Year's Best Scifi 2 Part 5

The nature of the thing that is taking place here is utterly obvious right away to everyone aboard the Citizens Service House truck. Even so, it isn't always easy to believe the evidence of your eyes when you see something like this. Mattison stares in shock and disbelief, wondering whether they have slipped through some time-fault and have dropped down into an ancient era, primitive and barbaric. But no, no, prosaic evidence of the modern century can be seen on every side, lampposts, store fronts, billboards.

It's just what's going on in the middle of the street that is so exceedingly strange."Holy f.u.c.king s.h.i.+t," Buck Randegger says. He's a former highway construction worker who has been substance-free about four months and is still plenty rough around the edges. "I thought the f.u.c.king Mexicans in this town were supposed to be Christians, for Christ's sake."

"We are," Annette Perez tells him icily. "And also other things, when we have to be. Sometimes both at the same time." The butcher-knife descends in a fierce arc, the newly headless chicken flaps its wings insanely, the crowd of wors.h.i.+ppers jumps up and down and cries out three times in a high-pitched ecstatic way, and Randegger expresses his disgust and amazement at the whole weird pagan scene with a maximum of pungency and a minimum of political correctness. For a moment it looks as though Perez is going to jump at him, and Mattison gets ready to intervene, but she simply shoots Randegger a black glare and says, "If this was your neighborhood, carajo, and you had a G.o.d, wouldn't you want to ask him to stop this s.h.i.+t?"

"With pigs? With sheep?"

"With whatever would do it," she says.

Gibbons, meanwhile, is backing the truck out of the intersection, since the a.s.sembled congregation now is staring at them as though their presence here is quite unwelcome and it seems manifestly not a good idea to try to drive any closer. Mattison, taking one last look over his shoulder, sees a small pig being led up the side of the altar. The truck swings left at the first corner, then takes the next right and right again, which brings it around to the far side of the site of the ceremony in the same moment as a little earthquake goes rippling through the vicinity, 3.5 or so, just enough to make the gaunt blackened palm trees that line the street start swaying. The wors.h.i.+ppers in the intersection behind them glower and point at the truck as it reappears, and begin to scream and yell furiously and shake their fists, and then Mattison hears some popping sounds.

"Hit the gas," he tells Gibbons over his suit radio. "They're shooting at us."

Gibbons speeds up. The street ahead is carpeted with a layer of loose ash maybe two feet deep, but Gibbons ploughs through it anyway, sending up swirling black clouds that make everybody on the open deck close the face-plates of their suits in a hurry. Beyond the ash is a stretch of crunchy cinders and other sorts of tephra, so that they all grab hold of each other and hang on tight as the truck clanks and jounces onward, and then a little newly congealed lava in the road makes the ride even rougher; but after that the street turns normal again for a while and they can relax, as much relaxation as may be possible while you ride in an open truck through territory that no longer looks like just a suburb of h.e.l.l, but the Devil's own back yard.

There have been repeated outbreaks of tectonic activity here before, early on in the crisis-that much is obvious from the burned-out houses and the black crusts of old lava everywhere and the ashen landscape-but something new and big is apparently getting ready to happen. The sky here is dead white from thick upwellings of steam and sulfurous fumes, except where the fumes are coal black. Streaks of lightning keep jumping around and the ground trembles continuously, as if a non-stop earthquake is going on. The sidewalks are warped and bulging in many places and some little red tongues of lava can be seen beginning to ooze from cracks in the pavement. Every few minutes a dull distant boom can be heard, a m.u.f.fled sound that definitely gets your attention, something like the fart of a dinosaur that might be sauntering around a few blocks away.

Three or four weary-looking fire crews are slowly taking up positions in the street and getting their gear into order; some of the biggest pumps Mattison has ever seen have already been hauled into place for the lava-cooling work; police helicopters are whirling overhead, booming down orders to whatever remaining population may still be living here to evacuate the area at once. It is a truly precarious scene.Mattison is ever so happy that he traded the horrors of substance abuse for the privilege of visiting places like this.

The same thing is occurring to some of his companions, evidently. Blazes McFlynn lays his hand on Mattison's right arm and says, "I didn't sign on for any G.o.dd.a.m.ned suicide missions, Matty. Let me off this f.u.c.king truck right now."

"Let you off?" Mattison says mildly.

"f.u.c.king A. I want out, this very minute."

Mattison sighs. McFlynn always makes trouble, sooner or later: if only he had known that this San Dimas operation was going to be tacked on to the day's outing, he probably would have opted to leave McFlynn behind at the outset. McFlynn is, of all goofy things, a bombed-out circus acrobat and pensioned-off movie stunt man, strong as a tow-truck winch, who over the course of time has found relief from stress in a whole smorgasbord of addictive substances and now-having very badly broken his leg while winning a moronic barroom bet that involved jumping off the top of a building, thereby acquiring a severe limp that makes it hard for him to practice either of his professions-draws generous compensation pay from a variety of sources while undergoing one of his periodic spells of detoxification and Citizens Service. His first name is actually Gerard, but if you call him anything but Blazes he will react unpleasantly. He is the only man in the house whom Mattison would feel any reticence about decking, for McFlynn, though five inches shorter than Mattison, is probably just about as dangerous in a fight, gimpy leg and all.

"Are you saying," Mattison asks him once more, "that you don't want to take part in the current operation?"

"The whole street is going to blow any minute."

"Maybe so. That's why we're here, to get things under control if it does. You want to walk back from here to Silver Lake? You think you'll catch a bus, maybe, or phone for a cab? The option of your departing this operation simply does not exist at this moment, okay, McFlynn?" McFlynn tries to say something, but Mattison talks right over him, although keeping his voice mild, mild, mild, as he is has been taught to do all the time when addressing the inmates, no matter what the provocation. "You find this work not to your liking, well, when you get your cowardly a.s.s back to the house tonight you can tell Donna that you don't want to do volcano work any more, and she'll take you off the list. You aren't any f.u.c.king prisoner, you understand? You don't have to do this stuff against your will and in fact you are perfectly free, if you like, to pack up and leave the house tomorrow and go back to your favorite substance, for that matter. But not today. Today you work for me, and we work in San Dimas."

McFlynn, who surely was aware when he began complaining that this was where the discussion was going to end, is just starting to crank up a disgruntled and obscene capitulation when Gibbons says, over the radio from the truck cab, "Volcano Central wants us to start setting up the pump, Matty. Satellite scan says there's a lava bulge about to blow two blocks east of us down Bonita Avenue, which is the big street straight in front of us, and we're supposed to dam it up as soon as it comes our way." So they are going to be right on the front line, this time. Fine, Mattison thinks. Hot diggety d.a.m.n.

They all get off the truck, and seal up their suits, and set about getting ready to deal with the oncoming eruption.

Because the pump they will be using this time is a jumbo job, just about the biggest one Mattison has ever worked with, he designates not only Prochaska and Hawks, once again, for the pumping crew, but also Clyde Snow and Blazes McFlynn, who will be up front not only because he's strong but alsobecause Mattison wants to keep a close eye on him. In any case Mattison's going to need all the muscle-power he can get when it becomes necessary to swing that big rig around to keep the s.h.i.+fting lava penned up. He puts the generally reliable Paul Foust in charge of the controls that operate the pump itself.

The rest-Randegger, Eisenstein, Herzog, Evans, and the three women, Doheny and Perez and Gulliver-Mattison deploys at various points along the line to the standpipe, so that they can keep the hose from getting tangled and cope with any other interruptions to the flow of water that might arise.

Everybody is in place none too soon. Because just as the signal arrives from the rear that the water connection has been made, there comes an all too familiar bellowing and groaning from the next block, as though a giant with a bad bellyache is about to cut loose, and then Mattison hears five sharp heavy grunts in succession, oof oof oof oof oof, followed by an eerie crackling sound, and suddenly the air is full of fire.

It's like one of the Yellowstone geysers, except that what is being flung up is a lot of tiny bits of hot lava, riding on a plume of bluish steam, and for a couple of moments it's impossible to see more than a few feet in front of your face-plate. Then there is one single booming sound, not m.u.f.fled at all but sharp and hard, and the bluish geyser of steam in front of them triples or quadruples in height in about half a second, and the pavement ripples beneath their feet as though an earthquake has happened precisely in this spot.

Mattison comprehends that there has been a terrific explosion a very short way down the block and they are all about to be hurled sky-high, or maybe are already on their way up to the stratosphere and just haven't had time to react yet.

But they aren't. What has happened is that an underground gas pocket has blown its head off, yes, but it has done it in one single clean whoosh and all the pent-up junk that is being released has taken off for Mars in a coherent unit, the steam and mud and lava bits and whatnot rising straight up and vanis.h.i.+ng, clearing the air beautifully behind it. A couple of good-sized lava bombs go soaring past them, fizzing like fireworks, and come down with thick plopping thunks somewhere not far away, but don't seem to do any damage; and then things are quiet, pretty much. The whole blurry geyser that was spewing straight up in front of them is gone, the ground they are standing on is still intact, and they can see again.

Mattison has just about enough time to realize that he has survived the explosion when he registers the force of an inrush of cool air that's swooping in from all sides to fill the gap where the geyser had been. It isn't strong enough to knock anybody down, but it does make you want to brace yourself pretty good.

And then comes the heat; and after it, the lava flow.

The heat is awesome. Mattison's suit catches most of it, but enough of the surge gets through his insulation so that he has no doubt at all about its intensity. It is what he calls first-rush heat: the subterranean magma ma.s.s has been cooking whatever deposits of air have surrounded it down there, and all that hot air, having had no place to go, has gone on getting hotter and hotter. Now it all comes gleefully zooming out at once. Mattison recoils involuntarily as though he has been belted by an invisible fist, steadies himself, straightens up, looks around to check up on his companions. They're all okay.

The lava, having busted through the pavement at last, follows right on the heels of that hot blast. A glowing red-orange river of it, maybe two or three feet deep, flowing down the middle of the street, taking the line of least resistance between the buildings as it heads in their direction.

"Hose!" Mattison yells. "Pump! Hit it, you bozos, hit it right down front!"

The lava is moving faster than Mattison would prefer, but not so fast that they need to retreat, at least not yet. It's actually three separate streams, each runnel six to eight feet wide, traveling in parallel paths and occasionally overlapping in a braided flow before separating again. The surface of each flow is fairlyviscous from its exposure to the cool air, darker than what is below and showing irregular bulges and lobes and puckerings, which break open now and then to reveal the bright red stuff that lies just underneath. Here and there, narrow arcs of dark congealed lava rise above the stream at sharp angles like sleek fins, making it seem as though lava sharks are swimming swiftly downstream through the fiery torrent.

As the water from their big nozzle hits the first onrush of the flow, a sc.u.m of cooling lava starts to form almost instantly atop the middle stream. The front of it begins to change color and texture, thickening and turning gray and wrinkled, like an elephant's hide.

"That's it!" Mattison tells his men. "Keep hitting it there! Smack in the middle, guys!"

The water boils right off, naturally, and within moments they are able to see nothing in front of them once again except a wall of steam. This is the most dangerous moment, Mattison knows: if the lava-pushed toward them by whatever giant fist of gas is shoving it from below-should suddenly increase its uptake velocity, he and his whole team could be engulfed by it before they knew what was happening to them.

For the next few minutes they'll be fighting blind against the oncoming lava flow, with nothing to guide them about its speed and position but Mattison's own perceptions of fluctuations in its heat.

The heat, at the moment, is really something. Not as fierce as it had been in the first instant of the breakout, no, but powerful enough to tax the cooling systems of their lava suits practically to their limits.

It feels like a solid wall, that heat: Mattison imagines that if he leaned forward against it, it would hold him up. But he knows that it won't; and he knows, also, that if things get much hotter they will have to back off.

What he is trying to do is to build log-shaped strips of solidified lava along the front of the row, perpendicular to the line of movement. These will slow its advance as the fresh stuff piles up behind them.

Then he can raise the angle of the hoses and start pumping the water upward to form larger blocks of lava, which he will eventually link to create his dam. And in time he will have buried the live lava at its source, entombing it beneath a little mountain of newly created rock and thus throttling the upwelling altogether.

The theory is a nice one. But in practice there usually are problems, because the lava, unlike your average river, tends to advance at a speed that varies from moment to moment, and you can build a lovely little log-jam or even some good-sized retainer blocks and nevertheless a sudden fast-moving spurt of molten stuff will spill right over the top and head your way, and there is nothing you can do then but drop your hoses and run like h.e.l.l, hoping that the lava isn't traveling faster than you are.

Or else, as Mattison knows all too well, your dam will work very effectively to halt the lava in its present path-thereby inducing it to take up a different path that will send it rolling off toward some still undamaged freeway or still unruined houses, or maybe pouring down a hillside into another community entirely. When you see something like that happening, you need to move your whole operation around at a 90-degree angle to itself and start building a second dam, not so easy to do when you are operating with two-ton pumps.

Here, just now, everything is going sweetly so far. It's a tough business because of the extreme heat, but they are holding their own and even managing to achieve something. They have been able to maintain themselves at a distance of about half a block from the front edge of the lava flow without the need to retreat, and Mattison can see, whenever the steam thins out a bit, that the color of the lava along the edge is beginning to turn from gray to a comforting black, the black of solid basalt. A pump crew from some other Citizens Service House has arrived, Mattison has been told, and is building a second lava dam on the opposite side of the breakout. The fire crews are at work in the adjacent blocks, hosing down thestructures that were ignited by the initial geyser of lava fragments.

If visibility stays good, if the water supply holds out, if the pump doesn't break down, if the lava doesn't pull any velocity surprises, if some randomly escaping gobbet of hot rock doesn't go flying at them through the air and melt one of the hoses, if there isn't some new eruption right under their feet, or maybe an earthquake, if this, if that-well, then, maybe they'll be able to knock off in another hour or two and head back to the house for some well-earned rest.

Maybe.

But things are beginning to change a little, now. The lava is penned up nicely in the middle but the bulk of the flow has s.h.i.+fted to the right-hand stream and that one is gaining in depth and velocity. That brings up the ugly possibility that Mattison's dam is achieving diversion instead of containment, and is about to send the entire flow, which has been traveling thus far from west to east, off in a southerly direction.

Volcano Central is monitoring the whole thing by satellite, and somebody up there calls the problem to Mattison's attention via his suit radio about a fifteenth of a second after he discovers it for himself. "Start moving your equipment to the right side of your dam," Volcano Central says. "There's danger now that the lava will start rolling south down San Dimas Avenue into Bonelli County Park, where it'll take out the Puddingstone Reservoir, and maybe keep on going south until it cuts the San Bernardino Freeway in half on the far side of the park. A piece of the 210 Freeway will also be at risk down there."

The street and park names mean nothing to Mattison-he has never been anywhere near San Dimas before in his life-and he can form only a hazy picture of the specific geography from what Volcano Central is telling him. But all that matters is that there's a park, a reservoir, and an apparently undamaged stretch of freeway to the south of here, and his beautifully constructed lava dam has succeeded in tipping the flow toward those very things, and he has to hustle now to correct the situation.

"All right, everybody, listen up," he announces. "We're making a 90-degree s.h.i.+ft in operations."

Easier said than done, of course. The hoses will have to be decoupled and dragged to new hydrants, the ma.s.sive pump has to be swung around, the trajectory of the water stream has to be recalibrated-nor will the lava stand still while they are doing all these things. It's a challenge, but stuff like this is meat and potatoes to Mattison, the fundamental nutritive agent out of which his recovery is being built. He starts giving the orders; and his poor battered bedraggled team of ex-abusers, ex-homelesses, ex-burglars, ex-muggers, ex-wh.o.r.es, ex-this, ex-that, all of it bad, swings gamely into action, because this is part of their recovery too.

But in the middle of the process of moving the pump, Blazes McFlynn steps back, folds his arms across the chest of his lava suit, and says, "Coffee break."

Mattison stares at him incredulously. "What the f.u.c.k did you say?"

"Time out, is what I said. You think it's a snap, hauling this monster around? I'm tired. I'm a crippled man, Matty. I got to sit down for a while and take a breather."

"The lava is changing direction. There's a park and a reservoir and a freeway in the path of danger now."

"So?" McFlynn says. "What's that mean to me?"

Mattison is so astonished that for a moment he can't speak. If this is a joke, it's a d.a.m.n lousy one. He needs McFlynn badly, and McFlynn has to know that. Flabbergasted, Mattison gapes and gestures in helpless pantomime.McFlynn says, "Not my park. Not my freeway. I don't even know where the f.u.c.k we are right now. But my bad leg is aching like a holy son of a b.i.t.c.h and I want to sit down and rest and that's that."

"I'll sit you down, all right," Mattison says, recovering his voice finally. "I'll sit you down inside a volcano, you obstreperous lazy son of a b.i.t.c.h. I'll drop you in on your head." He knows that he is not supposed to speak to the inmates this way, and that everybody else is listening in and someone is bound to talk and he will very likely be reprimanded later on by Donna, but he can't help himself. He doesn't pretend to be a saint and McFlynn's sudden rebellion has p.i.s.sed him off almost to the breaking point. Almost. What he really would like to do now is put one hand under McFlynn's left armpit and one hand under the right one and pick him up and carry him to the lava and dangle his feet over the fiery-hot flow for a moment and then let go.

Very likely that is exactly what Mattison would have tried to do two years ago, if he and McFlynn had found themselves in this situation two years ago; but it is a measure of the progress he has been making that he merely fantasizes tossing McFlynn into the lava, now, instead of actually doing it. The fantasy is so vivid that for a dizzy moment he believes that he is actually doing it, and he gets a savage rush of glee from the mental spectacle of McFlynn disappearing, melting away as he goes under, into the blazing river of molten magma.

But actually doing it would be extremely poor procedural technique. And also McFlynn is not exactly a weakling and Mattison is aware that he might find himself involved in a non-trivial fight if he tries anything.

Mattison has never lost a fight in his life, but it is some time since he has been in one, and he may be out of practice; and in any case there's no time now, with the lava about to overflow his dam, to f.u.c.k around getting into fights with people like Blazes McFlynn.

So what he does, instead, is turn his back on McFlynn, swallowing the rest of what he would like to say and do to him, and indicate to Prochaska, Hawks, and Snow, who have been watching the whole dispute in silence, that they will have to finish moving the pump without McFlynn's help. They all know what that means, that McFlynn has shafted them thoroughly by dumping his share of this tremendous job on their shoulders, and they are righteously angry. A certain amount of venting occurs, which Mattison decides would be best to permit. Hawks tells McFlynn that he's a f.u.c.king goof-off and Prochaska says something guttural and probably highly uncomplimentary in what is probably Czech, and even Snow, not famous for hard work himself, gives McFlynn the hand-across-bent-forearm chop. McFlynn doesn't seem to give a d.a.m.n. He replies to the whole bunch of them with an upthrust finger and a lazy, contemptuous smirk that makes Mattison think that the next event is going to be a crazy free-for-all; but no, no, they all ostentatiously turn their backs on him too and continue the job of guiding the pump toward its new position.

It's a miserably hard job. The pump is on a wheeled carriage, sure, but it isn't designed to be moved in an arc as narrow as this, and they really have to bust their humps to swing it into its new position. The men, clumsy within their bulky suits, grunt and groan and gasp as they bend and push. Mattison, who as the biggest and strongest of the group has taken up the key position, can feel things popping in his arms and shoulders as he puts his whole weight into the job. And all the while McFlynn stands to one side, watching.

The pump is more than halfway into place when McFlynn comes limping over as though he has graciously decided that he will join them in the work after all.

"Look who's here," says Hawks. "You motherf.u.c.ker son of a b.i.t.c.h."

"Can I be of any a.s.sistance?" McFlynn says grandly.He tries to take up a position against the side of the pump carriage between Hawks and Prochaska.

Hawks turns squarely toward McFlynn and seems to be thinking about throwing a punch at him.

Mattison, who has been worried about this possibility since McFlynn made his announcement, poises himself to step in, but Hawks gets his anger under control just in time. Muttering to himself, he turns back in Prochaska's direction. There is just enough room for McFlynn to shove his way in between Hawks and Mattison. He braces himself and puts his shoulder against the carriage, making a big show of throwing all his strength into the task.

"Hey, be careful not to strain yourself, now!" Mattison tells him.

"f.u.c.k you, Matty," McFlynn says sulkily. "That's all I have to say, just f.u.c.k you."

"You're welcome," says Mattison, as with the aid of McFlynn's added strength they finally manage to finish swinging the big pump around and lock it on its track.

The men step back from it, wheezing, sucking in breath after their heavy exertions. But the incident isn't over. Prochaska goes up to McFlynn and says something else to him in the harsh language that Mattison a.s.sumes is Czech. McFlynn gives Prochaska the finger again. Maybe there's going to be a fight after all.

No. They are content to glare, it seems. Mattison glances at McFlynn and sees, through the faceplate of his suit, that the expression on McFlynn's face has become unexpectedly complicated. He looks defiant but maybe just a little shamefaced too. An attack of conscience? A bit of guilt over his stupid dereliction kicking in at last, now that McFlynn realizes that he actually was needed badly just now and f.u.c.ked everybody over by c.r.a.pping out? Better late than never, Mattison figures.

Prochaska still isn't finished letting McFlynn know what he thinks of him, though: he throws in a couple of harsh new Slavic expletives, and McFlynn, who probably has no more of an idea of what Prochaska is saying to him than Mattison does, dourly gives him back some muttered threats salted with the standard Anglo-Saxonisms.

Things are starting to get a little out of hand, Mattison thinks. He needs to do something, although he's not sure what. But he has a lava flow to worry about, first.

The lava, in fact, is getting a little out of hand also. Not that it has started to flow in any serious way toward Whatchamacallit Park and Whozis Reservoir, not yet. A thin little eddy of it has begun to dribble off that way over the right-hand edge of Mattison's dam, but nothing significant. The main flow is still traveling from east to west. The real problem is that new flows are starting to emerge from the ground alongside the original source, and there are now six or seven streams instead of three. Red gleams are showing through the gray and black of the dam in a number of places, indicating that the hot new lava is finding its way between sections of the hardened stuff. That means that what is coming out now is thinner than before.

Thin lava moves faster than thick lava. Sometimes it can move very fast. The direction of the flow can get a little unpredictable, too.

The pump is in place in its new location and ready to start throwing water, but it needs to have the water, first. Mattison is still waiting for confirmation that the hoses behind him have been moved and hooked to different hydrants. He can see Nicky Herzog a short distance down one of the side streets to his right, kneeling next to a section of thick hose as he fumbles around with a connector.

"Are we okay?" Mattison asks him.

"Just about ready," Herzog replies. He straightens up and begins to give the hand signal indicating that the water line is completely set up. But suddenly he seems to freeze in place, and starts swinging aroundjerkily in a very odd way, going from side to side from the waist up without moving his legs at all. Also Herzog has begun flinging his arms rigidly above his head, one at a time, as if he is suddenly getting tickled by an electric current.

For a moment Mattison can't figure out what's going on. Then he sees that the rightmost lava stream, the one that had already begun to escape a little from the dam, has been joined by one of the newer and thinner streams and has greatly increased in volume and velocity. It has changed direction, too, and is running straight at Herzog in a great hurry, traveling at him in two p.r.o.ngs separated by a green Toyota utility van that somebody has abandoned in the middle of the street.

Herzog is in the direct line of the flow, and he knows it, and he is scared silly.

Mattison sees immediately that Herzog has a couple of choices that make some sense. He could go to his left, which would involve a slightly scary jump of about three feet over the lesser p.r.o.ng of the new lava stream, and take refuge in an alleyway that looks likely to be secure against the immediate trajectory of the stream because there are brick buildings on either side of it. Or he could simply turn around and run like h.e.l.l down the street he's in, hoping to outleg the advancing flow, which is moving swiftly but maybe not quite as swiftly as he could manage to go. Both of these options have certain risks, but each of them holds out the possibility of survival, too.

Unfortunately Herzog, though a quick-witted enough fellow when it comes to sarcastic quips and insults, or to laying out a million-dollar story line for some movie-studio executive, is fundamentally a clueless little yutz as far as most normal aspects of life are concerned, and in his panic he makes a yutzy decision.

Apparently he perceives the Toyota as an island of safety in the middle of all this madness, and, breaking at last from his paralysis, he jumps the wrong way across a segment of the narrower lava stream and with a berserk outlay of energy pulls himself up onto the hood of the green van. From there he clambers desperately to the Toyota's roof and begins to emit a G.o.dawful frightened caterwauling, high-pitched and strident, like an automobile burglar alarm that won't turn off.

What he has achieved by this is to strand himself in the middle of the lava flow. Maybe he expects that Mattison will now call in a police helicopter to lower a rope ladder to him, the way they would do in a movie, but there are no helicopters in the vicinity just now, and the lava that surrounds the Toyota isn't any special effect, either: it's a fast-flowing stream of actual red-hot molten magma, a couple of thousand degrees in temperature, which is widening and widening and very soon will be lapping up against the Toyota's wheels on both sides. At that point the Toyota is going to melt right down into the lava stream and Nicky Herzog is going to die a quick but very unpleasant death.

Mattison doesn't like the idea of losing a member of his crew, even a s.h.i.+thead like Herzog. He knows that his crew is made up entirely of s.h.i.+theads, himself included, and the fact that Herzog is a s.h.i.+thead does not invalidate him as a human being. Too much of the huuman race falls into the s.h.i.+thead category, Mattison realizes. If n.o.body in the world ever lifted a finger to save s.h.i.+theads from their own s.h.i.+theadedness, then almost everybody would be in trouble. He himself, as Mattison is only too thoroughly aware, would still be compulsively cruising the bars along Wils.h.i.+re and waking up the next morning under somebody's car port in Venice or Santa Monica. So he resolved some time back, quite early in his sobriety, to do whatever he could to help the s.h.i.+theads of the world overcome their s.h.i.+theadedness, starting with himself but extending even unto the likes of McFlynn and Herzog.

Nevertheless, Mattison is helpless in this instance. He is cut off from Herzog now by the larger of the two lava flows and he doesn't see a d.a.m.ned thing that he can do by way of rescuing him in time. A couple of minutes ago, maybe, yes, but now there's no chance. Even with an armored suit on, he can't just wade through a stream of hot fresh lava. He is going to have to stand right where he is and watch Herzog melt.All of this a.n.a.lysis, the sizing up of the somber situation and the arriving at the melancholy conclusion, has taken about 2.53 seconds. Roughly 1.42 seconds later, while Mattison is still glumly making his peace with the idea that Herzog is screwed, a lava-suited figure unexpectedly appears in the street where Herzog is trapped, emerging from the alleyway into which Herzog had failed to flee, and calls out, extending his arms to the terrified man on top of the van, "Jump! Jump!" And, when Herzog does nothing, yells again, angrily, "Come on, you p.r.i.c.k, jump! I'll catch you!"

Mattison isn't sure at first who the man who has come out of the alleyway is. Everybody looks basically like everybody else inside a lava suit, and it's not too easy to distinguish one voice from another over the suit radios, either. Mattison glances around, taking a quick inventory of his crew. Hawks right here, yes, and Prochaska, yes- Can it be Clyde Snow who is out there by the mouth of that alleyway? No. No. Snow is right over there, on the far side of the pump carriage. So it has to be Blazes McFlynn who right at this moment is standing at the very edge of a diabolically hot stream of lava and stretching his arms out toward the gibbering and wailing Nicky Herzog. McFlynn, yes, who has found some sort of detour between the adjacent buildings and made his way as close to the Toyota as it is possible to get. Incredible, Mattison thinks. Incredible.

"Jump, will you, you nitwit f.a.ggot!" McFlynn roars once more. "I can't stay here the whole f.u.c.king day!"

And Herzog jumps.

He does it with the same grace and panache with which he has handled most other aspects of his life, coming down in McFlynn's approximate direction with his body bent in some crazy corkscrew position and his arms and legs flailing wildly. McFlynn manages to grab one arm and one leg as Herzog sails by him heading nose-first for the lava, and hangs on to him. But, slight as Herzog is, the force of his jump is so great and the angle of his descent is so c.o.c.keyed that the impact on McFlynn causes the bigger man to stagger and spin around and begin to topple. Mattison, watching in horror, comprehends at once that McFlynn is going to fall forward into the lava stream still holding Herzog in his arms, and both men are going to die.

McFlynn doesn't fall, though. He takes one ponderous lurching step forward, so that his left leg is no more than a few inches from the edge of the lava stream, and leans over bending almost double so that that leg accepts his full weight, and Herzog's weight as well. McFlynn's left leg, Mattison thinks, is the broken one, the one that is bent permanently outward after the seventy-nine-cent job of setting it that was done for him at the county hospital. McFlynn stands there leaning out and down for a very long moment, regaining his balance, adjusting to his burden, getting a better grip on Herzog. Then, straightening up and tilting himself backward, McFlynn pivots on his good leg and swings himself around in a hundred-and-eighty-degree arc and goes tottering off triumphantly into the alleyway with Nicky Herzog's inert form draped over his shoulder.

Mattison has never seen anything like it. Herzog can't weigh more than a hundred forty pounds, but the suit adds maybe fifty, sixty pounds more, and McFlynn, though six feet tall and stockily built, probably weighs two-ten tops. And has a gimpy leg, no bulls.h.i.+t there, a genuinely damaged limb on which he has just taken all of Herzog's weight as the little guy came plummeting down from that Toyota. It must have been some circus-acrobat trick that McFlynn used, Mattison decides, or else one of his stunt-man gimmicks, because there was no other way that he could have pulled the trick off. Mattison, big and strong as he is and with both his legs intact, doubts that even he would have been able to manage it.

McFlynn is coming around the far side of the pump carriage now, no longer carrying Herzog in his arms but simply dragging him along like a limp doll. McFlynn's face-plate is open and Mattison can see that his eyes are s.h.i.+ning like a madman's-the adrenaline rush, no doubt-and his cheeks are flushed and glossywith sweat. It's the look of the hero coming back in glory from a tremendous victory. McFlynn's heroism is bulls.h.i.+t, Mattison knows: it's just the next scene in McFlynn's private movie. But you live out your movie long enough and it goes real on you. Herzog was going to get killed and, thanks to McFlynn, he wasn't. That's real.

"Here," McFlynn says, and dumps Herzog down practically at Mattison's feet. "I thought the dumb a.s.shole was going to wait forever to make the jump."

"Hey, nice going," Mattison says, grinning. He b.a.l.l.s up his fist and clips McFlynn lightly on the forearm with it, a gesture of solidarity and companions.h.i.+p, one big man to another. McFlynn's face is aglow with the true redemptive gleam. That must have been why he did it, Mattison thinks: to cover over the business about refusing to help move the pump. Well, whatever. McFlynn is a total louse, a completely deplorable son of a b.i.t.c.h, but that was still a h.e.l.l of a thing to have done. "I thought you had gone off on your coffee break," Mattison says.

"f.u.c.k you, Matty," McFlynn tells him, and shambles away to one side.

Herzog is conscious, or approximately so, but he looks dazed. Mattison yanks his face-plate open, snaps his fingers in front of his nose, gets him to open his eyes.

"Go over to the truck and sit down," Mattison orders him. "Chill out for a while. Tell Ned Eisenstein I want him to check you out. You're off duty."

"Yeah," says Herzog vaguely. "Yeah. Yeah."

And give yourself a couple of good shots of bourbon to calm yourself down while you're at it, Mattison thinks, but of course does not say. Christ, he wouldn't mind a little of that himself, just now. It is, however, not an available option.