Surely both god gangs had my place staked out. I needed to draw them away. So give them a sniff of the false trail, Garrett.
Out came that cord. I turned it into a poking stick and swished it around, relaxed it and trotted a third of a mile northeast, toward TunFaire’s northernmost gate, then I played with the rope in an alley infested with snoring drunks. I hurried on, used the cord one last time on the street that leads directly to the gate.
TunFaire’s gates all stand open all the time. Only once had they closed, when some thunder lizards from the north had been ravaging the countryside. A guy with the need could make a high-speed exit anytime of the day or night. I suspected the gates would be of particular interest to the new secret police.
The street to and from the northeastern gate is always busy. I tied my rope around my waist and plunged into traffic headed south. I didn’t think the Godoroth and Shayir, busy tripping over one another, would become sure of where I wasn’t for a good while yet.
My plan worked like they write them up in a book. For a few minutes.
I was preoccupied. The texture of the night changed, and I failed to notice because there were no mad little gods weirding around me. The street grew quiet and tense and the crowds thinned out, but I caught on only after a howl arose ahead and I discovered the street blocked by a bunch of guys carrying angry red-and-black banners. They were armed with clubs and staves and were whipped along by drums and trumpets. They sang some really vicious racist song.
Startled, I stopped to take stock.
More human rights guys came from cross streets. They appeared to have a specific objective, attainment of which required the physical battery of everyone in their way, human or otherwise. It seemed that, for the purposes of the moment, anybody not actively marching with them was deemed to be against them.
People on the street fought back. The nonhumans went at it with great verve. The rightsists didn’t care if those folks were apolitical and there by accident. They were not human. That was guilt enough.
I saw banners from several organizations. The demonstration would be something unusual, then. These groups fought one another over subtle points of dogma more than they battled their declared enemies.
Up ahead, where the rightsists were thickest, the northbound side of the street dissolved into ferocious turmoil. The center of violence appeared to be a caravan intent on slipping out of town under cover of darkness.
Stones flew. Clubs flashed. People hollered. I ricocheted back and forth, banged around, finally came to rest in a pile of mixed casualties. The cobblestones exercised no favoritism toward anyone. I got back onto one knee, muttering curses on all their houses. My headache was back. How could I douse all the streetlamps? But they would keep fighting anyway.
A knot of nasty-looking rightsists drifted my way. Ever flexible, I dived down and liberated an armband from an unconscious guy who didn’t really need his right now. I put it on fast. Then I did what I have been doing so well lately, which was act like I’d just had my brains scrambled and couldn’t quite get myself put back together. “Garrett? Hey, Wrecker, is that you?”
“I think so.” I knew that voice but couldn’t place it. It was a voice from long ago and far away. I faked an effort to get up that failed and left me down on my face.
Somebody else asked, “You know this guy?”
“Yeah. He was in my outfit. In the islands. He was our wreck.”
I got it. “Pappy?” That was the voice. Pappy Toomey, also known as Tooms. The old man of the outfit at twenty-seven, a lifer, like a father to the rest of us, like a sergeant without official authority. Pappy never got out but never wanted to advance either.
“Yeah, Garrett. Help me get him up, Whisker.” Hands hoisted me. “Who you with, Garrett?”
I didn’t know who he was with, so I wobbled a hand vaguely, muttered vaguely, “Them.”
A piece of brick whizzed by. They ducked, nearly dropping me. “What’s wrong?” Pappy asked me.
“Somebody whacked me with a log. Everything keeps turning around. My knees won’t work.”
“Lookit here, Whisker. Already got his head sewed up once today. Right in the thick of the Struggle, eh, Wrecker?”
I tried for a grin. “Hey, Pappy. Butter and bullshit to you, too. How’s it going? I thought you was dead.”
“I heard that rumor, too, Garrett. It’s almost all horse puckey. You gonna make the big rally?”
“I’m still walking,” I said, knowing that was the answer Pappy wanted. “I got to roll, Tooms, catch up with my crew. Nice meeting you, Whisker.” I took a couple of steps and glommed onto a lamp post that already supported two addled lovers against the seductions of gravity. Why does my luck run this way? On the lam from my personal armageddon and I stumble right into a guy I haven’t seen in a decade and he recognizes me and throws my name out where anybody with an ear can catch it.
What next?
Aunt Boo was right. It’s always something.
Nothing dropped out of the night or poured out of an alleyway. I saw no sign that anybody but Pappy and his pals had any interest in me. I held a conference. My feet agreed to stay under the rest of me. We all got going. My head hurt bad. I cursed softly and steadily, a vision of my own bed the carrot that kept me moving.
And still nothing plopped out of the night or boiled forth from the sewers while I was still in a part of town where they have those.
27
I was bone-tired. I wasn’t smart, but I was lucky. It was a quiet night. Everybody with a taste for trouble had gone to the riots. My own brush with those, I learned later, was little more than a glance off the fringes of a minor skirmish far from the center of conflict, where matters grew serious. The push and shove and shouting escalated into massacres when real weapons came out. Nonhuman shops got plundered by the hundred. Refugees and squatters got tormented and beaten too often to number.
The scary thing was, the men responsible were out of control now but were all trained soldiers and combat veterans. If they reclaimed military discipline and organization, TunFaire could witness some real bloodshed.
I wondered what Relway and the secret police were doing to stem the tide. Maybe nothing. Serious bloodshed might serve Relway’s personal agenda.
Bad as I wanted to get home to my bed, I entered my neighborhood with care. The temptation to make myself invisible was almost overpowering. Instead, I took my mind back in time, again became the company wreck. “Wreck” was what the regular grunts called us recon types when we were stuck with an infantry outfit. Wrecks got lots of training in sneakery and the mental skills important to the recon mission. I retained the physical skills, but getting to that place in my mind where there was no uncertainty, no nervousness, no worry, no lack of self-discipline, eluded me. That was something you had to work on every day. I had been slacking for years. I felt all the things your master wreck is supposed to set aside.
But I was quiet. I was one with night and shadow, never mind that big moon up there. I was fluidity itself, illusion flowing over the faces of walls in silence of stone. I passed sober but sleeping ratmen and they stirred not a whisker as I ghosted through the alleyways they called home.
I jumped about nine feet high when a sudden weight plopped onto my shoulder, grabbed hold like the cold, clawed hand of something risen from the grave. Every damned time I start telling me how great I am doing.
I returned to earth without screaming, having realized that the clawed hand was two bird feet. Attached to those feet was the ugliest duckling that ever lived. This one couldn’t even swim or honk like a swan.
It said, “Do not approach the house yet. There are watchers. They must be diverted. Do not move at all until I give you the word.” The voice did belong to the Goddamn Parrot, but there was only one horrible possible source for its dialogue.
I froze, the sheer horror, the terrible implications, leaving me completely blind to the fact that my venture northward, which had cost me such pain coming back south, had n
ot broken the stakeout around my place. “No!” I whined, envisioning a future wherein there was no escape, no safe place. “Tell me it isn’t so.” He would be able to nag me anywhere.
“Awk! Garrett?”
“I understand and obey, O babbling feather duster.” He was doomed. He had to go. If he could be used to follow me around carping, his fate was sealed.
It was him or me or the nightmare. Him or me. Heh heh. Accidents happen, Morley. Terrible accidents. Every day.
“Garrett! Please respond.”
I was so involved in scoping out Mr. Big’s short future that I had forgotten to keep my eyes and ears open. But luck looked the other way. No evil happened. “I’m right here. Right under this stinking vulture.”
“Do not talk that way. The creature could have feelings, too. Hurry home. This diversion will not last long.”
“On my way, Old Bones.” I could sell him into slavery. Plenty of big-time wizards wouldn’t mind having a dead Loghyr on staff. Well, a tame one anyway. Maybe I could give him away. Anybody wanted him, they could just come by and haul him off. I was not going to endure having him looking over my shoulder and criticizing me all over town.
28
I sensed the Dead Man’s presence long before the house came in sight. He was wide awake and totally involved, which was a little disconcerting.
“Hurry!” the bird muttered. “Hurry!” Hurry! echoed inside my head.
I ran, still horrified by the possibility that there might be no escape from the Dead Man ever again.
My block of Macunado was filled with smoke. A few neighbors were out asking the night what the hell had happened. Seemed a waste if this was the Dead Man’s doing. Gods, even of No-Neck’s petty pewter stripe, were without doubt capable of seeing through smoke screens both physical and metaphorical. But I soon discovered that this smoke was full of specters flittering hither and yon, like the ghosts of childhood nightmares conjured for but an hour.
I scrambled up my front steps. My front door popped open just as a bumblebee hum grew in the darkness. I dived through. It popped shut behind me, hopefully before that banger-smoking runt caught a glimpse. For once Dean was on the job.
He was pale, frightened. I said, “Maybe you should have stayed another couple of days. You would’ve missed all this fun.”
He gulped and nodded, but said, “I will have your supper ready in a few minutes. Meantime, Himself insists on seeing you.”
Now didn’t that dovetail sweetly with my own master plan?
I let myself into Himself’s room, rehearsing some choice remarks. “We’re into some really deep shit, Old Bones, and it isn’t going to be good enough to just tread water.”
“I am aware of the peril...”
“Can it with the talking bird, will you? Let’s do it the way we always have. No! Wait. Stay awake...”
Sarcasm is inappropriate, Garrett. We will proceed as you wish.
“I figure you can see how my day went with one glance at the inside of my head. I hope yours was better.”
Indeed. I had a very instructional evening with your friend Linda Lee, once she gained the upper hand on her prejudices. That child has potential, Garrett. I approve.
Uh-oh. He never approves of any woman. “Don’t let her image fool you, either. She knows exactly what to do with all that potential.”
I fail to see any humor in your insinuation, Garrett. Linda Lee is that rarest of all mythical beings, a woman of reason and...
I burst out laughing. “I don’t believe it. She got to you.” I chuckled some more, telling me I would have to look out for my librarian. If she could turn the Dead Man’s head she was dangerous. “Of course you don’t see any humor. You don’t have a sense of humor. Come on. What’s the word on these gods? They the real thing? How do I get out from under?”
The Word is Trouble. In your vernacular, trouble in a big way. From the sheer scope of events around you we have to conclude that this is not an elaborate confidence game.
“No shit.”
He failed to catch my sarcasm this time. Or he ignored it, which he will do.
Not even a government would go to the expense and trouble of staging something this difficult to manage.
“You’re kidding. Imagine that. No government willing to fool me?”
Not in this pinpoint fashion. The expense anti-militates.
“Not to mention that I’m completely unimportant in the mortal scheme. A little nil.”
Not to mention that no one on this earth has to work that hard to fool you. Some long legs, a bit of jiggle, some flouncing long hair, perhaps red for extra effect...
Sigh. “Great, Chuckles. We’re really getting somewhere here, aren’t we? We are really getting diddled by gods?”
They believe they are gods. And almost certainly they are within the liberal definitions employed by your primitive ancestors.
“All right. Whatever, they’re bad. I’m a fly and I see the flyswatter coming. Do I get philosophical and suffer it? Or can I do something?”
There are several somethings available as options. Perhaps the most attractive is to lie low and do nothing at all while the situation runs its course. I would not be repelled by this option were it possible to sustain it. Your world and the Dream Quarter would be no poorer for the loss of these pantheons.
“The trouble is, they don’t plan to go quietly into that gentle night.”
Not at all. And since you have been given the opportunity to save them, any disaster is sure to come to roost here swiftly, whether or not they are able to discern your presence.
“They want a key, Chuckles. And I don’t have a clue where to look for one. Or what it would look like if I tripped over it. Did Linda Lee help us out there?”
With her invaluable aid — and I cannot overemphasize just how much the child impressed me — I reviewed the available literature both on these pantheons and on those mechanisms used to determine presence, place, and status in the Dream Quarter.
“Wonderful. Does all that wind mean you figured something out?”
Restrain yourself. You are not safe here, nor is time ours to squander.
I rolled my eyes and beat back the urge to head upstairs right now. I was more than ready to get intimate with my bed. “I’m not the one blowing like the wind.”
Based upon available information, supplemented by reason, I have concluded — albeit with a reluctance approaching despair — that you yourself are the anointed key. Additionally, it seems improbable that the interested parties have yet entertained that possibility.
“Say what?” I squeaked.
You are it, Garrett. They do not know yet. That has been your grand piece of luck to this point.
“No shit.” If he was right. He couldn’t be right. I didn’t want him to be right.
They would break my legs so I couldn’t run, then clap me in irons and toss me into a cage and rivet it shut, then surround that with magical spells.
I have no doubts whatsoever.
“Shit,” I said again. I was going through one of those vocabulary droughts that set in after a really bad shock. “Shit. It’s me? I’m the key? How the hell does anybody fit me into a lock?”
You have to begin from the fact that where religion is concerned, as is the case with magic, much of what you deal with is metaphor and symbol. In this instance metaphor and symbol have taken life.
That kind of babble usually sets me off. This time I was too tired and achy to squabble.
Dean brought a tray. I stared at a gigantic lamb chop, vegetables, cherry cobbler fit for the king and a mug of beer big enough to suit one of the divine thugs making my life miserable.
“Is there some metaphorical way to kick symbols in the ass so they leave you alone?”
Doubtful. They are gods — albeit as petty as they get. You are not. In all the histories of all the races of this world there have been only two methods proven efficacious in dealing with the gods. You must appease them or you must befuddle them.
r /> “There you go stating the obvious again. Let’s back it up some. What makes me the key? How and when did I get hung with it?”
I cannot offer an informed answer. I have a theory, but it is too tenuous and unsettling at this point.
“Bullshit.” My buddy, my pal, who don’t like getting caught being wrong so won’t say anything till he is certain he is going to be right. “I’m not buying any of this premature...”
Though time is indeed precious, your best option now is to rest. It should be possible to maintain the illusion of your absence for a time. Sleep. And, henceforth, please do not resort to any of the options offered by the cord given you by that Magodor creature.
“I done figured that one out for myself, Smiley.”
I suppose you have, at that. Sleep, Garrett.
My bed felt like a little slice of heaven, with whipped cream on top.
29
It was a night too short. Some thief of time ripped off the four best hours. Cruel wakeup arrived with a crueler sunup. Somehow, my curtains stood open. Sunbeams flailed around like whips in the hands of morons. I faced away, tried to den up like a groundhog under the covers, but there was no escape. There is no enemy so relentless as the sun.
I know I shut my door before I collapsed into bed. It stood open now, perhaps betraying the first feather-stroke of Dean’s vengeance campaign. My struggle against a return to the realm of the waking suffered savage reverses at the beak of the Goddamn Parrot, who was perched atop the open door and deft enough of wing to evade a flying shoe traveling at high speed.
This was the last straw. He was gone.
I was not likely to fail to remember who was operating him, either. The very bone-lazy bonehead who had helped so little with my recent cases, the deadbeat who would not wake up if you set a fire under his chair.
To hell with him. I packed my blanket tight around my ears.
Stubbornness gained me nothing. I stayed in bed, all right, but didn’t get any more sleep. I just lay there wishing. While the Goddamn Parrot preached sermons.