delight and bent so that he could see the applause — he certainly couldn't hear it over the clacketyclack of the train. What Henty saw under the train horrified her. While the professor had been saying his goodbyes the train reached the fringes of the crowd and they were now shouting, "A dandy hobo!" and trying to force the professor back under the train where, without his superb timing, he would be mangled by the razor sharp wheels.

Without stopping to consider what she was doing, Henty ducked and rolled between bogies. For a second she lay under the rolling train between the rails, listening to the professor's piteous cries as he struggled in the hands of a large number of overfed rioters. Then she rolled again.

Her timing was off and one arm was still behind her when the next wheel slashed up and right over her wrist. Henty was brought to a dead halt. Frantically she jerked her arm but the second wheel of the bogey was already on it.

CHAPTER 34

She wrenched her arm free just before the next truck arrived. She already held her other hand ready to stem the flow of blood from her stump of a wrist when she saw there was nothing wrong with her hand: the Fist was whole and intact and the fingers wriggled when she wanted them to.

"No, no, no!" shouted the professor as he struggled against his tormentors who almost had his head on the rails.

Without hesitation, Henty waded into them with fists and feet: there were so many of them, she needed all her limbs. Surprised by the sudden onslaught of violence, and those hit by the Fist seriously hurt, they let the professor go and fell back. But they were already rallying to fight: they were many against an old man and a twist of a girl.

Henty heard the train gathering speed behind her and had an idea. She grabbed the professor by the collar of his tailcoat with one hand and by his belt with the Fist and hoisted him bodily into the next grain truck that came by. Then she put the Fist on the earth and straightened her arm suddenly and sent herself flying to fall flat on her back next to the professor in the very last truck of the train.

But not before a grossly fat, bejeweled woman had grabbed at her and gotten hold of the tattered remains of Henty's modesty bandage, ripping it from the Fist, which glinted black for all to see.

"It's the Runner!" the fat woman shouted and threw her little bag of symbolic grain after the disappearing train.

"Thank god they like fancy breads on the West Coast," the professor heaved. "And thanks for saving me."

"What did they have against you?"

"I had just arrived, so I must be an outsider. I dress differently. I'm old and therefore not strong."

"Poor man. You lost your picnic basket."

"No matter. It is my lost faith in people that hurts more."

"Yes," Henty said thoughtfully. "I'm beginning to understand what you mean."

"Well, thanks again and I'll be getting off when the train slows for that bridge."

"You're not staying in Chicago after that?"

He drew himself up to his full dignity. "I am not diverted from my determined course by any hoi polloi. Anyway, every place is as dangerous as every other place for a stranger."

"Well. I'll stick with this train as long as it heads west."

"I doubt whether that's wise. Within minutes it'll be public knowledge which train you're on, headed in which direction, on which railroad."

"Sure. But the people who took my son will be able to find me and tell me what they want to return him."

"Ah. Well, good luck," and once more the professor was gone, saying over his shoulder as he jumped. "Remember, things must get worse before they can get better."

"Yes," Henty said to the thin air where a moment before the professor had stood. "That makes a weird kind of sense."

With that, Henty settled down to sleep again and didn't wake until just east of Moline where, as it crossed the Rock River, the train was blown up by bounty hunters.

CHAPTER 35

The police will create an atmosphere, an environment, even a model of social relations. — Jacques Ellul

"And I was having such a pleasant dream," Henty said aloud in that awful stillness that always follows a really big explosion, in that moment of absolutely no movement in which the train hung suspended by nothing but thin air over that river.

Then the grain truck fell away from under Henty and she saw the water below her and the bounty hunters on the shore opposite shooting off zipguns and shotguns and deer rifles at her.

"Between the devil and the deep blue sea," Henty said aloud. Her grandmother had always said it on Sundays when she had to choose between two equally tempting deserts. Except Henty had no choice. She was falling towards that broad stretch of water and the bounty hunters were shooting at her.

While Henty fell, several other superfluous charges went off and the whole of the bridge, a part of the embankment (and several of the bounty hunters) were blown to smithereens. Henty, not knowing it, had her hands over her ears as she fell into the water. The bounty hunters, mistaking this for the thrown-up arms of a person who has been hit, cheered and then started arguing among themselves about who had hit her: the argument soon led to shooting and a few more bounty hunters bit the dust before unanimity of a sort once more descended on the river bank and they got around to launching the inflatable with its outboard.

Henty used this small break to swim underwater as far as a truck that was floating upside down, and hiding behind it. The Rock River, here so near to its junction with the mighty Mississippi, was broad and fast flowing and very frightening. Henty looked longingly at the far shore, where all the bounty hunters had blown themselves up by clumsily overdoing the dynamite but it was too far and the water too swift for her limited swimming skills. Besides, the bounty hunters would be able to see her all the way and have ample opportunity to shoot her in the back.

So Henty stayed where she was and in trepidation awaited the heavily armed bounty hunters coming out in their boat.

"But I'm not going to go down without a fight," she told herself to keep her spirits up.

She had an idea and cast around for an implement to put it into practice. A sharp-ended baulk of wood came floating by and she waited until it passed as dose to her as close to her as it was going to get before hauling it in. It was too heavy for her and jerked her clear of the grain car she was hiding behind. At the very last moment she changed hands on it and used the Fist to haul in her weapon while clinging to the battered railway car with her other hand. Then she bided her time fearfully. It would be one last desperate gamble.

"I knew a woman would never make it." A loud mouth pinpointed the bounty hunters for her just before they came around the corner of Henty's sheltering grain truck. She pushed off with the Fist and her feet and stove the raggedly pointed end of the baulk of timber into their inflatable so hard that it came out the other end of the dinghy, which immediately gave up the ghost with a terrifying Whoosh! And sank. Henty didn't hang around to see if they could swim: she was already striking out for the river bank at her best stroke. Several of the bounty hunters could not only swim, they had managed to hold onto their firearms. They swam as far as the grain car Henty had just deserted, climbed aboard, settled themselves comfortably — and paused to take bets on who would bag the easy target first.

"It's like shooting ducks when I was a boy," one said.

"All together now," another said. "Then we won't have any arguments about who got her."

"But first, let's reduce the number who'll share," another said. "She's going nowhere with this current." And with that, he turned his rifle on the bounty hunters still struggling in the water and zapped several before the others joined in. Then they turned their attention back to Henty.

"All together now," said the one who was trying to promote concerted action.

And with this fine sentiment on his lips, he zapped the other three men on the inverted grain truck in the head with his zipgun. He caught the rifle of the last one before it could fall into the river.

"It doesn't need more than one hero," he said with satisfaction as he clambered higher up his makeshift raft to find better elevation. "She's less than fifty feet away." He spread his feet and took careful aim. His finger squeezed the trigger in the approved gentle manner, caressing it almost lovingly. "Ten million dollars," he whispered as he fired. "All for me."

Just then Henty swung the Fist over arm and as it dug into the water, much stronger than her other hand, it dragged her to one side. Instead of thudding into her defenseless back, the bullet skipped across the water.

The bounty hunter cursed and fired again. This time, because he hadn't paused to take proper aim, he struck the Fist.

Henty turned over in the water to face her end. Over the rifle she could see the coarse red face of the bounty hunter.

"Murderer," she shouted at him but he merely tightened his aim and caressed the trigger.

CHAPTER 36

Suddenly Henty threw both arms in the air and sank under the water.

The bounty hunter grimaced but didn't take the rifle from his shoulder. Sooner or later she would run out of air and when she came up she'd present a nice stationary head shot. He even smiled to himself in keen anticipation. He enjoyed his work.

Henty's lungs were bursting. She went to the surface as quickly as she could. She burst out of the water, gasping for breath. It was going to be many seconds before there was enough air in her lungs to go under again.

Through the haze over her eyes she saw the bounty hunter draw another bead on her and squeeze the trigger with obscene care. She was still gasping. If she went under now, she would drown. It was no choice at all.

"Goodbye Petey," Henty said, for she fancied she saw him lying on his hospital bed on the bank of the river.

Just as he squeezed the last minute fraction of an inch on the hair-trigger uptake of the professional bounty hunter's rifle, the red-faced freelance killer staggered backwards as he was hit a tremendous blow in the chest; he was lifted clear off his feet and flung into the river while the rifle went flying the other way.

Henty heard the bullet buzzing by like an angry hornet and ducked — too late, of course. When she came up, spluttering, she nearly went under again from the fright the smack! of the rope on the water gave her but stopped herself just in time. Anything was preferable to drowning. She clung on while she was hauled in.

"Now maybe you'll recognize who your true friends are."

Henty looked up from the toes of his green lizard skin shoes into the face of the man from the Syndicate, Jimmy Twoshoes. In his hand dangled the rifle with which he had zapped the bounty hunter.

"With friends like you, I need no enemies," she said as her eye fell on Petey, lying in a clear plastic life-support system twenty paces away.

She came groggily to her feet, shrugging off the gangster's helping hand, and walked over. Petey was awake. With thumb and forefinger he made her a circle: he was okay. The surgeon who had operated on him stood nearby. Henty turned to him.

"They took me too," he said. "They're looking after Petey well. They're also threatening to kill me if anything happens to him."

"Yeah. I guessed. I'm sorry you got dragged in, Chris, but if a doctor had to be kidnapped to look after Petey—"

"—I'd rather it were me too."

"Thanks."

"Think nothing of it. Could you manage to let Linda know I'm all right?"

"First chance I get."

"Okay," Jimmy Twoshoes said decisively. "You've seen the boy and you've heard the doc's report, now—"

"— now here's what you're trying to blackmail me into."

"Doan innarupt da boss," one of his henchmen told Henty, who ignored him.

"You know what we want. Just a little control of where you take your fall."

"Nevada," Henty said. "Okay, you let Petey go and you got a deal."

"We'll let him go when you've taken your fall. But not in Nevada. In San Francisco, in sight of the Mint."

"Hell," said Chris, the surgeon, "if you let her get that near and then zap her, people will take the whole country apart."

"That's Washington's problem. I look out for my own."

"You can't fool all of the people all of the time, you know," Chris persisted.

"You wanna bet on it?"

Defeated, Chris shook his head.

"I'm hungry," Henty said and, spying a candy bar in the top pocket of one of Jimmy Twoshoes' bullyboys, extracted it, peeled the wrapper and starter munching it.

"That's stealing!" said Jimmy Twoshoes.

"Look who's talking," Henty retorted around a mouthful of candy.

"You can take one of the bounty hunters' cars," Jimmy Twoshoes told Henty. "They won't be needing them again."

Henty went up to the glass. "It'll be okay," she said to Petey, who again signaled thumbs up.

"Lissen, you wanna take more care," Jimmy Twoshoes said at her elbow. "That bunch of amateurs in Penn nearly got you and it was stupid to stay on the train so long after everybody knew where to find you."

"I wanted to have a chat with you," Henty said.

He looked at her calculatingly but said nothing.

With a wave to Petey and the surgeon, Henty trotted away to where the bounty hunters had parked their transport.

CHAPTER 37

The sun set as she reached Des Moines. She drove a Cadillac, which she chose because it possessed really dark smoked windows. Her foresight paid off when a number of times choppers carrying red-faced men waving armament came down low beside her to inspect the car: she could see them but they couldn't see her. Of course, if any of them had a receiver on the Fist wavelength, she would be a sitting target... It was a calculated risk: she calculated all the professionals would have been at the wrecking of the train and the bridge. These were the johnny-come-latelies.

She was already nearing downtown Des Moines when the sinister young man from the Chaser Bank caught up with her.

Henty wasn't worried about the bounty hunters here: her concern was the unpredictable actions of local people turned into heroes by the sight of the Fist and the promise of ten million dollars, so it was all the more to her credit that she reacted so quickly to the unexpected threat. One moment Henty was driving along peacefully, the next a chopper dropped out of the sky between the high buildings (well, Henty, a Texas country girl, though of them as high) and settled in the road right in front of her car. Henty was about to brake sharply — a natural reflex action when she saw the intertwined crosses of the Chaser Bank on the chopper's doors. Instead, she stepped right smartly on the accelerator and crashed the car into the chopper's side at a good 15 milesperhour, which may not sound like much but was enough to damage the lightly built chopper quite extensively.

Henty jumped out of her car and started running. The man from the Chaser jerked at the hatch but couldn't open it because the frames were bent and the car was right up against them. He clambered up to the roof hatch and aimed his rifle at Henty's running back in the twilight.

The other commuters were also more than a little irritated at the chutzpah of this man in putting his chopper down in their way home. They took their cue from Henty and crashed their cars into the chopper. When the first car hit the chopper, the young professional killer had already fired his first shot and missed because Henty just then ducked around a parcel laden woman coming out of a store.

The woman. a born-again Christian, went to join her Maker.

Henty stopped to help her up, then saw the blood. She turned and ran towards the immobilized chopper. She didn't know what she was going to do against a professional killer holding a rifle on her, but she was so angry, she didn't think at all. "You can't even shoot straight," she shouted at the man again aiming the rifle at her, "you stupid— you— you— murderer!"

People on the pavements were giving way before her angry charge. The the man from the Chaser saw a clean shot and was about to bag her there and then — when the first commuter expressed his dissatisfaction with the holdup by ramming the chopper.

The organ chaser was thrown off balance and his shot killed another innocent bystander twelve feet to Henty's right. Then his body jerked every which way as more enraged commuters crashed their cars into his chopper.

Henty was brought up short against a solid wall of automobile metal. Realizing for the first time the stupidity of going empty-handed against a man with a rifle, she turned and trotted away into the sunset. Behind her, the man from the Chaser turned his rifle on his tormentors and soon what had started as a traffic jam was a massacre. But Henty didn't know any of this.

Nobody seemed to find it odd that Henty was running. In fact, many other people were either walking very briskly, or running themselves.

After a while, in which the streets suddenly emptied as it became dark much quicker than it would in Texas, Henty asked one of the few people still on the street. "Hey, why is everybody running?"

"It's the garbos," the woman said, and sprinted away at a rate of knots.

"Oh," Henty said, though she was none the wiser. And, "Thanks," even though the woman was already out of earshot. Henty kept heading west: the Mint in SF was thataway and that was the way she was going, for Petey's sake.

Then, also for Petey's sake, Henty had an idea when she saw a phone booth. She went in and stuck her card in the slot and then looked around uncertainly: she had never placed a bet before. But one number was written on the walls more than any other number and rather than call the operator — a member of The Caring Society to whom she would have to give her name before receiving service — Henty tried this popular number.

"Ryan's Malted Milk and Candy Shop," said a rasping voice.

"What's the odds on the runner making it all the way to San Francisco?" Henty asked.

·Ten thousand to one," came the prompt reply. "What're you, some kind of a long-shot freak? Or a woman's libber?"

"A liberated woman," Henty said. "Can you bill me for a bet?"

"Sure. Just tell me your Medicare number and it'll be automatically billed to your bank. How many credits?"

Henty still had a couple of thousand in the bank. It wasn't enough to do Petey any good and the bank would grab it an anyway once she was gone. But the Syndicate always collected... and always paid. "Two thousand that she makes it to San Francisco. Not the Mint, just SF."

"Sure. Two thousand she makes it to SF. You get twenty mill if she makes it. I'm holding thumbs for you, lover. If she makes it. You'll be a celeb."

"I guess I'm one already."

He wasn't impressed. "The vidi makes a new celeb every week. Now just put the thumb and four fingers of your right hand on the light pads to validate the credit transaction."

Henty put her thumb and fingers on the pads, knowing that by the time the computer threw up her name and the bureaucracy decided what to do, she'd be several miles away, but grateful all the same that the Fist was on her other hand.

"Okay, you got two grand on the Runner to make SF. Cheers, sucker!"

Henty called Linda to tell her Chris was okay and was about to leave the phone booth when she found out about the garbos.

CHAPTER 38

She turned to a bloodcurdling scream. A man in a business suit was in the grip of two large overalled men while a third ripped off his watch and extracted his wallet with practiced ease.

"A mugging," Henty said to herself. "Even Middle-America isn't safe." Then she gasped.

Instead of letting the man go, the muggers picked him up bodily and threw him into the back of the big garbage truck next to them which gulped the poor man in and crunched him and then was silent.

Henty's mouth opened but no sound came out. She just couldn't believe it.

The men swung aboard their truck and it moved on. Henty looked frantically upwards but the light globe was smashed and the only light inside the phone booth came from a nearby streetlamp which would also cause reflections on the armaglaze sides; she was quite safe. All the same, she shivered fearfully until they were well past. Then she crept out of her phone booth and ran down the street the other way. Far off she heard another unfortunate late stroller scream as the clanking machine ate him.

Henty crossed over several blocks, then turned doggedly West again. She wondered what the police were doing while citizens were fed to garbage trucks. She saw one or two funny square cut silhouettes race by on otherwise deserted streets and realized what they were when she ran past an open lot. "Pre-loved Personnel Carriers, Gently Used Tanks and HalfTracks", said the sign, but even they were closed for business. Henty broke her stride to look yearningly at the armored personnel carriers but she didn't want to steal anything and maybe the things needed special skills to drive.

A couple of blocks further on, Henty heard the screams and clanks of the garbos going about their business heading her way. She immediately turned a corner but they had already seen her. There was a shout and they rolled straight up the street at her even as she turned off.

Henty ran full-tilt into a blind man leaning on his white stick and staring intently East.

"So sorry!" She helped him to his feet and immediately he stared East again.

"The garbos are coming!" Henty said urgently. "Come along!" She tugged at his elbow.

He shrugged her off irritably. "Such a lovely sunrise, he said dreamily.

"It's sunset and you're looking East not West," Henty said. "Come on!"

"Sunrise over Europe," the blind man said. "Lovely radioactive hi-count over Europe. It's the only thing I can see, every day this time."

"My husband died in that war," Henty said. "THE GARBOS ARE COMING!" Once more she grabbed his elbow and tried to drag him along but he stood his ground and then the garbos were upon them, big men with brutal hands. The blind man fought like a tiger and Henty too put up a spirited defense, cracking a couple of heads, before they were overcome and pinned from behind. Their wallets and watches were ripped out of their pockets and from their wrists and then they were flung into the gaping maw of the munching machine by the garbos who simply swung them by their arms and legs and let fly...

They threw the blind man in first and he screamed. Then Henty, and she screamed. She also tried to grab the blind man back from the cruel teeth of the machine even as the automatic safety lid swung to behind them, leaving them in absolute darkness.

Henty missed the blind man but in grabbing for him stuck the Fist between the teeth just as they closed. In a blind panic in the darkness, right up against the crunching machinery, hardly knowing what she was doing, Henty used the enormous power of the Fist to twist two of the teeth into hooks and hook them around each other. There was a growl and a flash of an electric short and then the machinery ground to a halt, though not to silence as the garbos were returning the truck to the depot before taking their colleagues hurt by the stick of the blind man and Henty's Fist for medical attention.

The cops were waiting for them at the depot.

"Where were you when we needed you?" the foreman of the garbos asked as he handed over half the night's take.

"They fightin' back are they?"

"Yeah. Can you lead us with the siren. Bill's arm is broken real bad."

"Sure thing."

That was when Henty, enraged at this clear evidence of police complicity, smashed the Fist into the steel side of the garbage truck.

"Bloody truck's overdue for service," the foreman said.

Henty, seeing — much to her surprise — a glint of light where she had hit the steel plate. hit it again, harder this time. It tore and she came through the gap like the avenging angel, Fist first. It hit the garbo foreman in the face as she was still coming out of the hole and she swung the Fist up into the policeman's ribs as her feet touched. The other garbos were too far for her to reach and they were already running, so with her next step Henty was at the police car and then she was in it and away, switching the siren on just for the hell of it, swinging the wheel hard at the doors to the depot to turn West, towards the Old US Mint in San Francisco. West!

CHAPTER 39

Henty was perhaps a little naive but she wasn't stupid: she learned from her mistakes. She ate all the food in the policeman's box immediately to make sure she didn't have to leave any of it behind. And, before crossing the Missouri into Nebraska, she abandoned the distinctive police car.

All the same, the Humble and Poor Hunt was waiting for her.

CHAPTER 40

When the posse rides out, or the good man guns down the villain, the justification is always the same: extra-legal violence is the only protector of true justice in a world where authority has gone to seed and savagery is close at hand. — Michael Davie

The Humble & Poor Hunt originated, as the name suggests, in the institutions of Wall Street. But, as the New York megapolis spread, so the foxes retreated until there was not one to be found in Connecticut, Massachusetts, southern New York State, New Jersey, Vermont or New Hampshire. Or that is what the Master of the Fox Hounds of the Humble & Poor claimed. In fact, they had killed all the foxes long before urban sprawl became a danger to the descendants of tomarctus. When Abercrombie & Fitch moved to Los Angeles, the Humble & Poor recognized that the times had changed but they had no intention of going anywhere near that Sodom and Gomorrah. Instead, they moved to Nebraska, soon annihilated its foxes (and incidentally the rest of its never-abundant wildlife) and switched from hunting foxes to what one MFH described with a straight face as "the socially responsible duty of every properly constituted citizen to hunt the Gauntlet Runner". Soon after, he was jailed for tax fraud.

Many members of the Humble & Poor were legal or financial advisers to one or more tentacles of the Syndicate. One of them was an actuarial consultant to the Syndicate's betting arm and had told them that one Runner in about seven or eight would reach Nebraska; his friends in the Syndicate usually gave the Humble & Poor advance warning when a Runner would reach that far.

Of the Runners who made it to Nevada, only one in twenty survived the Humble & Poor Hunt to cross the border into Colorado or Wyoming. If a Runner tried to escape the Humble & Poor by going north or south, around Nebraska, the Humble & Poor would spare neither effort nor cost to punish him for his impertinence. They paid a permanent secretary to make all the arrangements. Of course, the Hunt was registered as a charitable institution to make its costs tax deductible for airlifting horses, hounds and hunters north to the Dakotas or south to Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas. If the Runner made it across the Western borders of these states, the Humble & Poor would sportingly let him go. They were, however, negotiating with the State Legislatures of Montana, Wyoming, Colorado and New Mexico to hunt across their territories as well.

Henty knew nothing about the Humble & Poor Hunt. She was not addicted to the vidi, the violence on Gauntlet Runner sickened her, and now that Petey was growing up, she switched the vidi off promptly when it came on to protect him from it as much as possible.

So she was quite unprepared when the Humble & Poor MFH shouted, "There she goes. Tallyho!" and blew his horn until he was red in the face and at the same time gestured to the handlers to take the muzzles off the dogs...

CHAPTER 41

The Des Moines coppercar carried RAM in its route finder only to cover the streets of the city and the main roads of the State as far as its borders. It showed Henty that Interstate 80 runs into Interstate 29 near the Nebraska border, that she would have to travel south along 29 briefly before turning west again on 80. What the map didn't show was that she could also have turned north on 29 for a little way before heading west again on US-30 which would then swing southwest to rejoin IS-80 at Grand Island, a route not significantly longer but a great deal less obvious than the direct one along IS-80, on which the Humble & Poor Hunt was waiting for her.

Henty's second mistake was also made out of ignorance: if she had known men on horseback, aided by dogs, would hunt her, she would never have abandoned the car before crossing the Missouri into Nebraska and the hunters would first be forced to separate her from her transport.

It was just before dawn when Henty trotted up to the bridge and started walking briskly across it. She had found a first aid kit in the glove box and bandaged the Fist with the gauze while in the other hand she carried a plastic lunchbox; it was empty but it might mislead the unobservant or naive into thinking she was on her way to work.

Out on those open spans Henty had to resist the apprehensive urge not to look around furtively, like some frightened animal, to keep up the appearance that she normally, routinely, daily crossed the bridge. On the far side elation took her and she broke into a trot again to get as far from the bridge as possible.

Henty had just seen the shimmer of Omaha's lights when, the Humble & Poor Hunt having established themselves between her and the bridge she had just left, the MFH gave the traditional cry:

"There she goes. Tallyho!" He blew his horn until he was red in the face and at the same time gestured to the handlers to take the muzzles off the dogs.

Henty, not for a moment dreaming that the cry was intended for her, turned to watch the Hunt's horses and riders and dogs and handlers muster near the road not far from the bridgehead. The horses were the finest that she had ever seen and the dogs were all Doberman Pinchers but this did not surprise Henty, who knew nothing about fox hunting hounds and anyway was vaguely aware that Americans own more Doberman Pinchers than all the rest of the world put together.

After a moment, Henty reluctantly turned away and started trotting westwards, into Nebraska. She was not to remain innocent long. No more than fifteen seconds later the Doberman growled behind her just once, quite softly and very briefly but Henty was so startled she swung around and, as she swung, her arms went wide. The Doberman sunk his teeth into the Fist — or tried to. Teeth broke and come spraying out of the dog's mouth. It howled pitifully and slunk away from her. But Henty was no longer looking.

Another Doberman had her by the other wrist and with a trained flick of its muscular neck, twisted her to the ground. Then, by instinct reinforced by training, it went for the jugular.

Henty tried to push it away and, in her desperation, grabbed its jaw too hard with the Fist. She opened the Fist immediately she heard the bone crunch but the dog was never again going to attack anyone with a pulverized jaw. Henty flung it from her and reared up to run but she was in the center of a circle of scowling red-faced men and women sitting high and mighty on their horses and wearing their red coats as some kind of a badge of merit; between the horses Dobermans were snarling pink and black gums and ivory teeth at her, barely restrained by their handlers.

"You silly woman, you have damaged two hounds for no sport at all," the reddest-faced man of them all shouted at Henty, brandishing a hunting horn in one hand and a whip in the other. He flicked the whip and Henty felt the sting on her cheek. When she took her hand away there was blood.

"But— " Henty said, flabbergasted.

She was drowned out by the angry roar of the MFH. "But me no buts, you poor-spirited thing! We will have proper sport or I shall know the reason. Now get up and run!" Again he flicked the whip; this time against Henty's other cheek.

"That was unkind," Henty said, catching the whip on the return swing and jerking hard. The MFH, roaring his anger, crashed heavily to the ground. While the rest of the Hunt was still rearing back at this lèse-majesté and trying to calm startled horses, Henty bounded on his hunter and, digging her heels in hard, set him to jump the impenetrable wall of Dobermans and handlers; the other horses instinctively gave way for one of their fellows. It took Henty a while to find the reins and get them into her hands, and put her feet into the stirrups. Only then could she feel safe on that bucking seventeen-hand high thoroughbred hunter.

Behind her, the MFH — a far less agile figure at ground level than on horseback — waddled around in a circle before making his choice of the rider he would dismount so that he could ride. The rider protested and the MFH physically jerked him from his saddle. Then the MFH rode around swatting at handlers who weren't quick enough in releasing the Dobermans. By this time Henty was two furlong shead but it was bad form to set off ahead of the MFH, so the huntsmen they merely fidgeted and some of the bolder ones said things like, "I say," or "Not cricket, that," or "Jolly bad show, what," referring to Henty's dastardly deed in unseating the MFH.

"Used to hang horse-thieves in these parts," said one woman.

"The hounds will never leave enough of her to hang," another said regretfully. "Nothing like a good public hanging to instil respect for lornorder," said a bewhiskered fellow whose advertising agency was called Motivation Inc. This earned respectful nods. Then the MFH blew his horn and they were away after Henty, dog handlers hanging onto their stirrups with feet touching or dragging along the ground every now and again.

Nebraska is criss-crossed by major and minor rivers and their associated streams and gullies, so that it is nowhere very flat, being made up of gently rolling plateaux and valleys. The Humble & Poor Hunt's quarry was out of sight but that did not bother them one bit: they merely followed the baying of the pack, which was on her track and, from the sound of it, perhaps even in sight.

"Excellent hunting," one of the backmarkers remarked to another, his customary shout passing for a conversational tone in the tumult.

"One shouldn't say so—" remarked the addressee.

"—but all the more spice to have her on horseback," the other added. "Bit of a cheek, grabbing the MFH's horse."

"Quite. She'll regret it yet."

"Hey George!" the first one raised his voice to stentorian shout and waited for the MFH to look around to acknowledge him. "It's traditional to hang horse-thieves."

George spluttered something and faced for'ard again but after three minutes he half-turned in his saddle to roar. "Sterling idea, Nicholas. If we get there before the hounds finish her, of course."

Nicholas resisted the temptation to tell the MFH to get a move on then. That too wasn't done, and he could be left behind if the better riders streaked ahead; he didn't want to miss the fun.

"Who has a rope?" he called among the backmarkers. None carried a rope but they were all men and women of initiative:

"We'll cobble one up from dog leashes or tackle," said a woman who was a wheel on the sales side of the publishing house that had bought Henty's sob-story.

CHAPTER 42

Henty hadn't ridden since the pony her parents gave her for her twelfth birthday died. She had the greatest difficulty staying on that obstreperous hunter and keeping him heading in the right direction — and the baying of the hounds closing on her was not helping her equilibrium at all. The hounds came closer with every breath she took, relentlessly cutting down her slender lead. Henty was further demoralized by the knowledge that, even if she should manage to outpace the dogs, they would still have her scent to follow until she dropped from pure exhaustion and a Doberman could tear her throat out without any resistance from her. Fearfully she looked back — and marveled very briefly at the fabulous dawn outlining the Humble & Poor on the skyline behind her. But the Dobermans slavered after her much closer and were making a renewed effort now that they were almost within springing distance of their quarry.

Henty smacked the big bay's shoulder with the rein-ends and dug her heels in too and, miraculously, he picked up speed. But now she found it even more difficult to hang on as the big horse galloped over the rough country. Only pride kept her from throwing her arms around the horse's neck and merely hanging on for dear life. She swayed from side to side and was continually in the air, her bottom touching only intermittently and very, very briefly. When the horse jumped ditches or low obstructions, she thought she would be flung clear. She didn't dare look behind her for fear of the horse taking a ditch or a bush while she was off-balance and throwing her.

But there was no need to look: already she was so attuned to the sound of the Doberman Pinchers that she was reasonably certain that, while they were not falling back and were easily holding their own, they were not gaining on her. The sound of their baying had changed, she thought. Henty was learning fast.

Over an apparently perfectly level stretch of country it wasn't easy to judge when you were never still but being bounced up and down with great speed while being carried forward at even greater velocity. Henty dared to look back and saw the Dobermans were at least a hundred yards behind her. She sighed: small mercies were mountains of strength in her present predicament. Of course the horse couldn't keep it up and then the dogs would catch her and tear her and the horse apart. But for the moment a hundred yards was as good as a mile.

Behind the dogs were the mounted hunters, riding hell-forleather, the leaders sitting up straight in the saddle though some of the backmarkers swayed almost as precariously as Henty. Henty hoped none of them had a rifle. She was probably within range of an expertly fired pistol and they would have at least a pistol to put down hurt horses and dogs. But Henty couldn't go any faster without falling off.

When Henty turned eyes-front again, they were almost upon the river, racing along a railroad tract. "Oh! Oh, for a train to take me away!" Henty shouted her fear and frustration at the heavens. "Whoa! You stupid horse, stop! I don't swim too good."

The horse paid her no heed, keeping going at full pelt. Henty kicked her feet free of the stirrups so she wouldn't be dragged down by the horse.

"Now she's got to stop and water the horse and then we have her with her back to the river," the MFH gloated and deliberately slowed his mount, forcing the whole hunt to slow behind him. "Mustn't spook her," he shouted. Nobody argued with him; none knew of anyone who had ever won an argument with George Ballantyne.

"Don't you want to stop for a breath and a drink of water?" Henty hopelessly tried to coax the runaway horse.

The bay flicked his ears and increased his pace. Henty groaned, then laughed aloud. The horse was smart. A railway heading straight for a river — of course there was a bridge. In a flash they were on the bridge and, near the end of it, Henty dared look back again. She had gained another hundred yards on the riders and the bridgehead was providing a bottleneck for the pack of hounds. All those behind the very front rank, who were still on Henty's trail, were fighting to get on the bridge first instead of waiting their turn in an orderly manner.

"Have you ever seen such cruelty," George raged. "Not even a pause for breath or a drink for the poor horse!"

His fellows shook their heads sadly. "Shocking!" said Nicholas, summing up for all of them. "She deserves whatever she gets."

"I'm not surprised at all that she's an outcast from Society," a redheaded woman said primly. "Cruelty to horses is also a hanging offence."

CHAPTER 43

"Get those dogs sorted!" George shouted, laying about the handlers with his whip. "She's escaping while you laze about, you wretched buggers."

They looked at him sullenly but only briefly and none said a word of protest before running to do his bidding: they were all illegal immigrants from south of the border and after a year's service they would be rewarded by the Humble & Poor in the person of their ubiquitous, energetic paid secretary sponsoring them for US residence permits.

By the time they finally did get the dogs sorted out. Henty was four or five furlongs ahead of the riders and the main body of dogs. But that was small consolation to her, because the leaders of the pack, the most vicious and persistent of the Dobermans, had made it onto the bridge before the general mêlée among the crush of dogs broke out. Now these dogs were right behind her and gaining. She could hear them panting and when she could no longer prevent herself casting a terrified look behind her she could see their pink tongues lolling out of the sides of their mouths with their exertions. But they did not seem tired and the blank brown eyes regarded her expressionlessly, fanatically. They could and would run her down and tear out her throat, those eyes told her.

"That stupid woman is going to let the dogs pull my horse down." George's voice was high-pitched with anger. "Move!" In his anger he forgot the time-honored usages of the hunt and reverted to his everyday speech.

"But our horses—"

"Do you want her to escape justice, Madam?" the MFH roared and set his horse across the bridge. Though Henty was further in front of them than at any time since the hunt began, they could see her clearly because she was keeping to the line of the rail. If the horse couldn't outrun the Dobermans on the level, Henty thought, perhaps its longer legs and taller stature would give it an advantage in the rough. She therefore headed the big bay to the left, using considerable power with the Fist to do so: he was a headstrong horse in more than one sense of the word. Henty suspected the horse was running so hard to get away from George rather than to save her.

When next she looked back, she had gained maybe ten yards on the dogs but the Hunt had turned after her and was gaining on her again. Ten yards gained on those dogs was like nothing and the red-coated hunters would soon be there to spur the dogs on or catch her themselves.

How Henty wished she'd kept that car!

The bay launched himself into the air and barely cleared a big stream, his hind legs scrambling for purchase on the steep far bank. The impact of the landing sent Henty over his head, flying in a high parabola to land heavily on her back. Henty was thoroughly winded; she wanted to be ill; she was certain her back was broken. But she clenched her teeth and rolled upright and scrambled across to the horse and, pausing only for a fraction of a second to stare at the frenzied Dobermans jumping into the water from the far bank, managed to swing a leg over the saddle just as the bay rose to his majestic height. She would never have gotten back on if he had been standing.

The horse set off immediately. Henty, all thought of pride now consumed in fear and the urgent need for breath, clung to his neck and let him have his head.

Behind her, the leaders of the Humble & Poor had jumped the stream more or less cleanly but the middle ranked riders landed in the river on top of the dogs and the backmarkers on top of them. Nobody counted the handlers, already in the water to help the dogs up the far bank, who got their heads stove in or their necks broken by having horses land on them. It was a disaster.

George shouted stentoriously to sort out the mess. He was a master organizer but, even so, it took him eight minutes to restore order, to appoint a deputy to shoot the injured horses, to boost the rest of the dogs up the steep bank of the stream (during which operation many handlers and two members of the Hunt were savaged), and to set off once more in pursuit of Henty.

But he wasn't worried she'd get away. The leaders of the pack had made it up the riverbank before the horses had landed in the river and they could still be heard baying in pursuit of Henty. There was a clear trail for the remaining dogs to follow, even without the aural direction.

Henty swayed with fatigue and she fancied the horse wasn't going as strongly as it used to. It was now full morning with a blistering sun and she had been going at this pulverizing pace for hours without rest, after a night without sleep, and with no breakfast.

But mainly her thirst was killing her. Henty hardly knew that the Dobermans had caught up with her until one jumped for her ankle. She jerked her foot away, into the horse's side. The horse thought the sharp pain was caused by the impertinent dog and stopped, kicked the dog in the head to crush its skull, and then started grazing.

Henty landed face down. First she heard the sickening thud and then she felt it throughout her battered body. With the last of her energy she pressed the Fist on the ground to roll her over so that at least she could breathe. The three remaining dogs were aiming for her head with gaping jaws, ready to grab her head in those concrete crushers and shake her to break her neck if her skull didn't collapse first. Now they paused, waiting for Henty to expose the softer target of her jugular instead.

Henty saw the pink gums and the teeth but she was gasping for breath and had no energy to spend to defend herself. That enforced lack of resistance was Henty's good fortune.

As she lay there, quite still except for her chest heaving for breath, the dogs thought she was submitting. It was their instinct — and couldn't be taken from them by any amount of training and selective breeding to accentuate their vicious streak — to let another animal who passively exposes the jugular lie unmolested, though they would stand over it and, at the first sign of movement, tear out its throat.

Henty, a country girl, of course knew this, but she would never have remembered to lie still in her panic at the dogs coming straight for her throat. But, once she had caught her breath, though she was still heaving for more air, her mind had a break to catch up with her reflexes and she remembered. She therefore lay quite still until the Humble & Poor Hunt rode up and the handlers pulled the dogs, snarling from frustration at being deprived of their quarry, away from her.

"Poor-spirited!" George shouted at her from a safe distance. "Cowardly horse-thief."

The tear jerk publisher pointed. "There's a marina on the river there. Plenty of rope to hang a horse-thief."

"And a derrick to serve as a gallows," Nicholas added enthusiastically.

"Excellent!" boomed George. "After we hang her, we can have a picnic breakfast on the river-bank, what?"

CHAPTER 44

We are easy to manage, a gregarious people, full of sentiment, clever at mechanics, and we love our luxuries. — Robinson Jeffers

"Do you have any last words?" George roared at Henty.

Henty looked at up at the little crane to which the rope about her neck was tied. George already had his hand on the lever that would raise the boom — and raise her, at the other end of the rope, by her neck. Her hands were tied behind her back. One of the handlers started tying her feet but a woman leaned down from her horse to flick her crop across his back.

"Don't be silly. Watching them kick is half the fun."

"Yes," Henty said. "What makes you think you're human?"

George spluttered. Slowly his pudgy red hand pressed down on the lever. The Humble & Poor members cheered and clapped their hands and shouted. "Good old George!" Henty felt her neck stretching and came up on her toes. Then the rope tightened around her neck and her air was cut off. She gasped and that cost her more air she could ill afford. Already there was a red haze in front of her eyes. She had resolved not to kick but now she couldn't help herself. It consumed more precious oxygen and tightened the rope around her neck another notch.

Henty pulled with the Fist against the ropes on her wrists. The rope cut cruelly into her unprotected right wrist but she hardly felt it. Then she had the Fist twisted so that her left wrist was broad-side on to the right and she twisted the thumb of the Fist around to hook it in the rope. In front of her eyes the red haze had changed to black. She no longer heard the Humble & Poor or the Dobermans they had released to snap at her swinging feet. She concentrated solely on her thumb in the Fist, twisted through the rope on her wrist, one hard twist with the Fist, the rope cutting excruciatingly into her unprotected right wrist, then it snapped.

Henty's hands flew instinctively to her throat to relieve the painful constriction there on her breathing, though she knew this was a fatal mistake. But the rope was already pulled into the flesh. There was no way to get her fingers between her flesh and the rope.

"Noooo!" Henty shouted at herself — though it was all in her mind. She forced the Fist to the rope above her head and twisted it this way and that, hauling herself higher, ignoring the searing pain of the rope tightening and her killing need for air, to twist the rope around the Fist. Then, with a flexure of her fingers inside the Fist, Henty parted the rope.

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 every 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.

"How'd you know it was me?" Henty was sure the Fist had been in darkness all the time.

"The only person not hunting the Runner must be the Runner. Us Italians just about invented logic."

"Hm," said Henty, not wishing to contradict a benefactor.

"As you go out on the street, the Watcheye on the right hand corner is broken."

"Thanks."

"Many people see hope for all of us in what you're doing."

"I'm— uh— flattered."

"But you don't know what the hell I'm talking about."

"Right. I'm only doing it for Petey."

"There was a party of cops that ran off with the rest of the crowd after you. They never lock their cars. They're parked all over the no-parking zone round the front. Good luck."

Henty flicked her fingers at the broken Watcheye as she passed it. The no parking-zone held five cars, each with a uniform cap lying ostentatiously underneath the back window. Henty found the keys in the first one she tried but the tank was empty. The second one had the keys and a full tank. Henty drove off with a wave to the waiter, now standing in the front door of his restaurant. He made a sliding and then a turning movement with his hand. Henty took that as meaning she should take the first right, which proved correct. Without passing any traffic lights, she soon came to a sign for Interstate 80; that was of course no guarantee that the Watcheyes at random street corners without traffic control lights didn't observe and broadcast her passing but she wasn't too worried about that. She no longer feared the crowds as much as the organized and professional bounty hunters.

Back on the highway and heading west, her stomach filled with good steak and strawberries and cream and even a glass of wine, Henty burst out in song. She didn't notice the flames that lit the night sky behind her as the good citizens of Cheyenne expressed their frustration at her escape.

CHAPTER 50

By the time Henty phoned The Caring Society to send an ambulance for the man from the Chaser, he was already in hospital, the very place he didn't want to be. He had finally recovered enough strength to rise and start after Henty. He had paid the farmer's widow over the odds for a ramshackle truck but she, feeling he had cheated her, had not told him Henty was on the back of a Coke truck.

So, thinking he'd never find her on the highway with the obsolete truck, he turned back towards the town of North Platte. It was only half the distance to Cheyenne and, if he was quick about finding a new chopper and pilot, he could find Henty before she got too far into Wyoming. Or so he thought. But he was stopped for a vehicle emissions test, the old truck failed the test and then, despite his protestations that he was a vice-president of the Chaser Organ Bank on urgent Caring Society Business, they grabbed him and gave him to the local hospital because he was in such an obviously bad way.

The hospital enmeshed him in their procedures and wouldn't let him go until some senior official was roused to make him sign forms absolving them of all responsibility. By then it was midnight and the airport was closed and, when he finally tracked down the chopper operator at home, the man said, "Yeah. I heard about you. You keep losing choppers'n'pilots about the rate of one each per day." And promptly shut the door in his face.

The banker knocked up the manager of the local affiliate of the Chaser. He showed him his credentials.

"Never had the honor of meeting a vice-president before," the man said cautiously.

"Yes, yes! I need transport. You got a chopper?"

"Well, I—"

"Yes or no!"

"This isn't New York, you know. We have a Zuffhausen Flyer converted to a hearse to get us to accidents fast before the competition and the freelance organ chasers."

"I'll take that. Where is it?"

"Well, look here—"

"No, you look! Hold me up, and I'll fire you on the spot."

"Okay, okay! You don't look too good, you know. Do you want me to drive for you?"

They were at the low slung sports car turned into a morguemotor. "No." The banker opened the door and groaned as he folded himself in. He started and gunned the engine. The local manager shouted at him but he pressed the button and wound the window up. He spurted gravel as he took off in a hurry.

Behind him, the manager said to himself, "Well, I told him those tires are badly worn." Then he crossed himself.

The young banker kept his foot in the corner. He was doing three times the speed limit. Every once in a while a siren would start up, then the highway patrol would see it was the Chaser's car and the siren would wind down. Sometimes they would query him on the radio about the accident and he would lie to them. "Young girl dying in her bed. I want to get there before the relatives sell the body to the jekyll'n'hydes."

Out here the speed limit was still an antediluvian 55 milesperhour, so every hour he was on the road, he gained two hours on that damn woman Runner who was ruining his reputation and his career. He hunched forward over the wheel as if willing the Zuffhausen Flyer to go faster still...

CHAPTER 51

Henty had set the cruise control to 55 milesperhour. She didn't want anybody to stop her for any reason whatsoever.

She was fighting to stay awake. It was boring driving across Wyoming in the middle of the night, requiring a minimum of skill and attention except for crossing the mountains and, on modern roads those weren't a big deal either. She played the radio very loudly and every fifteen minutes cut in on the police band but there was no excitement out here, only some chat about reinforcements being sent to Cheyenne where the populace was destroying their city to winkle out the Runner. She met a lot of fire engines heading towards Cheyenne.

If the Watcheyes in the sparse and sparsely populated towns she passed through saw and recorded her passing, nobody was manning the monitors and in the morning, when they played the tapes back, she'd be long gone and the trail would be cold. By now only morons wouldn't know she was heading across America arrow straight on Interstate 80.

"Is it time to leave Interstate 80?" Henty asked herself aloud, punching up the route finder.

A single glance told her the only alternative was US-50 onto which she could turn once past Salt Lake City — but that rejoined Interstate 80 on the far side of Nevada. Henty doubtfully traced some other possible routes with her finger. They were all huge detours. She came back to US-50: it wasn't too much of a detour and she could bypass Salt Lake City whereas on I/S-80 it was impossible to give Salt Lake City a miss. Having made up her mind, Henty relaxed.

CHAPTER 52

The President, trying to appear at once homely and industrious, conducted many of his working meetings at breakfast. As a result, he often ate three breakfasts with different groups of people (which made it no hardship to give up lunch and expect everyone else to work through the lunch break as well). This was the first, early, breakfast. The party around the table consisted of the President, his Chief of Staff — who most thought of as the real government, the Secretary for The Caring Society, the Director of the FBI, and a four-star Air Force general who was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The President spoke around a mouthful of waffle and syrup.

"This woman Runner is running away with the imagination of the nation."

There were appreciative chuckles: they thought the President was making small talk and pretty good small talk — for him. The President's axe-man, whose name was Vaughn, said, "That's the purpose of this meeting, gentleman. The President is of the opinion—"

The chuckles stopped dead: schoolchildren caught giggling.

"That to let her succeed would undermine respect for authority in the nation," the President said on cue. "Let's hear first from those who don't agree with me."

The Director of the FBI said, "You're right, Mr President. To let her reach the Mint would undermine the moral fiber of the nation."

"I agree," said the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. "It would be like rewarding her for wrongdoing, right?"

"What about you, Alfie?" the President asked around another mouthful of food. The Secretary for The Caring Society was a plump, balding little man; he looked like a prime candidate for henpecking and it was typical of the man that, after attaining high office, he was still called by the diminutive of his name.

He swallowed hurriedly and nearly choked on the unchewed food. "I dunno, Mr President. Isn't the idea that the Runner crosses the country under the opprobrium of the nation? Isn't the idea that, if he survives the punishment the solid citizens meet out to him, he is redeemed by reaching the Mint and receiving a new financial start and a full and unqualified Presidential Pardon?"

"Huh?" said the Air Force General.

"You don't believe that guff, do you?" the Director of the FBI wanted to know incredulously.

"Hold on," Vaughn interrupted before they shut Alfie up permanently. "Are you making a case we should let her reach the Mint?"

"Take your time, Alfie, if you want to think on it," the President said kindly.

But Alfie, who had hadn't reached the top through indolence, had done his homework and knew his answer. "Mr President, our researches tell us the people believe the Gauntlet Run is fixed, either by the Government or, more likely, the Syndicate."

"Never mind 'believe', the people know the Syndicate nobbles the Runners when it suits the odds," the Director of the FBI said scornfully. "I don't need research to tell me what I can hear in any bar."

"So," Alfie said doggedly, "it is our opinion that we should allow just one Runner to reach the Mint."

"This one?" Vaughn asked. He too was incredulous.

In the face of so much hostility, Alfie hesitated.

"Speak up, man," the President said impatiently. He had two more breakfasts scheduled.

"No, not this one," Alfie said. "One, she's the first woman Runner. Two, she's not a regular criminal. And three—"

"And three, she's got too much of a following already from people who sympathize with her boy's illness," Vaughn ended for him. "So what do you suggest?"

"Nothing," Alfie said in what was for him quite a decisive voice. "She won't make it and we don't want to get caught interfering. That would just create a martyr and more trouble in the inner cities."

Vaughn flipped the cover off a chart on an easel beside his chair. "She's almost through Wyoming now." He ran his finger along a red streak across the map.

"Maybe, instead of zapping her, we should recruit her," the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs said. "How many get that far?"

"Not quite one in forty," Alfie said immediately. "But she hasn't one chance in a million of getting to the Mint."

"And on Monday morning your statisticians were claiming she'd never make it to Chicago," the Director of FBI said chillingly.

"You lost your bet, did you?" The President was himself a betting man. He waited for the Director to nod, and then nodded his own head in sympathy. "I don't care overly much for statisticians myself. Okay. The only point that remains to be decided is who'll take that woman out and when."

CHAPTER 53

Jimmy Twoshoes was fetched to a meeting with the Chairman of the Commission in the middle of the night like a disobedient pup. The Boss of all the Bosses was an insomniac, a dark, craggy man of about seventy. He was the only man Jimmy Twoshoes still feared. He kissed his Don's hand, then backed away, with his head still down, to a distance that wouldn't make the bodyguards in the corners of the room nervous. There was no other chair in the room beside the one the old man sat on but Jimmy Twoshoes didn't expect to be offered a seat.

"James," the Don said just before the silence drove Jimmy Twoshoes from the room screaming his fear. "You have risen far and fast in our organization."

"It has been an honor and an education to serve under you, Don Guilio."

"You learned well. Now, in the matter of this woman Runner—"

Jimmy Twoshoes sighed and the sweat started flowing but in relief this time. The Don wasn't reading his obituary. It was just the Dan's usual dance of intimidation before coming to the real business for which he summoned Jimmy to audience; it was none the less frightening for being expected. "Taking the son from The Caring Society was rash."

He was expected to reply. "We didn't kidnap him, my Don, he was given to us by The Caring Society with all the paperwork properly filled in."

"How can such a thing be?" The Don was shocked.

"When the care of The Caring Society is exhausted, relatives often pay for patients to be taken care of privately."

"And for this we pay taxes," the old man said bitterly, "What about the surgeon?"

"Him we had to take," Jimmy Twoshoes admitted. "But will make a fuss about him." He risked a joke. "His mother's not the Runner."

Don Guilio seemed not to have noticed the joke. "The actuaries tell me you say this woman will come to her inevitable end in sight of the Mint in San Francisco. How can such a thing be? None of these criminals have ever made it as far as San Francisco."

"Because we have not allowed them," Jimmy Twoshoes said respectfully. That the Don of all people seemed to believe the myth that the Syndicate just let the Runner run and took their losses with their profits, now that was one for the book, though he would of course never be able to tell anyone else. Not if he wanted to live.

"We are not the only hunters in the field," the Don said swiftly.

Jimmy Twoshoes nodded, "That's why I took her son, to give her motivation. She is also very good, a natural survivor. She looks like a birdbrain but she has the country-smarts." He realized he was rattling on out of fear and stopped.

"The actuaries don't like it," the Don said when he was certain the other man had stopped talking; it was his policy to let every man talk himself into a cement overcoat: sooner or later they all did just that, to his enormous gratification.

Jimmy Twoshoes knew that already: they had told him several times and at length but he had shut them up with a look because these "civvy" employees of the Syndicate were afraid of the "line executives" like him. They must have pretty good reasons if their dissatisfaction reached the Don. Suddenly he was sweating so profusely, he had to mop his face with his handkerchief, even knowing that it was a sign of weakness to the old man and the four bodyguards.

He took his time putting the handkerchief away, then said carefully: "What is it you would like me to do, my Don?"

"Do?" Don Guilio spread his hands. "No, I don't want you to do anything. I'm merely an old man trying to keep peace in my family."

"So far this Runner has been our most profitable operation ever," Jimmy Twoshoes said. "This week alone we have taken as much in bets as in all of last year."

"The actuaries do not contest that. Jimmy. They give you full credit for that."

A cold shiver ran down Jimmy Twoshoes' back. This was terrible! All this extravagant praise was a sure sign the actuaries were out to get him.

"But," continued Don Guilio, "They think that by letting her get so close to the Mint, you are risking all of that and more."

"How?" Jimmy Twoshoes asked shortly, then moderated his tone to add, "That's what they couldn't make clear to me."

"If she makes it to the Mint, we will have to pay odds of millions to one. It will wipe out all the profit we made this week and more besides." When it came to money, Don Guilio was no innocent and now it showed. "That is how."

Jimmy Twoshoes shook his head. "I wish they would stick to their trade and leave me to mine," he said. "How can I fail to zap one lone woman who's got to come to a certain place and with whom I already have an arrangement?"

"You guarantee she will not get into the Mint?"

"I guarantee it," Jimmy Twoshoes said hotly. Goddamn pen pushers!

"Don't be a hothead, Jimmy. We lose nothing if she doesn't make it across the Golden Gate Bridge and we lose everything if she gets to the Mint."

But Jimmy Twoshoes could no longer back out: if he gave in now, his respect would be gone and without that he was already as good as dead. He shook his head.

Don Guilio seemed to consider issuing a direct order. He considered for a long time but, in the end, merely whispered, "With your life, you guarantee it?"

"I guarantee it," Jimmy Twoshoes whispered fiercely.

CHAPTER 54

A religion which thinks primarily about the bigger and better future — as do all the political religions from Communism and Nazism up to the at present harmless, because unorganized and powerless forms of Utopianism and Humanism — runs the risk of becoming ruthless, of liquidating people it happens to find inconvenient now for the sake of the people who are going, hypothetically, to be so much better and happier and more intelligent in the year 2000. — Aldous Huxley

Henty was jubilant. She just had to pass Evanston, in the bottommost southwestern corner of Wyoming, and cross the border into Utah and she would have passed through Wyoming without any trouble at all. Then there was just Utah, Nevada, a bare, almost empty States, and the width of northern California between her and the Mint in San Francisco.

"Can't understand why more people don't try it," she sang to the tune of the instrumental number playing on the radio.

Dawn broke. It would be a fine, clear and hot day, the kind of weather she was used to back home.

"Gee, what was that?" Henty wanted to know but had no answer because the Zuffhausen Flyer was gone too quickly to make out any details. But she was sure she had never seen a car like that before. (She was right — it was the only Zuffhausen Flyer converted into a morguemobile anywhere in the world.)

In the Flyer, the banker held the mike to his mouth. "So, after the Watcheye spotted her coming through Rawlins, what then?" He was speaking to the main Caring Society computer bank in Washington.

"Nothing, sir."

The people in Washington, as opposed to the local hicks, knew who he was and treated him with proper respect.

"So she could be anywhere on any link road whatsoever?"

"No sir. Interstate 80 runs straight on but on any link road she would have to run through a town with Watcheyes and we've been through the tapes. She's on Interstate 80, unless she stopped somewhere."

"She didn't stop," he said with absolute conviction, though he knew nothing firm to support the conviction. "She's behind me on Eighty now."

"Where are you, sir?"

"Evanston, Wyoming," he told her, and waved at the Watcheye on the traffic signal.

"Right, I got you on the screen," she said a moment later. "What happened to your face?"

"Never mind that. Ask your computer how far behind me she is, huh."

"Do you want me to wake up the Evanston police?"

"No, don't do that!" He waited until he brought his breath under control. "Look here, when I catch her, I'll come up to DC and buy you the best dinner ever, how's that? But I need to do it alone."

"Gee, great! Just a sec, now."

He drummed impatiently against the steering wheel while he waited.

"The least she could behind you is three minutes," the girl in Washington told him. He straightened in the car seat. "And the most?"

"The computer won't say. 'Too many imponderables', it says on my screen here. But she can't be in front of you unless she broke the speed limit."

"No, that would be stupid." He settled himself comfortably in the Flyer's seat again and watched Evanston's main drag. Unless that goddamn woman turned off — and why should she? — everything was going her way — she would have to come through here.

The Watcheyes found her first. "She's thirty seconds from you. Don't forget my dinner," the voice in Washington told him.

He fired up the Flyer and pulled it into the traffic just as Henty came by. The policeman's cap in the back window incensed him: this woman kept taking Caring Society property and wrecking it! She knew no respect for what was right and proper. It was up to him to teach her a lesson. A permanent lesson.

That time of the morning, traffic was sparse; Evanston was hardly awake. He saw her glance in his direction and sank down in the seat until only his eyes were above the windowsill, feeling stupid about the instinctive action almost immediately because the glass was smoked and she couldn't possibly see him.

CHAPTER 55

Henty recognized the discreet logo of the Chaser Bank on the door but was not perturbed: Chaser morguemobiles were everywhere, ready to rush out to accidents and reclaim bodies — and, some claimed, hurt but still living people — for their organ banks. Nor was she worried when the Flyer morguemobile took to the road with her because the only two other cars on the road with them were between them. She assumed the morguemobile driver was working on commission, so the man was cruising the highway, waiting for a pileup in that treacherous dawn light. She had no intention of crashing.

One of the cars pulled into the Last Chance service station and Henty glanced at the needle: plenty of fuel in the tank. She would refuel in the morning rush hour when she passed through Salt Lake City's dormitory towns on her way to joining US-50. The other car turned onto a rutted dirt road half-amile outside Evanston.

Now Henty could see the Zuffhausen Flyer a hundred yards behind her, lazily holding station. It was a well-known tactic of Chaser Bank employees, to spook drivers into accidents; there were rumors of organ bank employees deliberately causing accidents to generate the bodies that earned them their commissions. But those chasers drove hefty 4WDs with three-inch stainless steel bull bars all round so that there was never any evidence against them. This Flyer lacked bull bars and was anyway lighter than the policeman's Cadillac she drove. Henty decided to ignore him.

In convoy, they passed the sign and crossed into Utah.

Henty watched the mirror very carefully and also he.dsd her breath. Like all commission workers, the organ bank chasers were allocated strictly enforced territories. It was highly unlikely that such a territory would cross the convenient demarcation line of a state border and in any event the chasers were licensed by the States and the job protection laws made it virtually impossible for anyone in a state-licensed profession to practice in more than one state.

Three miles into Utah, Henty clicked the cruise control off, held 55 milesperhour for a couple of minutes and then, grimly, breathing evenly, increased speed ever so slowly so that, ten minutes later, she was covering 70 in every hour. All this time the Flyer never grew any smaller or larger in her mirror.

"Hello, Mr Bloody Banker," Henty said to her mirror. She slowed back to 55 and switched the cruise control back in. "Next move's up to you."

Now she drove with one eye permanently on the mirror and one on the road in front of her.

An hour later Henty was white in the face with the tension and her teeth were clenched in frustration. There was more traffic now as people from outlying areas headed to their jobs. But still the banker held his distance. Sometimes he would let other drivers come momentarily between them but soon the other drivers would pass Henty as well and then he would be in her mirror again.

At Santaquin Henty refueled. The Flyer stopped across the road until she pulled out, then pulled in to refuel too. H"What the devil's he up to?" Henty asked herself. They had already covered a good deal of open road with very little traffic if he wanted to take her. But now, as they passed through Heber, the routefinder showed her several closely spaced towns: Provo, Spanish Fork, Payson, Santaquin, Eureka. After Eureka, there was an hour's clear run to Delta, then just a road without towns through the desert and into Nevada, the next town being Ely, forty miles into Nevada. He won't do anything until beyond Eureka, Henty decided. He wants to take me where there's no chance of local citizens then grabbing me or the Fist from him.

Henty was only two miles towards Eureka when he came up behind her in a big hurry and braked sharply to settle down at his self-imposed distance. Henty's hands clenched on the wheel and her face set. She was hungry and thirsty and tired and, most of all, she wanted a long, long cold shower and to sleep twenty-four hours straight in a comfortable bed between cool sheets. And she wanted to be free from fear, not to be hunted.

"Eureka!" Henty shouted. But it was to relieve some of the bottled-up tension and in greeting for the town, not because she had any idea. The initiative was firmly in the banker's hands. His car was faster and would easily out-handle a vast, soft Cadillac.

And out the other side of Eureka they drove. Henty was determined that her nerve shouldn't break, though more than once her hand hovered over the cruise control on-off switch and her foot over the accelerator. Ten miles, fifteen, twenty.

"Come on!" Henty shouted. "Make your move!"

Still the smoked windows of the Flyer fifty yards behind her mocked her blankly in her mirror.

By the time they passed through Delta, Henty was a nervous wreck: she knew it was stupid, that that was his intention, that she was playing into his hands, but still she could not help it. Her fatigue and fear and the continual pressure were combining to disintegrate her. She could take no more.

She would deal with that damn ghoul from the Chaser Organ Bank once and for all, even if she perished in the attempt. She would show him a little something about driving an American car.

She would show him some Texas spirit. Her thumb clicked the cruise control off. She held a steady fifty-five, one hand on the steering wheel, the other on the gear lever. She breathed deeply, letting her breath out slowly, one, two, three times.

Then she hit the shift straight through into low, Spun the wheel, jerked the handbrake, floored the accelerator, released the handbrake just at the right moment, and, having executed a perfect bootlegger's u-turn, was heading for the Flyer at 70 milesperhour and still accelerating, intending to drive straight over the low slung sports car and squash it with the driver inside, regardless of the consequences to herself.

"I've been persecuted enough! Hear me?" Henty screamed, both hands now firmly on the wheel, holding it dead straight ahead, her right foot trying to tread the accelerator through the floor, her left foot bracing herself firmly, her elbows and knees ready to absorb the impact.

Henty's Cadillac was ten yards from the Flyer, its blacksmoked windows no longer mocking her, but reflecting no fear either. Grimly she held on. She would drive up the slope of its nose and the weight of the Cadillac would squash it like a bug.

"If you want to jump before it's too late," Henty said calmly, "that's up to you."

Five yards, fifteen feet.

But that banker didn't make his living as an assassin of criminals without being cool and fast. At the very last moment he sashayed his Flyer past the roaring Cadillac as if he was doing nothing more important than disco-dancing.

Henty's Cadillac spun out as she threw another moonshiner turn, the engine stalled, and for a moment she just sat there, shaking.

The moment was long enough for the banker to screech the Flyer to a near-halt beside the Cadillac and, jumping from the Flyer while it was still moving, to run up to the Cadillac and jerk her door open. He reach for reached for Henty.

Henty turned the key but the shift was still in Low. She jerked the lever into Park. She turned the key again. With her other hand, with the Fist, she grabbed the banker's wrist and tore his hand from her blouse. He howled as bone cracked.

Everything stopped for a moment out of eternity. "Oh, sorry!" Henty said contritely.

Then his other hand clawed for her.

CHAPTER 56

The Cadillac's engine fired and Henty's other hand, already on the shift, dropped it into Reverse and, since her foot was already on the accelerator, the Cadillac shot off backwards like Muhammad Ali had socked it in the grille, dragging the banker behind the open door for about ten paces before he fell and rolled under the door.

Immediately he was up and running back to get at her.

Henty had just then braked sharply to free him, the door swung to with the change in direction and Henty found Drive and floored the accelerator.

The banker stood looking thoughtfully after her for a moment. There was no need to rush to his car: the Flyer could catch any Cadillac with fifty or sixty milesperhour to spare. But attacking rather than running, that was smarter than he gave her credit for. And her car was heavier than his. He thought about that while he dusted himself down and climbed into the Flyer and strapped himself in. Then he spun gravel under the rear wheels as he took off after her. When the rubber bit into the blacktop, flame spurted from under the tires as he floored the loud pedal in a low torque-multiplying gear. He barrelled down the road after Henty's Cadillac.

Flat out, the Cadillac was good only for a spot over 100 milesperhour and even on a straight road its suspension wasn't up to even that: the whole car was the legacy of too many years of stultifying speed limits.

Henty held on to the wheel for dear life, shaking the wheel as if that could make the Cadillac go faster. But the accelerator was flat to the floorboards already and the engine screamed in pain.

In the mirror Henty saw how effortlessly the Flyer caught up with her. She spent her frustration by making a fist and hitting the steering wheel. Unthinkingly, she made the fist with the hand she normally used, with the Fist. She stared aghast at the half-a-steering wheel left after the piece under the Fist broke off and fell down beside her feet. Only the bottom half of the steering wheel was left, so she threw the loose piece in her right hand on the floor and took hold of what was left of the steering wheel very carefully indeed so that the Fist didn't wreck that as well.

The Flyer was just tooling along behind her, holding station, psyching her. She resolved not to lose her temper again and give him an opportunity to kill her. After ten miles, Henty glanced from the mirror in which she had been watching him constantly, to the route finder to see how far it was to the next town.

The moment he saw her eyes leave the mirror, the banker made his move. If the roar of the Flyer's engine hadn't alerted Henty she would have been dead there and then. Even that split second of warning was nearly not enough.

The Flyer sped up right behind the Cadillac and at the last moment cut out, just barely brushing the Cadillac's rear corner.

Henty felt the slight nudge and turned the wheel the other way, fighting to hold the big soft car on the road, frantically grasping thin air where the steering wheel had broken away. She and the Cadillac went down the road broadside, first this side on, then the other, and finally spun around four, five, six times.

Henty's chest was heaving and sweat was dripping from her. Another piece of the steering wheel had broken off in the Fist and she stared at it blankly. Of the steering wheel only a spoke and a small piece of the rim was left.

The Flyer blistered back and once more the banker jumped from it before it stopped moving, running full tilt for the driver's door of the Cadillac to grab her. This time the Cadillac hadn't stalled, so Henty dropped the piece of broken-off steering wheel she had been staring at and drove off just as his hand touched the door handle. In the mirror she could see him sucking his fingers. She steered as best she could with the spoke and piece of rim, handling them with the greatest tenderness.

As if pulled behind her on rails, the Flyer fell in to keep station fifty yards to the rear.

"What now?" Henty asked herself. The next time he bumped her, she wouldn't be able to control the Cadillac and she would crash. If she didn't die in the crash, the organ chaser would kill her with a weapon or his bare hands — she was no match for a trained and experienced killer. "Between the Devil and the deep blue sea," Henty muttered angrily. Her grandmother used to say that about intolerable choices.

Her speed was back up to over 100 milesperhour and she needed all her concentration to keep the heavy Cadillac on the road at that speed with only the stump of the steering wheel to control it. She raised her foot from the accelerator but immediately the banker brought the Flyer right up behind her and Henty, fearing he would nudge the Cadillac again and kill her, was forced to resume speed.

Henty was in too much trouble to be amused by the signs telling her she was leaving Utah and that the speed limit was cancelled. Next there were signs to tell her that she was entering Nevada, and that she was no longer doing anything illegal by driving so fast.

Grimly Henty clung to what was left of the steering wheel and prayed there would be no curves in the road...

CHAPTER 57

Ely and Ruth are two not-too-large towns straddling the crossroads made by US-50, US-93 and Nevada State Highway 6. Most of the time, the people of the two towns are mildly contemptuous of each other and highly competitive in everything from business to sport and religion. But for ten million dollars gravy money, they could and would co-operate. So, when Hal Ryan, who owned a bar and poolroom in Ely, heard from his brother-in-law, who was with the highway patrol in Utah, that the Runner had been spotted by a Watcheye in Delta a little more than an hour ago, Ryan thought it was the luck of the Irish: the woman couldn't be heading anywhere else. There was a Ruth building contractor called Little John Polanski (he was six-six) already standing at the bar, arranging a golf tournament — and Ryan knew exactly how to stop the Runner dead in her tracks.

"Dead in her tracks," he told Polanski. "And I mean dead."

"Sure, she'll be crushed or roasted," Polanski agreed. "But what about my—"

"What harm can come to it?"

"Yeah, but—"

"Out of the ten million, we'll buy you a new one first, before we share, okay?"

"Yeah, right! Let's get moving!"

CHAPTER 58

Henty had a plan. The thing was, she would only get one chance at it — and if she fluffed it, she was a goner. She'd lose her transport and be out in that desert at the mercy of the organ banker.

But it was her only chance. Sooner or later she would have an accident in that crippled Cadillac. She breathed steadily, evenly, while she thought her plan through once more, then another time, then still again, making quite sure each of the few simple steps was crystal clear in her mind so that she could act without wasting time on thinking, by reflex alone. When she was certain—

The banker saw Henty drop her eyes from the mirror to the route finder. It was just the split-second break he was waiting for and, before she could raise her eyes again, he dropped the Zuffhausen Flyer into a lower gear and accelerated right behind her, swinging out, caressing the Cadillac with the Flyer's rubber strip so gently the paint was hardly broken. But it was enough to send the unwieldy luxury cruiser into another spin at over 100 milesperhour. As he passed the out-of-contol Cadillac, he could see the woman fighting with what was left of her steering wheel to straighten the big soft car.

He bootlegged the Flyer around and floored it to speed back to the Cadillac and pull her out of it before she could drive off again. He wanted her alive: she had done his self-image too much damage to be allowed a quick, easy death.

"You're gonna die slowly!" he screamed at her to disorient her further, as he jumped from the still-moving Flyer.

Henty watched him out of the corner of her eye. She had brought the Cadillac up on the wrong side of the road, So that he had to run around her car to get to the driver's door. She noticed how he feinted to run around the front and then actually ran around the back, just in case she was faking and intended running him over.

As he reached for the door handle, Henty flung herself into action, kicking herself across the seat, opening the passenger door, flinging herself into the gap—

He held one of her ankles.

Henty kicked out and heard him gasp. She didn't stop to congratulate herself, she just rolled out of the Cadillac and rolled upright and ran for the Flyer. The banker was only the width of the Cadillac's seat behind her, so Henty ran like all the devils from Hell were after her. She jumped through the open door of the Flyer and without waiting to close the door, kicked the clutch, moved the stick shift and let go of the clutch while stomping on the accelerator. The tail of the overpowered monster whiplashed out, the door slammed shut, and the car caught the organ banker just as he reached for the door and flung him bodily about twenty feet away onto the soft verge of the road. He wasn't winded and suffered no broken bones but by the time he stood up, Henty was snaking down the road in his Flyer. He ran to the Cadillac to give chase. "Stupid woman left the keys for me," he said, shaking his head, as he set off in pursuit.

The raw overpowering force of the Flyer scared Henty so much it almost overcame her relief at dumping the dangerous Cadillac and escaping from the assassin, so she kept to just over a 100 milesperhour, which she already knew was the Cadillac's top speed. When she readjusted the mirrors to her satisfaction, she could see the Cadillac, with the banker driving, following her. But that was no problem: she didn't think he would call up help. He wanted to catch and kill her all by himself. Slowly. She shivered.

A town appeared on the horizon. The road dipped and then there was, in the dip, a short S-bend. As Henty braked for the S the banker audaciously hustled the big Cadillac through on the inside. It would have been an admirably skilled maneuver in that car even if he had a full steering wheel to control it with: Henty whistled.

She stopped whistling almost before she started because next he swung the heavy Cadillac over to force her into the side of the cutting. No matter how hard Henty braked she still needed to give way to the left. She was still traveling over eighty, inches from the bare rock face when—

Neither of them had been looking forward. The banker looked back at the Flyer, half behind the Cadillac. Henty stared in horror at the rock face coming ever closer to her. She concentrated on braking as hard as she could. Neither of them saw the big man drive the bulldozer onto the road and then run away from it.

Henty looked into the Cadillac for advance warning — a twitch of the banker's hands on the wheel — when he next tried to push her into the wall. His face was grimly exultant.

"Watch out!" Henty shouted at him when she saw the bulldozer.

But he couldn't hear her and he couldn't see her behind the smoked glass of the Flyer. He drove into the blade of the bulldozer at 63 milesperhour.

Henty smacked the Flyer into low gear by brute force and jerked the handbrake on and stood up on the brake so hard her bottom left the seat and spun the wheel at the same time. Then she just sat there and waited to die against the rock as the Flyer spun like a top in the middle of the road between the rock faces.

Before the Flyer stopped spinning, Henty, without pausing to think, swung the door open, jumped out and ran to the wrecked Cadillac to pull the banker out before it exploded or burst into flames.

The door was jammed in its bent frame but Henty put her foot against the rear door and the Fist pulled the recalcitrant door right off its hinges. She flung it aside and pulled the banker out. She ran a little way with him before the Cadillac exploded behind them, flinging them to the ground.

"Shooooo!" Henty said, half in relief at being alive, half as the wind was driven from her. She rolled over next to the banker. He was still alive. She raised his head so he could breathe. "Goddamn amateurs," he said.

"Don't speak," Henty said, alarmed at the blood that came out of the corner of his mouth together with the words.

"Always getting the wrong man," he said. "Thanks for pulling me out."

"It's nothing."

"I'll tell you something in return. They won't get you."

"I hope not," Henty said.

"Not the amateurs, they won't get you. But the professionals will, they'll get you."

"The bounty hunters?"

"No. The Syndicate."

Henty nodded. "Sure. I got a deal with them to cash in my chips in front of the Mint in 'Frisco in return for them letting my Petey go."

"That's where they'll betray you."

"Huh? I got a deal with them!"

"You reckon they'll let Petey and that surgeon live to tell how the Syndicate fixes the Gauntlet Run? You can't be that stupid."

"I just haven't thought about it."

"You don't need to think about something like that. You know it."

"Well, thanks. Now, no more talk."

"You should've stuck to chicken farming." More blood flowed over his lips and his eyes opened to stare forever skywards.

Henty put his head gently on the ground and tried to close his eyes but the lids flew open again. A big man and a smaller man headed for her.

"Get that dozer off the road," she shouted at them. One jumped on it and moved it. The other one danced a gleeful jig until he noticed Henty's left hand — the Fist — and stopped dead.

"Hey, Little John!" he shouted at the one on the bulldozer, his voice wavering. "We got—"

"You killed a vice-president of the Chaser Organ Bank of Manhattan, which is a charter member of The Caring Society," Henty said, raising her voice a little to shut him up. "You're guilty of a very serious crime. You'd better think carefully about that before you phone ahead that I'm coming, otherwise how will you explain what you know?"

Henty climbed into the Flyer and drove off westwards.

CHAPTER 59

We live in a world of transgressions and selfishness and no pictures that represent us otherwise can be true. — James Fenimore Cooper

It is probably too late to prevent further nuclear proliferation. It is even possible, indeed, that nuclear weapons may become available to private criminals, instead of (as up to now) merely to public ones. — D J Goodspeed

Hunger was killing Henty, so she stopped at a roadhouse. She kept her left hand low down by her side so the carhop didn't see it. There was a Watcheye scanning the parking lot but it didn't bother her. By now she had the hang of it: the Watcheyes fed their responses to some kind of a record that wasn't checked constantly and continually, otherwise they would've killed her a long time ago. By the time this Watcheye's records were checked (at the local cops? in the State Capital? in Washington? Henty didn't know) she would be long and far gone. In the last hour she had covered a hundred-and-twenty miles. If there was any money left after paying for Petey's treatment and paying off the mortgage on the farm, she'd buy herself her own Zuffhausen Flyer. And she wouldn't convert it into a morguemobile... She found a shroud in the back and tore a piece off it to wrap around the Fist and to make a sling like her arm was hurt.

The doors were marked Hawks and Peacocks. Henty grimaced and went into the Peacocks. "Don't they know it's only the male peacocks that're colorful?" she asked a woman washing her hands inside. "The females are just drab."

"I wouldn't know. I'm from LA," said the woman.

"Oh," Henty replied, as if being from LA explained everything.

"Yes. We've come up here to get a baby, my husband and me, we haven't got any children."

"Hey, you don't know what you're letting yourself in for," Henty said. "Diapers, feeding times. But it's good once they grow up a little."

"How many've you got?"

"Only the one."

"Hey, you wanna come help me choose mine?"

"Well, I have to be—"

The woman's face fell in disappointment. "Come on, it won't take more'n ten minutes."

"All right then," Henty agreed.

The woman and her husband led in their car and Henty followed in the Flyer. They came to a parking lot and parked. Henty walked with them towards the lines of babies lying squealing in the blistering sun. Between the babies were neat paths and along these men in loudly checked sports jackets walked, making notes in their books.

A woman in the pink of The Caring Society spied them as strangers and came up to them.

"Are you betting or taking?" she asked.

The woman said, "We'd like a baby."

The pink woman smiled. "Okay, like the President said, people are our cheapest asset. You can't have one if you have two or more children, you know that don't you?"

"Oh yes, we know. But we haven't got any at all." The woman held out some papers. "We filled in all the forms and got them verified and stamped at your LA office."

"Good-oh, I wish everybody was so considerate. Well, you choose your baby."

"That one will do," the woman said. She bent to the little crib, then remembered she had brought Henty for advice and looked up at Henty, her eyes appealing to Henty not to say no to this one.

Henty smiled. "A baby's a baby and that one looks good except for a bad case of sunburn." The woman gathered the baby up in her arms. "Thank you," she said to Henty, and to the woman in pink, "I don't know how we can ever thank The Caring Society for giving us a child."

"Lots more where that one came from," the pink woman said jovially.

Henty saw something cross the face of the husband as he looked at the other babies. He said. "In that case, we'll have another one as well."

"You can't," said the pink woman firmly.

"But we're entitled to two children and—"

"That's right. A year after yoa second one."

"But by then they'll all b—"

"Now don't make trouble," the pink woman said, her voice no longer friendly. "I can still decide you're not fit persons and take that one back."

"No!" said the new foster mother. "We won't make trouble. Come on, Gene, let's go!" She hugged the baby tightly and walked backwards towards the exit and their car, watching the pink woman for any sign that the woman would try to take the baby back, her eyes saying she'd fight to the death to keep it.

The husband tried once more. "Have a heart," he said softly.

The pink woman shook her head. "Listen, just about everybody asks me to break the rules. Regulations are made to be kept, you know, even if I agreed with you, which I don't."

"Gene!" his wife called, fear rising in her voice. "Don't rile her!"

Defeated, the husband turned away to follow his wife.

Henty didn't follow them immediately. "Why don't you cover these babies?" she asked the pink woman.

The woman shrugged disinterestedly. "They'd only last longer."

CHAPTER 60

"What do you mean?" Already a small horror was nagging at the back of Henty's mind.

"And I can tell you something else," the woman from The Caring Society said. "The Syndicate will howl like hell." She indicated the men in the check sports jackets. "They like a quick turnover. I mean, people who bet on how long some little fellow is going to last don't want to sit in front of their vidi for days waiting to see if they won their bet, do they now?"

Henty looked up and saw the cameras. "You mean these babies are exposed to die and people take bets on how soon they die?"

"Why yes," said the pink woman. "It's another service of The Caring Society to those States where abortion and child euthanasia is illegal. And to Catholics who don't believe in birth control. And to women who want the experience of childbirth but not the bother of bringing them up. You know how it is."

"I don't," Henty said stoutly. But the woman seemed not to have heard her. "And a service to everybody who agrees with the President that we can't keep up our living standards if we just keep breeding and breeding until our families are too large to keep in the style to which we are accustomed. ZPG." She said it like a mathematician might say QED about something that needs no explanation at all because it's so obvious to all right-thinking people.

Henty had to stop and think about ZPG. Then it came to her: Zero Population Growth.

Henty was horrified. "But there are lots of childless couples!" Henty exclaimed. "They go to jail for buying babies illegally. Why don't you just tell them they can get a baby here for free for asking?"

The woman shook her head sadly. "You really aren't very bright. Why do you think it is illegal to adopt a child except through us? Why do you think this place is so remote from everywhere? We'd spoil all our good work if we let people know where we are, won't we?"

"I think it's— it's—" Words failed Henty. She gagged.

One of the men in loud sports jackets came up. "When did twelve-eighty-nine croak?" he demanded from the pink woman.

The caring Society functionary pointed to the couple settling the baby into their car. "Didn't croak. Got adopted."

The man in the loud check jacket cursed foully. Henty swtared at the little metal number plate above the crib: 1289. A number, not even a name. She swallowed the bile back in her throat.

"Look here," the loud sports jacket said to the pink woman. "There're a lot of bets riding on that one. If you get him back — tell those people to choose another one — I'll make it worth your while."

Henty brought up the meal she ate not quite half an hour before.

"Something wrong?" asked the pink lady.

"Yes," Henty said. "You. You're disgusting."

"I'll go offer them some money to bring that one back, let him croak and take another one," the loud sports jacket said and started running to the car park. "They won't mind. One baby is as good as any other baby."

Henty's foot shot out almost of its own accord to trip him. He fell with a crunch. "I saw what you did," the pink woman said nastily.

The death's head bookmaker rolled over and up and swung at Henty: she blocked with her right hand and struck out for his chin with her other hand, forgetting that she had wrapped the Fist to cover it. It burst out of the sling she carried her forearm in, and out of the shroud-bandages around it. It also burst the bookie's chin rather conclusively.

The pink woman screamed and pointing at the sky.

Henty saw the insignia first: US Air Force. 87th First Strike Squadron.

She saw the rockets leaving their pods where the wings joined the fuselage of the plane. The rockets headed straight for her. Nobody mentioned the Fist.

CHAPTER 61

But the Fist had been noticed, in Washington, by its signal broadcast to the many cameras around the baby-arena. In fact, Henty had not been in view of the cameras more than three seconds before the Pentagon computer, tied in for this operation to the computer of The Caring Society, flashed her up in close-up on no fewer than six screens on the wall of the Pentagon Operations Room. A Signals colonel murmured into a telephone to the room above The Pit where the Joint Chiefs sat in easy chairs, seeing everything through their glass wall.

"We can scramble 87th First Strike and hit her four-thirty seven from now, sir."

"Do it," the Air Force general who answered the phone said without hesitation, and returned to listening to an admiral describing how he shot a birdie at Burning Tree.

CHAPTER 62

Four minutes and thirty-seven seconds later, Henty looked at the rockets, standing rooted to the spot, hypnotized by the next plane and the next and the next breaking off from the formation to follow the first down so that from her foreshortened perspective it looked like a universe of planes all diving at her in a solid black line.

She had seen rockets before.

And what rockets could do.

Henty grabbed a baby under each arm and ran hell-for-leather for the car park.

Behind her she heard bookmakers scream, the pink lady scream even louder, the crack! of each succeeding plane firing its rockets. Henty did not look behind her. If she did, a rocket would come and turn her into a pillar of salt, she thought. And then she thought, No that's not right, a pillar of fire.

The happy new parents were just about to drive off with their child.

"Here," Henty passed the babies one by one through the window to the woman, who sat in the back seat. "Here's two more for you."

"Why, thanks! Both for me?"

"Sure."

A rocket hit the Flyer and exploded it. Henty ducked. "Give you a ride?" the husband asked.

"Thanks," Henty said as she slammed the door behind her. They drove off in a hurry.

CHAPTER 63

A major in The Pit called The Royal Box. "Sir," he said to the Air Force general, "we could sterilize the area nuclearwise."

The general thought briefly. "What's the likely body count?"

"It's in the middle of the desert," said the major. "There's a roadhouse and a baby farm. Maybe a coupla hundred if you don't count the babies."

The general was half listening to an army general telling a smutty story about his secretary which was just coming to the climax. "Okay, Major. Go!"

CHAPTER 64

The pilot who dropped the small nuclear bomb nudged the co-pilot/bombardier but the other man kept his eyes on the mushroom still growing to port and below them.

"On the nose," the bombardier enthused. "Look at that mushroom grow!"

"C'mon, you seen mushrooms before. But look at the blast rock that Beetle!"

Reluctantly the bombardier tore his eyes away from the devastation he had wrought to the elderly VW flying through the air beside the road, touching here and there in the barren landscape, driven by the successive shock-blasts that always follow explosion as Nature tries to fill the vacuum the explosive leaves.

"Hey!" the bombardier laughed, "If we dropped that baby fifteen seconds earlier they would've had it."

"Yeah," the pilot agreed. "But on that rollercoaster they're riding now. I bet they're wishing they bought it instantly instead, huh?"

CHAPTER 65

I've died and gone to Hell. Henty thought.

She clung to the baby the woman, whose name was Anna, handed her just before the bomb dropped behind them and the old VW started its hop-skip-and-jump through the desert. Henty's elbows and knees and head and the small of her back all took great blows but so far she had managed to shield the baby from contact with anything hard. She was flung half around in her seat by another sudden change in direction. Behind her, in the back, Anna held a baby in each arm and grimaced as her head crashed against the roof of the car but she didn't let go. In that moment, as they both came down jarringly, but simultaneously, Anna smiled sweetly at Henty.

Henty grinned back.

Gene fought the wheel but to no avail as the wheels didn't touch often or long enough for control. At last there was on almighty crash and then, for a moment, they were still.

"Ouch," said Henty.

"Wow," said Gene.

"Hold tight," said Anna.

"But—" said Henty, taking firm hold of a grab handle all the same when she saw Anna kick her feet up against the rear of the front seats and brace her back against the seat. Not a moment too soon. Violent winds rocked the VW this way and that, tilting it so precipitously that Henty feared it would fall over and roll away like a marble on a polished floor. It lasted an eternity, though in real time it was probably only minutes. When at last it was over, Henty looked at the baby in her one arm — it was sleeping peacefully! — and then at the grab handle which was torn out of one end of its moorings.

"Wow," said Gene again.

"Let's move before we catch a lethal dose of radiation."

"Right," said Gene. "But which road?"

"That way, I think," Henty pointed.

They drove off across the desert and soon came to the road. When they were beetling along it, Gene said. "The US Government sure got it in for you if they send the Air Force to kill you with nuclear bombs."

Henty nodded thoughtfully. "I can't understand it," she said finally. "They — the Air Force — helped me get out of New York."

Gene gave her a sideways look but politely said nothing.

"Henty, dear," Anna said, "of course they helped you out of New York. They wanted the people to have their fun and games hunting you, to work off some of their frustrations on you rather than revolt against the government. But they don't want you to reach the Mint and collect $10.000,000 and a Presidential Pardon and become a national hero."

"But that's the whole point, to get there and get the money and the pardon! They can't cheat me of that now!"

"They're trying very hard," Gene said firmly.

"That's not fair," Henty said equally firmly.

"Only nice people like you expect the world to be fair," Anna said kindly.

"And it wasn't fair blowing up all those babies," Henty said. "That was a massacre of innocents."

"The government is committed to zero population growth," Gene said. "They'd probably like to blow up all the other baby farms as well."

"You mean there are more places like that!" Henty just couldn't believe her ears.

"Yes, many. All in remote places like this."

"How did you discover that one?"

"I'm a computer freak. By accident, I bust into The Caring Society's computer and then, since Anna and I always wanted a baby but couldn't afford to buy one, I made give me the list of the baby farms."

"When I finish with the Gauntlet Run and have settled Petey into his new hospital, will you give me that list?" Henty asked quietly.

"Sure," Gene said.

"But first," Anna said. "You have to reach 'Frisco. And you can't, not with that Fist broadcasting that you aren't dead back at— back there."

"I'll just have to go around towns and avoid Watcheyes," Henty said.

"Maybe," Anna said. "But from here to 'Frisco, you must cross many bridges and they all carry Watcheyes."

"Are you trying to tell me I can't do it, I should give up altogether? I can't do that, you know."

"No. But I know a way of stopping the Fist sending out signals."

"Oh boy! What's that?"

"You have to dip your arm in boiling lead."

Henty paled.

CHAPTER 66

When Gene returned from Fallon, Henty helped Anna change and feed the babies and spread salve on their sunburn. By the time they finished, the cauldron of battery-lead Gene bought from the scrap yard bubbled away merrily over the gas fired barbecue he also bought. Henty sat quite still while he wrapped the Fist and a good part of her arm in fresh bandages and then covered everything, including a good part of her upper arm, with wet plaster of Paris.

Henty stood doubtfully over the cauldron of boiling, bubbling, steaming lead.

"You have to do it while the plaster's still wet or the heat..." Gene said, letting the sentence trail away.

Henty gritted her teeth. It was now or never. She drew a deep breath, then plunged her arm to the elbow in the boiling lead.

CHAPTER 67

I tell you, these are great times. Man has mounted science and is now run away with. I firmly believe that before many centuries more, science will be the master of man. Some day science may have the existence of mankind in its power, and the human race commit suicide. — Henry Adams before 1870

You know you need it, because you are fashioned to fit it.

If you take the wilderness away, the world is a cage. — David Brower

"You have failed," said Don Guilio in his almost-whisper. "We do not condone failure."

Jimmy Twoshoes had thought carefully on his answer. All the same, his voice trembled pitifully. "My Don, there is no proof that I failed. The Fist has not been found."

"It is not possible that a chicken farmer, a woman chicken farmer could escape the might of the United States Air Force," Don Guilio said in the same implacable tone, made all the more frightening for its lack of insistence. "I am told they used rockets and an atomic bomb. How could such a thing be possible, for this woman to escape the wrath of the mightiest nation on earth?"

Jimmy Twoshoes stuck to his prepared text. "My Don, the Fist is indestructible. We have flown several times over the site of the nuclear explosion within range of the transmitter in the Fist. Not once did we hear a beep."

"Then where is this woman?"

"I don't know," Jimmy Twoshoes admitted. "But it would be unfair to punish me without proof that she is dead."

Almost before the words were out of his mouth, Jimmy Twoshoes knew he had made a terrible mistake. The old man's face remained impassive but his eyes glinted before the lids closed to cut off the light of hatred. Why, he wants to eliminate me, Jimmy Twoshoes thought. He wants me to fail so he can kill me!

"The justice of the Society of Friends does not depend on proof," Don Guilio said sternly. "I am the sole arbiter of our justice."

Jimmy Twoshoes trembled. His knees sagged until he was kneeling on the floor in supplication.

"But," Don Guilio went on, "Since there is so much money involved and since you ask so nicely, go, find her and kill her."

Jimmy Twoshoes tried and failed to unclasp his fingers from their death-prayer grip on each other. He was as yet too weak to rise to his feet, so he stayed on his knees. "I'll kill her immediately I find her, my Don." His voice wavered between the hysteria of fear and the hysteria of unbearable jubilation.

"No, if she is alive, it will profit us most if you remain faithful to your original plan of doing it in front of the Mint in San Francisco. Go now, and do not fail me again."

The Don closed his eyes as if to rest but in truth to gloat over the abject thing to which he had reduced this tough guy.

Jimmy Twoshoes still lacked the strength to rise to his feet. After he made several tries, two of the bodyguards unceremoniously dragged him out.

CHAPTER 68

The Joint Chiefs of Staff already knew that Henty was still alive. When their spotter plane didn't find the Fist's signal, they sent men dressed in cumbersome radiation suits to rake the hot ashes of the roadhouse and baby arena.

The men found nothing.

Hot on their heels came the bounty hunters, without radiation suits, cavalierly exposing themselves.

They too found nothing.

By nightfall there was a rumor in every big city that the Air Force dropped a nuclear bomb on Henty and she had walked nonchalantly through the holocaust, waving cheerfully at the pilots who dropped the bomb.

When Gauntlet on all four networks showed the crashed Cadillac still on the bulldozer scoop and said Henty died in it but didn't show the body, everyone knew there was something fishy going on. And when all four commentators turned immediately to a discussion of the merits of next week's Runner, without mentioning the atomic bomb rumor — even as a joke, they knew there was a big cover-up in progress. Almost everyone had seen one of the slogans that appeared as if by magic on walls everywhere: HENTY LIVES. But not one of the networks referred to that either.

It became an article of faith that Henty not only lived, but would appear at the Mint to collect her $10.000.000 and her free Presidential Pardon. There were riots against government interference in the Gauntlet Run in Cleveland, New York, New Orleans, Memphis and Oakland. Of course there were still people who were not rooting for Henty: they would rather have the ten million for themselves.

CHAPTER 69

A group of cars came out of the night and stopped beside their camp. Men carrying shotguns and rifles — and one with grenades hung on his belt — climbed out and questioned Gene and Anna closely, while one of them turned around 360° twice with a portable radio direction finder sporting a long antenna. Henty happened to be behind the VW in darkness at the time, burying the contents of baby diapers. Fortunately she instinctively stayed out of sight.

After the men left, Gene heaved a sigh of relief.

"Well, now we know the lead works. That RDF of theirs was tuned to the Fist's broadcast frequency. They couldn't have missed you if just the tiniest beep came through the lead. C'mon, cheer up!"

"They still carried my picture," Henty said, very subdued, not her usual sparkling self. "Everybody now knows what I look like. Tsch! Why won't they just believe I'm dead like the government tells them?"

"Because sensible people believe exactly the opposite of what the government tells them," Anna said with finality.

The next day they cruised through California on US-50 while Henty dozed on-and-off. She hadn't slept well at all, waking up repeatedly through the night to worry about Petey: What would he think when he heard she was dead? Would the Syndicate let Petey and Chris go, or would they kill them? Or would they wait until there was evidence — the indestructible Fist coming to light — that she was dead?

In the morning, she discussed it with Gene and Anna but they couldn't help her either.

"You'll just have to go to the Mint and get the money and the pardon and then go looking for Petey," Anna said.

Gene added, "If you somehow tell Petey you're alive, the Syndicate will be waiting for you at the Mint. Then you and Petey will both be dead. You don't have any choice. It's only till tonight. Petey will just have to last out."

Every time Henty woke uneasily as they cruised down US-50 and then back onto Interstate-80 beyond Sacramento, there was something weird and wonderful to see. California was like a foreign land, she thought, and didn't know how right she was: California by itself could be the ninth richest nation in the world. She was too dazed by fatigue and events and worry about Petey to take in California except as a series of unrelated vignettes:

They stopped at a light and through an open window she saw a man and a woman glued to their vidi. The filth on the vidi made Henty blush. "Boobtoobers," Anna told her. "They watch live pornography on cable television twenty four hours a day."

A building with twin horns and an upstanding arrow headed tail. "That's the cathedral of Satan," Gene said disinterestedly. "They're one of the established religions. You wanna see the buildings the really weird kooks put up.

When Henty commented that Californian children play rough, because almost every one she saw wore a least a black eye and more often an arm or a leg in splints, Anna said sadly, "Child-bashing is the biggest indoor sport here." Henty was too horrified to ask any more.

A highway patrol stopped them. Henty's heart beat in her mouth but Gene and Anna were perfectly calm. The patrolman took down the registration details and Gene's name and address on what he called a "stop card". When they were driving on again, Henty asked why they had been stopped and Anna told her. "They do it routinely. The information on the stop cards goes into the computer. If this car is used in a crime, they find out from the computer where we were seen."

Henty shivered, "That's an invasion of your privacy, before you've committed any crime."

But neither of her new friends were impressed. "It's just an older version of the Watcheyes," Gene said. "The Watcheyes are a continual invasion of your privacy."

With that Henty couldn't argue, so she went back to her fitful dozing.

Late in the afternoon. Henty was woken from a dream of endless orange groves with flat butch haircuts by the shattering klaxon of one of the Southern Pacific's goods trains.

"Stop! Stop everything!" she said urgently.

Gene turned the VW through the thundering heavy trucks and stopped it beside the road.

"Shhh! You'll wake the babies," Anna said reproachfully.

"What's up?" Gene wanted to know.

"I can't go to the Mint and claim the ten million dollars and my free pardon," Henty said. "That would be genuinely stupid."

"How's that?"

"Well, if I do, the Syndicate will know I'm alive and have double-crossed them. Then they'll kill Petey and Chris, the surgeon they kidnapped to look after him."

"But they're planning to double-cross you anyway and kill all of you. What else can you do except double-cross them but do it first?"

"I don't know. But I can't do it until I take Petey back. Look, you don't want to risk your babies—"

"Sorry but you're right," Anna said quickly before Gene could be a hero.

"—so you'd better just leave me here." Henty swung the door open. "Where are we?"

"Almost in Berkeley. That's San Francisco over there."

Henty sighed. "I almost made a terrible mistake. Thanks for your help."

"It's we who must thank you," Anna insisted. "Good luck!"

Henty stood beside the road, forlornly watching them drive away, wondering what she would do now.

CHAPTER 70

Around noon, citizens with nothing better to do — and many with better things to do — started turning up at the Old US Mint to share in the historic occasion when the first Gauntlet Runner made it all the way to the Mint. Their reasoning was quite simple: the Fist had not put in an appearance, therefore Henty was alive. And the place where The Caring Society claimed she had been killed was only a day's journey from the Mint. She would come today.

Other citizens argued the same but they would not rejoice if Henty made it. Instead of waiting in front of the Mint — though some of the lazier bounty hunters did exactly that, they went singly or in groups with their armament to the bridges that no-one with business in San Francisco can avoid crossing. Henty avoided those who manned the bridge over the Bay from Vallejo to Berkeley-Oakland because she had been asleep, with the baby she was hugging obscuring her face. But those on the Golden Gate and on the San Francisco Oakland Bay Bridges were, despite the efforts of the police to stop them (so that they could do it themselves and collect the ten million), stopping and searching thoroughly all cars and trucks crossing into the city.

Other bounty hunters decided not a mouse could enter the city past the vigilantes; they flew above the Mint in helicopters and planes. High above them all circled a monstrous Air Force Communicator to which low-flying helicopters would relay the slightest beep out of the Fist. There were also jets of various strike capabilities, a division of Green Berets, and several tankers to refuel all these planes in the air. It was no longer any secret that the US Air Force and Army were all set — were desperate — to wipe Henty out; anyone with eyes could look up and see that for themselves. A few sensible ones wondered who the Air Force would wipe out with Henty; they slid quietly away.

CHAPTER 71

Jimmy Twoshoes groaned. He'd just come from the Golden Gate, where the bounty hunters were standing virtually shoulder to shoulder. He hoped that the Bay Bridge...

"Goddammit, this bridge is eight bloody miles long," he raged. "They can't guard it all." But he knew it was futile: they needed only to guard the ends. There the bounty hunters were standing shoulder to shoulder, three deep, and parting only to pass vehicles that were already searched thoroughly. All along the bridge stood the bounty hunters who couldn't find employment at the ends.

Nor could Henty enter by air: even from here, on the Oakland side, he could see the sky black over the San Francisco skyline with the planes of bounty hunters.

He waved at the pretty girl with the large sunglasses and her hair up under her cap; then his mind caught up, his reflexes and he made a rude sign in reply to her gesture for him to come on down. He didn't have time for women, not if he wanted to live. And if he wanted to live, he needed to kill that damn woman and kill her only one place: Right in front of the Mint. The Syndicate had, since last night, taken billions in bets she would be the first Runner to collect the ten million and the free Presidential Pardon...

The woman was still waving persistently at him.

"Get lost. I'm working," he shouted down to her. He was no more than twenty feet above her, his chopper hovering over a line of trucks waiting their turn to be searched.

She took her cap off, shook her hair out, and ripped the glasses off, and shouted, "I am your work, stupid!"

"Put the chopper down," he shouted into his throat mike. "Put the hat and glasses back on," he shouted at Henty. He looked behind him to make quite sure his leverage — Petey and the surgeon — were right there. They were. All of a sudden the world glowed. He would live. He would triumph. The Don would give him a bonus, he'd retire and live happily ever after.

Henty stood well back from the open hatch of the chopper, holding onto her cap and glasses so that the wind from the rotors didn't blow them away.

"Come on!" Jimmy Twoshoes shouted impatiently. Behind Henty he could see the bounty hunters on the bridge start paying attention to why a chopper was landing for a woman so near them.

A woman with her arm in some kind of a cast! It was a wonder they hadn't grabbed her yet!

Henty was peering into the chopper to make sure Petey and Chris were there. If they weren't, the Syndicate thug would have to fetch them first, though how she would make him do it, she had no idea. In fact, she was wondering - sort of in a distant part of her mind, like it was happening to somebody else she didn't know very well — why he didn't just kill her right there. (Because the Syndicate had also taken billions in bets that she would never make it to San Francisco, and she wasn't in San Francisco. Yet.)

"Get her!" Jimmy Twoshoes ordered the two soldiers he had brought along to look after Petey and the surgeon.

They jumped out to do his bidding as Henty recognized Petey and Chris in the shadows of the chopper. Henty ducked between the two of them and jumped into the chopper just as the first bounty-hunter shouted. "That's her! There! Get her!"

One of the Syndicate thugs started shooting at the bounty hunters, the other turned to run for the chopper. The pilot took the chopper up. The thug got his fingers on the lower edge of the hatch but Henty gave his knuckles a light tap with her lead cast and he fell away to the bounty hunters. They fired at the chopper, which the pilot now slid away in a big hurry, but low, so that he could hide it behind the lines of trucks. Henty paid them scant attention.

Henty and Jimmy Twoshoes stood looking at each other for a long moment, then his hand dipped into his jacket. In that instant Henty knew that what everyone said about his plan to betray their deal and kill Petey and Chris was the truth. But still she waited until he actually brought the zipgun out before tapping him smartly over the wrist with her left hand in the lead cast.

He screamed as the bone broke. The zipgun fell away. Chris caught it neatly and promptly stuck it in the back of the pilot's neck.

'"We got a deal," Jimmy Twoshoes said. "You take your fall in front of the Mint. How're you going to get there, huh?"

"We had a deal," Henty said easily. "But you never intended letting Petey go. As for getting to the Mint, that's easy. We're to flying there in this chopper."

"Not me," said Jimmy Twoshoes firmly. "I want to live."

Behind and below them a bounty hunter lined them up in the sights of his mail-order bazooka. He squeezed the trigger with loving care.

The bazooka hit a truck between the chopper and the bounty hunter. The shock wave of the truck exploding tilted the helicopter so that the rotors nearly dug into the ground. Jimmy Twoshoes staggered towards the open hatch. Henty hooked her cast-encased arm around an upright pole and caught him with her right hand to haul him back in. Chris held onto the back of the pilot's seat and stayed where he was. Petey's bed was strapped to the floor and the blankets tucked in with enough precision to hold him firmly in the bed.

"Round here, none of us will live very long," the pilot gasped as a truck-driver on the ground decided enough was enough and opened up on the bounty hunters with a machine pistol he carried in his truck.

"Right," Henty said. "First we put Petey down, then we fly to San Francisco."

"No." Chris the surgeon said. "You can't put Petey down. There's nowhere within a hundred miles he'll be safe from the mobs. He has to go with you."

Henty thought only briefly. "Okay. Chris, we'll put you down then."

"Nope. I've come too far on this ride to jump off now."

"I'm not flying into that," the pilot said, pointing to the air that was black with planes over San Francisco. "They all have radios tuned to the Fist's frequency."

Henty held the lead cast in front of his eyes. "It went off the air, see?"

"So, all the same. You reach the Mint, how will you get in without getting us all killed? No, thank you!"

"Did you plan to use that rifle to kill me at the Mint?" Henty asked Jimmy Twoshoes, pointing at the built-in gun-rack.

He shook his head. "Too uncertain. Anti-personnel mines, in that box there."

"And hundreds of people with me," Henty said. "You have no conscience."

"I'm only doing my job."

"Pfft!" To the pilot, Henty said, "About the roof of the Mint..."

CHAPTER 72

The Future is not what it used to be. — Restroom Graffiti

Two more trucks exploded almost simultaneously. There was now a full scale battle between the teamsters and the bounty hunters, with not only bullets but grenades and rockets flying.

The chopper slid smoothly from the uncertain shelter of the lines of trucks and hovered over the middle of the bay, halfway between Oakland and San Francisco.

Henty looked through the plastic at Petey. He gave her thumbs up with one hand and an O of approval with the thumb and middle finger of the other hand. "I knew they'd never vaporize you," he said. "I knew you'd come for me."

"Everything's going to be A-one," Henty said, though inwardly she didn't feel so sure at all. The pilot was still holding the chopper over the middle of the bay.

Henty nudged Chris in the elbow so that the zipgun dug into the back of the pilot's neck. "You have a choice. You can fly us to the Mint. Or you can jump."

The pilot leaned forward to study the sea below him through the Perspex bubble. Then he looked at the choppers swarming over San Francisco and the huge saturnalian ring of planes circling higher up.

Suddenly, he let the chopper drop, flung off his belt and threw himself through the open hatch.

Jimmy Twoshoes also dived for the hatch but Henty caught his ankle and hauled him back. "Hold him!" she shouted at Chris.

The chopper still fell.

Henty dived for the driver's seat. Her feet dropped onto the anti-torque pedals, the cast on her left hand pressed against the cyclic stick in front of her, while her right hand fell naturally to the collective pitch control lever between the seats. It wasn't that Henty knew what these things were for but in the past few days she'd seen many chopper pilots in action.

The chopper was still falling towards the water. There was no time for tentative movements to familiarize herself with the controls. Henty just moved a lever. Though she didn't know it, she had reduced the collective pitch. The motor roared and a needle shot into the red (there was also a lower red line, Henty noticed); what she should have done was to close the throttle slightly but Henty didn't know this. Instead she hastily restored the pitch by moving the lever the other way again. By now she had other problems: the reduced torque effect which accompanied the reduced collective pitch had yawed the chopper to the left. The Fist, in its cast, pushed against the cyclic stick with more rightward force than was necessary. The aircraft immediately swung the other way. Henty corrected by punching the cyclic stick leftwards. Too much again. The pendulum swings grew larger and larger with every correction.

Below them, the pilot swam away frantically to avoid the chopper dropping on him.

The chopper's skids touched the water and slowly, slowly, it started sinking away.

Henty saw the word THROTTLE and slammed it wide open. The hell with dials and red lines! The hell with fine corrections, as long as they kept heading for the concentration of choppers over the Mint. The chopper seesawed back and forth and side to side in her inexpert hands because she just pressed pedals and pulled levers reactively, with no idea of what they did or how they were co-ordinated, but painfully aware that almost every control movement in a helicopter creates the need for another, and so on ad infinitum.

A boat appeared out of the water in front of them. They were only feet above the water, speeding nose-down for the San Francisco skyline. They would crash into the bridge of the boat. People dived overboard from the boat. Henty hauled on everything and the chopper cleared the boat by fractions of an inch, a skid taking the cap from the captain who was still stoically manning the flybridge — and cursing them roundly.

"Hey. I have problems of my own," Henty replied to his shaking fist as she tried to level the chopper off.

Suddenly she had more problems. While her own chopper was still swinging this way and that, making sudden sickening chin-swoops and nose-dives alternating with attempts to soar heavenwards, they had arrived in the outer fringes of the choppers and planes over the Mint. Professional pilots of course spotted her cavorting as strictly amateur and gave way in a hurry but many of the choppers and planes were flown by licensed amateurs and they were inclined to contest the right of way...

One big black chopper just sat there. Henty headed straight for it. She tried turning her chopper to one side but it happened too slowly. At the last moment, when Henty could count the teeth of the other pilot — his mouth was open to shout obscenities at her — he gave way ever so fractionally and Henty's chopper passed within inches with Henty holding her breath and clenching her teeth so that she shouldn't move a muscle and cause a disaster.

Beyond the big black chopper the real nightmare began. The choppers were packed much closer than was safe, several layers deep. They were kept from disaster only by the skill of the pilots. But Henty wasn't skilled enough even to hold her chopper steady, never mind holding position in a formation.

Another big chopper in front of her. Choppers to the left and the right. Choppers above. There was nowhere to go but down. They were almost upon the other chopper, whose pilot was jabbering on the radio at them. Henty dropped the chopper raggedly, her hands and feet moving frantically to correct for her over-corrections, which caused even more over-corrections.

"Watch out!" Chris shouted.

Henty saw the freeway at the end of the bridge coming at her at blinding speed. She reacted instinctively by taking the chopper up as fast as she could. Above her the other choppers shifted fractionally and she scraped through the minuscule hole in the air they made and very nearly went into the next layer up before they could make a little hole and the next layer and the next. Even when she broke through the topmost layer of choppers, it was only to emerge in a maelstrom of planes, including some low-flying Air Force fighters, one of which jetted right past the nose of her chopper so that its wake rocked the chopper frighteningly. For the first time, Petey screamed, and Henty made up her mind—

CHAPTER 72

High above San Francisco in the stratosphere where all is peace and quiet, a one-star general listened to the voice of the pilot coming through the speakers.

"I saw it. I tell you. The Fist, except she has a big cast on it."

"So she suddenly learned to fly a chopper, with one hand in a cast?" another voice asked sarcastically.

"You saw how erratically that chopper flew across the Bay, didn't you?"

The commander took the mike. "This is General Meggs. Can you take out just that one chopper?"

"Yes sir, sure sir," said the pilot. "She's gonna take a lot of other folks with her when she goes down though."

"Never mind that, they're not our responsibility as long as you don't shoot them down directly. Go!"

"Sir! Thank you sir!"

Far below the communicator, the pilot heeled his fighter over and pushed the button to arm his rockets at the same time. In one-and-a-half seconds he would lock onto the chopper the Runner had stolen and blast her out of the sky. In five seconds he'd be back up here in the safety of clear skies inhabited only by other highly trained Air Force fighter pilots, rather than the dangerous amateur rabble down there. Out of the corner of his eye he noticed the rest of his flight heeling over with him, the arms of the pilots reaching for the arming buttons, to back him up if he should miss. Bloody likely, ha-ha, he thought. A chopper is a sitting duck.

CHAPTER 74

"Look down now!" Chris shouted, pointing down to the almost solid mass of helicopters through which no more than the occasional glimpse of the city could be seen. "That copper roof is the Mint."

Henty looked down. It was just a glimpse of a roof, more verdigris than copper-colored but she knew what Chris meant. A moment later even that sliver of roof was invisible as the mass of choppers shifted. Henty feared they would drift away and never find it again.

"Move the bombs to the door," she told Chris. Into the mike, shouting to make herself heard over the hubbub of many ill-disciplined pilots: "Get the hell out of my way!"

Nothing moved, except the jets diving on her in formation through the planes circling above— Jets diving at her in formation!

"Watch out!" Chris shouted at the same time, having spotted the jets through the hatch as he arrived there dragging the box of anti-personnel mines. He grabbed a post with one hand and Petey's bed with the other.

Henty dropped the chopper straight down, screaming into the mike, no words, just a mindless banzai scream as her rage at all the persecutions of the week and the unfairness of the Government setting the Air Force on her boiled over all at once.

Below her a chopper pilot scurried to move his chopper away from the screaming mad woman. His passengers were shooting off their rifles at the other chopper falling towards them and one was throwing a grenade at it, shouting, "That's her, that's her, get her, get her!"

The evading chopper crashed into another chopper and exploded and, from there, the explosions spread.

The grenade fell short of Henty's chopper, kept falling and fell right onto a chopper piloted by a bounty hunter who had in three years accounted for as many Gauntlet Runners. When his chopper exploded, it left a neat hole for Henty's chopper to fall through, though pieces shooting off it got into the rotors and engines of nearby choppers, spreading the conflagration.

The Air Force pilot who first spotted Henty had her in his sights with his finger a microsecond from pressing the button that would unleash his rockets on her when she seemed to drop out of the sky. Without hesitation, his hands and feet perfectly co-ordinated, his reflexes perfectly honed by years of expensive training to respond instantly to the irrational exigencies of war, he twitched the jet onto a new course to follow her down.

Behind him, his flight, who had been equally inculcated with the belief that to follow your comrades through thick and thin was their highest duty, until it became a reflex action, twitched their planes equally, simultaneously with his action, and dived after their leader into the melee..

Only the flight's commanding officer, who felt slighted by General Meggs going over his head directly to order the pilot to attack — and who anyway didn't believe the woman flying the chopper was Henty — turned his plane upwards, only to crash immediately into a light prop plane flown by a curious amateur pilot. Since the jet had over 1800 gallons of aerofuel on board, nothing of the men or the machines was left.

The pilot who'd gotten his orders directly from General Meggs now had a clear shot at Henty's falling chopper. He blasted two rockets, then two more. They had not trailed ten yards from his plane when one hit an engine out of an exploded chopper. The bang this rocket made set all the other three off and pieces from the leading jet hit those following close by, exploding their armed rockets. All the jets fused into one large explosion that barreled over and over and over, like a giant Catherine-wheel, through the tightly packed choppers and planes adding more exploded planes and choppers wherever it touched, its fiery tentacles reaching hungrily for more combustibles and fuel, scathing a channel half a mile high by four miles long through the planes and choppers over the city of San Francisco, causing a rain of burning fuel and red-hot parts that—

Henty grimly kept her eyes in only one direction. Down. Down! Down! DOWN! She knew she could do nothing to avoid the other choppers if they didn't want to give way. Then she could see a large expanse of verdigris and only one chopper between her and it.

"Move!" Henty shouted at it. And, miraculously, just then the pilot looked up, saw the conflagration above him and shot off in the direction of the bay to escape the carnage. He made a couple of hundred yards before a piece of Piper Cherokee slashed through the Perspex and cut the pilot quite gently on the forehead. Before he could wipe the blood from his eyes, he lost control and crashed into the Embarcadero Freeway.

"Bombs away!" Henty shouted.

Chris started throwing the anti-personnel mines out of the hatch. They were already armed: all he needed to do was ram the fitted fuse home and drop each one to fall towards the copper roof below where the impact exploded it. Then the nails and shrapnel and pieces of sharp plastic inside would tear into the soft roof and its supporting wooden members. Already a good-sized hole was forming but Henty was worried the chopper would fall into one of their own anti-personnel mines.

"That's enough," she shouted.

Chris looked at the mine in his hand He'd already pushed the fuse home. On the fuse it said. NO DELAY. He dropped it just as—

Henty slammed the throttle shut and the ignition off, then jerked the pitch control. Her idea was to make the chopper fall straight through the weakened roof, now not too far below them. Like most people, she believed that a chopper, once it loses its motive power, will fall like a stone. Now she discovered it isn't true. The rotor, disconnected by the freewheel built into every helicopter, did not stop even though the direction of airflow through it was reversed from downwards to upwards. The chopper fell quite gently.

Henty also discovered how lucky she was, on two counts. First, a piece of red-hot metal from another, exploded chopper severed a fuel line in her chopper and nothing happened because by now the line was empty. Secondly, the correct way to cushion an autorotation (that's what chopper people say when they mean the engine's conked out) landing is exactly to increase the collective pitch just before touching down. If Henty had crashed the chopper through that roof like a falling stone, as she fully intended, the chopper would have exploded and killed her and Petey and Chris. Instead, the chopper just settled gently on the bare rafters, now covered by only a few torn scraps of twisted copper.

"Phew!" Relief exploded Henty's breath.

Chris looked up to see what they had passed through and then, too stunned and awed to speak, just pointed upwards to where the end of the Catherine-wheel the Air Force flight had started was just falling apart in the sky. Where the sky had been black with choppers and planes, it was now streaked with smoke from explosions but almost clear of aircraft, the few survivors streaking for home as fast as they could. Here and there explosions were still scarring the sky, planes and choppers coming down like the tail-end of a Fourth of July celebration.

"They didn't come to wish me well," said Henty, beginning the transformation that would change her life from Texas chicken farmer to national savior.

Then the rafters, weakened by the anti-personnel mines, creaked and gave way and the helicopter slipped through. The rotors caught, then bowed gracefully and, very gently, the chopper slid through the roof to come to rest on the parquet floor of the Governors' Room of the US Mint.

CHAPTER 75

"One woman flying a chopper for the first time in her life and the US Air Force failed to shoot her down?" The Air Force Chief of Staff could not believe his ears. "Repeat that. Meggs."

"We did shoot down or otherwise destroy more planes than in all three World Wars," Meggs said. "But now she's in the Mint."

"Moron," said his boss in Washington.

Aboard the Communicator flying high above San Francisco, Meggs looked at the mike for a moment. Then he asked "Shall I drop the paratroopers on her, sir?" The Chief of Staff looked through the glass wall of the Royal Box at the screens on the far side of the Pit. The Pentagon was still tied in to The Caring Society computer and the crowd scenes in San Francisco were quite incredible.

"And how do you suggest we keep the resulting massacre quiet, Meggs?"

"The only alternative is nuclear sterilization, sir," Meggs said immediately.

"Hold on." The Air Force Chief of Staff was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs for this period, so he sat in the center swivel chair. He turned from side to side to his colleagues as he spoke. "You heard Meggs. Shall we neutralize her nuclearwise?"

"Well," said the admiral. "Either way there'll be a big body count. We'll never keep it quiet if we drop combat troops. But if we just sterilize all downtown San Francisco, there'll be no survivors to talk and we just say it was a mistake — pilot error or something — and that's that. I go for it."

"I'm not against sterilizing SF nuclearwise," said the army general. "Never liked the place much. But there's somebody else we got to consider."

"Who's that?" the Chairman asked.

"The President."

"He told me in person to get that Runner," the Chairman said.

"Sure. But San Francisco voted almost unanimously for him and you can't say that for many places. Like SF could make the difference between re-election or not."

The Chairman picked up another, red phone. "Mr President, that woman Runner is in San Francisco in the Mint and the only way to deal with her is by nuclear sterilization." He listened, then said. "Yes, Mr President," and put the red phone down with due reverence.

CHAPTER 76

Henty stepped from the chopper onto the parquet floor and stared first at the little old gentleman with his pruned goatee and steepled fingers and then at the pigeonhole desks spaced equidistantly around the perimeter of the room.

"Welcome to the United States Mint," the old man greeted her. "What are you looking for?"

"People trying to stop me," Henty said bluntly.

"Ah, yes. I heard you had a little trouble reaching here."

"A little," Henty admitted. "No more than any Texas girl could handle."

"Hmm. You're the first Runner ever to make it. You're quite safe once you're inside the Mint, you know. Oh, how I've been looking forward to one day handing over the ten million dollars and the Presidential Pardon."

"Bully for you. Where are they?"

"Right there in the safe."

He pointed to an old-fashioned iron safe and offered Henty a key from the chain around his small but perfectly round potbelly.

Henty opened the door of the safe.

"Chris, bring Petey please. He'd probably like to see this."

She waited until the surgeon wheeled Petey's bed to the lip of the helicopter hatch, then she held up the check already made out in her name and payable at any bank in the United States. "This'll make you well," she said to Petey.

The big scroll was the Presidential Pardon and her name was filled in on that as well.

Outside the crowd cheered as they saw Henty reach her reward as relayed on the big vidis on the street. Henty heard them. She walked to the big window overlooking Mission and Fifth Streets, threw the window up and—

"The same key removes the Fist," the Keeper of the Mint said behind her.

Henty nodded and—

Stepped out on the balcony just as—

Jimmy Twoshoes saw his opportunity and rushed up to shove her in the back, betting that the twenty foot drop would kill her and save him from Don Guilio's wrath. As Henty bent to clear the window, his hands found nothing but thin air and he flew through the doubled-up window above her and out onto the street.

One of the crowd shouted up at Henty, "Who's he?"

Without thinking, she replied, "Syndicate. He was trying to—"

But she got no further for an animal growl emanated from the mob, which saw for themselves what the gangster was trying to do. The mob tore him apart.

"Henty, Henty, Henty," the crowd shouted. Henty smiled on them. Behind her, the Keeper said, "Take the Fist off now."

Above her the Air Force turned to head for home: the Watcheyes inside the Mint had broadcast Henty's triumph to the nation even as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was asking the President's permission to annihilate San Francisco. The President could not tear his eyes from the multividi broadcast on his wall of the historic event, a Runner making it to the Mint. Why did no one order the broadcast not to take place? the President asked himself. Because no-one knew it was scheduled and anyway nobody thought she'd make it past the US Air Force, the President answered himself. Then he told his Chiefs of Staff to stop staring at the red phone and watch their vidis like good little boys.

"Henty, Henty, Henty!" the crowd roared.

In Washington, glued to his multividi, the President shivered on that warm summer's day.

In San Francisco, the Keeper of the Mint insisted urgently, "The Fist, take the Fist off now. You no longer need—"

Henty held the Fist high and the crowd went wild. With her other hand she gestured for silence and instantly they were silent and—

In Washington, Alfie sighed and told the broadcast controllers. "No. it's too late to cut her off now. The damage is done."

"The Fist!" the Keeper whispered hoarsely behind Henty.

"The President and The Caring Society gave me the Power of the Fist because they thought I was evil," Henty said—

And the microphones picked up her voice and sent it across the nation and amplified it for the crowds in the street in front of her and in streets everywhere and almost everyone thought of the Statue of Liberty and of Freedom.

"There are many wrongs in our nation," Henty said firmly, "that I shall use the Power of the Fist to right."

And, as she committed herself and flexed her fingers, the cast of lead shattered from the Fist and shards flew in all directions. The Fist gleamed black and shining and powerful high above the crowd.

The crowd roared but was instantly silent for Henty's final words:

"With the Power of the Fist, I will turn Evil into Good."

Andre Jute

*

"Wild but exciting. A grand job with plenty of irony."

New York Times

"So bizarre, it's probably all true."

London Evening News

This is an important book."

Sydney Morning Herald

"Keeps up such a pace and such interest that it really satisfies."

Good Housekeeping

"A masterly story that has pace, humor, tension and excitement with the bonus of truth."

The Australian

"Jute has clearly conducted a great deal of research into everything he describes, investing the novel with an air of prophecy. His moral and ecological concerns are important."

Times Literary Supplement

"Andre Jute's Iditarod is the finest piece of fiction that I have read about The Greatest Race on Earth. Packed with adventure at every turn, nail-biting suspense, touches of endearing humor and the fine, subtle thread of romance, this tale speaks to what readers crave."

Margie Myers-Culver/Librarian's Quest

Historical Saga

Cold War, Hot Passions

(12 parts, 8 volumes)

Vanguard Elite

Terrors • Bread & Circuses • Black Cabinets

Derring-Do

True History Novelized

AN ELECTION OF PATRIOTS the novel

PIVOT a play for radio

A CRIME OF INFLUENCE a screenplay

Omnibus

 The TIME-LIFE Conspiracy Omnibus

André Jute

wins the

FlamingNet Young Adult Book Reviews TOP CHOICE AWARD

for

IDITAROD a novel of The Greatest Race on Earth

Novel

Henty's Fist•1 GAUNTLET RUN birth of a superhero

Economics

IT'S THE ECONOMY, STUPID a Rhodes Scholar Education in One Hour

Thriller

Eight Days in Washington

Short Stories

TWO SHORTS (High Fidelity & Christmas Oratorio)

THE SURVIVOR A Short Story

Literary Criticism

STIEG LARSSON Man, Myth & Mistress (with Andrew McCoy)

André Jute, • Andrew McCoy

*

Literary Criticism

STIEG LARSSON Man, Myth & Mistress

In Stieg Larsson: Man, Myth & Mistress, Jute (with collaborator Andrew McCoy) turns that analytical intelligence to the recent phenomenon of Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy. Stieg Larsson: Man, Myth & Mistress, is a work of criticism, but more, it's a study of how a collision of circumstance can lead to an entertainment industry happening, with books that sell by the million and high-budget movies to follow. While The Larsson Scandal is worth reading for the criticism alone, for me it was the story of the story that made this book required reading.

Keith Brooke

I would recommend this to anyone who enjoyed Larsson's Millennium Trilogy. It gives one a better appreciation of the books.

Lee Wright

André Jute • Dakota Franklin • Andrew McCoy

*

Novel

Henty's Fist•1 GAUNTLET RUN birth of a superhero

What these three elite authors provide in the playful romp that is Gauntlet Run is a fascinating combination of The Running Man, Hunger Games — and intelligence.

Matt Posner

Dakota Franklin

*

A wonderful story full of action and remarkable detail. Dakota Franklin has used her extensive sports car and engineering experience to spin a really engaging story that I found difficult to put down. I can honestly say that there's one more fan on the Dakota Franklin mailing list.

Boyd S Drew

The pacing was great, constantly making me want to find out more. I would recommend this book to anyone who likes crime novels.

Diana Sakioti

Troubleshooter is as good a crime thriller as any I've read as well as being a pretty good racing novel.I can't wait to read the next novel in this series.

abrwrite

What a ride! If you're a fan of racing, any type, you will love this book and the series! Even if not, the story will give you enough technical knowledge to understand races and keep you on the edge of your seat just the same.

Diane Fisher-Monroe

Trouble Maker or Trouble Shooter... Very well done, some very sexy bits, lots of behind the scenes look at how things work in the automotive world, and of course lots of dangerous things happening. I look forward to reading it again very soon.

John Tami

I thought the characters were great. I was swept along.

Joo

A very hard-to-put-down book once I started reading it. I give it five stars.

Willow

Dakota really took me for a ride in this book with a big surprise from the start!

John Tami

Race out and buy this novel!

Sharon Tillotson

All in all, it was a very well-told story.

Christopher Wuestefeld

An excellent read - gripping, knowledgeable, and well written. I can't wait for another book in the series.

M. Weiss

Racer story for the racers at heart. As a current member of the auto racing community I know a fair amount about the ins and outs of the sport. This author knows her stuff and was able to weave an exciting tale that involved the technical side in addition to the personal side of racing drivers, the teams and the rivalries that are ever-present in motor sports.

Katherine Sterling

Great racing novel. Excellent exciting read. Action every page. Learned a lot about behind the scenes high stakes racing.

Stanley G. Wiedmeyer

Franklin really knows her autos and auto racing which makes reading her so much more enjoyable than other authors dabbling with car fiction. She never loses you with a silly technical mistake. I love these books from Dakota Franklin.

John E. Entwistle

The fast lane just got faster!

Dr Benjamin Pitman

Thrilling both on and off the track. No matter how you feel about racing, if you're looking for a fresh thriller, you should definitely check out this book

Good Book Alert (J. A. Beard)

Fantastic! The book would appeal to males and females alike and if, like me, you have no interest in racing itself, you will love it if you are looking for a good mystery. By the time you get to the revelation of the guilty party, you will be hooked.

Sarah Dixon

Action-filled and entertaining.

abrwrite

A very well written book, fast paced, enough twists & turns to keep me reading until I finished it. I only put it down once because my tablet ran out of juice before I was done reading it.

Crazy_Bunny_Lady

A really fun read, mixing mystery with car racing in Europe.

D Bower

Requiem at Monza will continue to hold the reader in its grip of intrigue.

Sara Edens

Dakota Franklin

*

Dakota Franklin

wins the

eFestival of Words Best of the Independents eBook Award

RUTHLESS TO WIN series

LE MANS a novel

REQUIEM AT MONZA

TROUBLESHOOTER

NASCAR FIRST

QUEEN OF INDY

RACING JUSTICE

Novel

Henty's Fist•1 GAUNTLET RUN birth of a superhero

RUTHLESS TO WIN series

TROUBLESHOOTER

LE MANS a novel

RACING JUSTICE

RUTHLESS TO WIN series

REQUIEM AT MONZA

NASCAR FIRST

QUEEN OF INDY

Andrew McCoy

*

"Mr McCoy gets on with the job of telling us exactly what it is like in the Heart of Darkness. He has the soldier's eye for terrain and the soldier's eye for character. This has the ring of truth."

John Braine/Sunday Telegraph

"Very rough, exciting, filmic, and redolent of a nostalgie de boue d'Afrique. Full of the rapport and affection for blacks experienced only by the genuine old Africa hand."

Alastair Phillips/Glasgow Herald

"Like the unblinking eye of a cobra, it is fascinating and hard to look away from, powerful and unique."

Edwin Corley/Good Books

"I found this work excellent. I recommend it as a book to read on several planes, whether of politics, history or just as thriller -- every episode is firmly etched on my memory. It is certainly a most impressive work of fiction."

"H.P."/BBC External Service

"Like a steam hammer on full bore."

Jack Adrian/Literary Review

"Something else again. The author has plenty of first-hand experience of the conditions he describes so vividly."

Marese Murphy/Irish Times

"Totally convincing fiction."

Colonel Jonathan Alford, Director, Institute for Strategic Studies/BBC World at One

"The reader is in good hands."

Kirkus Reviews

"Even in an entertaining thriller he makes us see ourselves anew."

La Prensa

"Graphic adult Boys Own Adventure."

The Irish Press

Thriller

THE MEYERSCO HELIX

The LANCE WEBER series

AFRICAN REVENGE

Literary Criticism

STIEG LARSSON Man, Myth & Mistress (with André Jute)

Novel

Henty's Fist•1 GAUNTLET RUN birth of a superhero

Thank you for reading.

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