Free Jade Dragon by James Swallow Page A

was
blocked by a hooded guy with a sleeper wand and a meshweave shirt that
said
Venue Security.
The man rose from the waves of fans, one hand
pressed to an ear bead, the other pointing the wand. The guard spoke but
the music was too loud to hear a word of it. The letters on his top
changed into a tickertape marquee.
    Where the
****
are you going?
scrolled across the shirt, an
automatic censor routine kicking in. Many of Juno’s fans were pre-teens.
    Fixx pointed toward the stage as she started to sing the love song
“Paper Sunday”.
    Let bee sea your ticket, sun.
    The audio pickup on the guard’s throat wasn’t doing the job properly.
Fixx produced the pass he’d stolen and handed it over. When the man’s
eyes dropped, he pushed forward.
    What the duck?
The guard went to grab him and jab with the arcing tip
of the sleeper wand; Fixx turned his wrist and disarmed the man. With a
knuckle, the operative struck a nerve point near the security guard’s
clavicle and the man dropped to the floor.
Uuuuuuuuuu.
    Next came “Halo Kisses” and then Juno did a piece off the unreleased
album called “Apple/Eye”. Fixx reached the edge of the general admission
crowd and pressed into the thick of the hardcore fans, a hundred bodies
deep in the mosh pit. Juno’s spotlight died and everything went dark.
    “Zen, zen,” sang the girl. “I’m the quiet mind inside, pretty voice.”
The crowd erupted into a storm of cheers and Fixx blinked as he felt a
light rain on his face. “Touch” was the song that had made her career,
the hit that had stayed at number one on the Billboard chart like it had
been nailed there. “I’m the perfect smile,” Juno crooned, the Hyperdome
singing with her. “Touch my thoughts and flow, there’s no world we can’t
know.”
    As the bassline kicked in, the stage went supernova white. Lasers fanned
across the arena, cutting shapes, numbers and letters into the misty
air. The holograms of Juno morphed and changed, flickering between her
different outfits. Her face came forward off the holotank podium and
wove patterns of fire above them. People cried out in surprise and tried
to touch them. Angels. Fixx could see angels up there, made from glass
and light.
    The skin across his face was tingling and Fixx shook his head, hard.
When he ran his fingers through his close-cropped step-cut they came
back wet. The artificial rain was warm, speckling the shoulders of his
coat. He could see some people tipping their heads back and welcoming it
with outspread arms.
    “Sea of stones, sand waves,” Juno’s voice echoed in his skull. “Harmony,
come with me.”
    “This is wrong,” he said aloud, but his voice vanished into the roar of
the crowds.
    “Taste the blue,” sang the girl, each word a shock to his heart.
    The glass angels in the rafters fell toward the crowds and as they came
they changed; bright wings became masses of writhing serpents and faces
fell apart into knots of maggoty flesh. Fixx struggled to find his guns
but the press of people about him was so great he could barely move.
Juno was still singing, and in the spaces between the words a woman in
lolicon gingham shouted “Isn’t she great?” into his ear, wild with the
thrill of it all. “My eyes are golden!”
    “Star at dawn, bubble in the stream. Zen, zen, I’m the quiet mind
inside, pretty voice.”
    The laser fans turned to ropes of blue and green fire. Crossing in the
air, the beams fell into the masses and laid lines of screaming, burning
bodies in their wake. The smell of burnt flesh reached Fixx’s nostrils
and sense memory engulfed him in a flood. For one shuddering instant, he
was—
    —
there with Cajun Pork Cathy and her Longpig Boyz out on the rusted
Gulf Coast oilrigs as they did the work of the Dark Ones, turning
ferryboat passengers into chum for Deseret’s blood rites. His guns hot
in his hands. Cathy’s head clean off at the neck. Crimson fountain. The
Queen of Cups, inverted. Screaming. The meat smell.
    Fixx