"Mumbles!"
Ray heaved with all his strength. He felt ligaments strain and tendons pull. Something groaned - either him or the stone wall. Rock shifted scraping loudly across other rocks and then there came again the groaning sound and this time Ray knew it was the wall. He heaved again, spots of color dancing against the blackness of his closed eyes, and then it fell.
Stone blocks crashed down from above. One smashed his shoulder and bounced off, one hit him directly on his back as he leaned forward, off balance from the wall's sudden collapse. He breathed a lung-full of dust from the clouds swirling around him and he knew how Samson must have felt when he threw down the temple.
He laughed aloud.
Someone behind him said in a small voice, "Oh my gosh."
Several someones in front of him looked up from their meal, speechless. They were Sharks, all right. Ray could recognize their paramilitary outfits anywhere.
"Aaaaaaaahhhhh!" Ray said.
And charged into the room.
He didn't know how many Sharks there were. He didn't care.
He didn't know if the Fists followed him. He didn't care.
His eyes darted around the room, registering targets without realizing it, looking for one particular face. General MacArthur Johnson.
The room was a combined dining/bivouac area, sensible in the limited space within the Old City. The room's center was taken up by two long plank tables at which half a dozen Sharks were sitting, eating. Another half dozen were sitting or lying on their cots, cleaning weapons, reading magazines, or catching z's.
Ray roared into the room screaming like a demented soul, shirt torn, bleeding from where he'd been struck by the falling blocks, grey dust ghosting his hair like a spectre, mutilated face grinning like a half-skull.
He reached the first Shark, who was seated at the dining table with nothing more lethal than a chicken leg in his hand. Ray threw him an elbow, catching him in the mouth, crashing lips and smashing teeth, knocking him off the bench. Ray pivoted, took two running steps and scooped the second Shark off the cot where he sat cleaning his rifle. He slammed the Shark against the wall and pushed his grinning, scarred face against his.
"Where's Johnson?" Ray gritted through his fused lips, his eyes shining madly.
"Wha' - wha' you say, man?"
"Johnson!" Ray spat. He could feel the blood rush to his face. He could feel the veins pounding madly in his neck and forehead and he knew he was dancing dose to the edge. But he made no effort to pull himself back.
The Shark finally understood. He shook his head wildly. "I don't know."
Ray head-butted him and let his unconscious form flow down the wall and puddle back on the cot.
The Sharks were shaking off their astonished paralysis and were reaching for weapons. Out of the corner of his eyes he saw his Fist comrades peeking through the hole he'd shoved in the wall.
One of these mothers must know where Johnson was. It was only a question of finding the right one, but Ray's smile twisted into a grimace as he realized he wouldn't have time to question them all before they'd get to their weapons. All right. He could deal with that.
The third Shark was standing up from the table as Ray reached him. He clenched one of his damaged hands tighter and smashed it into the Shark's solar plexus. The Shark turned green, puked up his lunch, and collapsed. Ray hurdled him and landed on a Shark who was trying to scrabble away. Ray grabbed a fistful of hair, slammed the Shark's head on the table, and turned before his victim slipped unconscious to the floor.
A Shark was standing by his cot, pistol out and pointing at Ray. He fired twice as Ray closed the distance between them. The first bullet just missed, the second punched through the taut muscle above Ray's collar bone, and then Ray hit the Shark at full speed, picked him up and smashed him against the wall.
As the Shark slid limply down the wall Ray heard a voice shout, "No automatic weapons! You'll hit Mumbles!"
It was Owl's voice. The kid's got a brain, Ray thought, then he bent, picked up one of the cots, and swatted two Sharks who were rushing him. They went down in a tangle of limbs and Ray tossed the cot away and leaped on them.
One had a knife, a shiny, ugly thing that looked sharp enough to slice steel like chedaar cheese. Ray took it from him, like candy from a disoriented baby. Out of the corner of his eye he saw that at last the other Fists had entered the fray. He had time now.
He kneeled on one of the Sharks. The Shark thrashed about like a live insect on a pinning board, but Ray ignored him. He held the other down with one clubbed hand and dangled the knife in front of his face.
"Where's Johnson?" he asked.
The Shark surged against him, but couldn't break away. "I don't know," he spat sullenly, but there was something in his eyes that suggested to Ray that he was lying. A scene from one of Ray's favorite movies flashed into his mind and he inserted the tip of the knife in the man's left nostril.
"Say again?"
"I don't know!"
Ray flicked the knife and cut the Shark's nose open. He moved the tip of the knife to the other nostril.
"Care for a matched set?" he asked above the Shark's screeching.
"He's a got a place near the Seventh Station! By the Judgment Gate!"
Ray looked exasperatedly at the Shark he was kneeling on and brought the knife butt down, hard, on his forehead. He quit struggling.
"You shitting me?" he asked the other Shark.
The Shark shook his head wildly.
"If you are, I'll find you again and take the rest of your nose."
"I'm telling the truth!"
Ray nodded judiciously and clocked him on the side of the head with the knife butt.
He looked up again to find the room a shambles. The Fists were slightly outnumbered, but they had their weapons to hand which gave them an advantage over the surprised and disoriented Sharks. In the heat of battle some of the Fists had forgotten Owl's instructions and the rat-a-tat-a-tat of automatic weapon fire echoed loudly through the room.
That was sure to bring more Sharks on the run. Ray looked around. The Fists had done all right. Most of the Sharks were down. One or two had run away. The others were lying in bloody heaps. Owl, Ray saw, had a look on his face somewhere between revulsion and exultation, leaning more toward revulsion. Snailfoot was helping Tarek up. The rodent-like joker was bleeding profusely from the stomach. It didn't look good.
One of the other jokers started after the fleeing Sharks, but Ray stopped him with a barked command. "Let them go!"
The joker stopped, looked at Ray, then glanced at Snailfoot who was still trying to help Tarek stand.
"Are you in charge, Mumbles?" Snailfoot asked.
Ray shook his head. "Just good sense. We did what we came to do. Hurt them bad."
Snailfoot nodded slowly. "I see your point. Yes." He looked at the others. "All right, let's go."
They gathered together. No one was seriously hurt, except for Tarek. Owl looked proud and scared at the same time.
"Man," he said to Ray, "I never seen anyone move like that."
Ray shrugged it off. "We'll talk about it later. Let's go."
"Right," Snailfoot said. He gestured at the unconscious bodies Ray had left littered over the floor. "Finish them."
"They're unconscious," Ray said.
Snailfoot looked at him. "So?"
Two of the other Fists were supporting Tarek. Ray came face to face with the Fist leader. His chest was awash with blood from the bullet wound that was even now starting to knit. More blood had splashed on his face from the Shark's cut nose. He held the knife lightly in his hand and said mildly to Snailfoot, "I say leave them."
"So they can kill another time, my dear chum - "
"I'm not your fucking chum," Ray said. "They come against us again, we kill them anyway you want. For now, leave them."
"They can follow us through the tunnels - "
"They're strangers. This is your home territory. They'd be nuts to go after us. Besid
es, post hidden sentries and blast them to hell if you want. But for now, leave them."
Snailfoot looked at Ray coldly, then said in a dead voice, "Very well." He looked at the other Fists. "We leave them. This time."
Someone started to say something, but Owl broke in, "We have to get Tarek to a doctor, fast."
"Right-o," Snailfoot said, his usual jaunty self again. "Let's go. Ali and Nyugen take Tarek." He turned to Ray. "Mumbles, since it was your idea, you and Owl will serve as rear guard. If any Sharks show, I sincerely hope you'll be able to overcome your scruples and kill them."
Ray grinned. "Bet your ass on it, chum. If you have an ass."
♥ ♦ ♣ ♠
Coming into the Nur's encampment, even under a flag of truce, made Gregg's stomach churn with memories. The last time he'd met the Nur - seven years ago, now - Gregg had overreached himself. Prodded by the addictive need inside him, haunted by the personality that rode his soul, the visit had been a disaster only narrowly averted when he'd forced Kahina, the Nur's seeress-sister, into slitting the ace's throat.
Gregg himself had been shot in the chaos, an event that would destroy his political aspirations a year later. The Nur had become a watershed from which his life had careened downhill, losing him along the way his career, his mistress, his wife, his secrets, and - at last - his power.
The Nur's fault, all of it, the voice told him, tasting his thoughts.
Sand whipped around the Land Rover Needles drove. They'd followed the directions of the taciturn, djellaba-clad, and bearded man who was their guide - met as planned in Damascus - driving across the vast Syrian desert, skirting the mountains of Jabal Duriz and onto the arid plateau where only hawthorns and a few stubborn scrub brushes grew. The sky was a furnace overhead; jerry cans of gasoline gurgled in the back of the Rover, a white flag fluttered from the aerial.
As they bounced over the lip of a rocky hill, the wind was suddenly fragrant with camel musk. A crowd of particolored tents huddled around the stone walls of a small village spread out below them. Their guide stood up on the seat and waved to two guards that none of them had noticed, crouching behind boulders on either side of them. There was a long, chattering exchange in Arabic, then they were waved forward. Gregg could feel the apprehension rising like a cold ocean current from Hannah and Needles as they maneuvered downslope to where a crowd was suddenly gathering. "Gregg? I don't like this," Hannah said. "Look, over there by the building on the center square."
Gregg looked where she pointed, squinting. Blurrily, he could see a human form swinging from a gibbet high up on the side, a cloud of flies buzzing around it. The body was a joker's, the legs fused into a flipper-like tail - a cruel joke of the virus: a mermaid in the desert. Seeing the corpse displayed this way brought back memories to Gregg - the Nur had presented him with a similar display the last time they'd met. "Oh, man," Needles moaned. His hands twitched, and claws rattled.
"Don't react," Gregg told them. "That's what he wants. Needles?"
Needles was peering through the gathering darkness at the crowd watching their approach, and Gregg could sense a flash of recognition from the boy as he saw a veiled and robed woman with a bandage wrapped around one wrist. "Who's that?" Gregg asked.
"No one," Needles said quickly. Gregg could tell by the muddy orange of the words that Needles was lying. Gregg wondered at that, but there didn't seem to be any point in pushing it. Not here. Not now.
Their guide had leaped out of the Rover as they pulled into the clearing in the middle of the village, talking and gesticulating furiously with an elderly mullah. Finally, the guide waved at them. "This way," he grunted in his accented English. "The Nur will see you."
As they entered the building, flanked by guards with Uzis, Gregg realized it was a small but ornate mosque, the walls and floor inlaid with tile in intricate patterns of lapis lazuli and gold, lamps throwing long-legged shadows from the pillars. On the dais of the minbar, the pulpit, a giant sat in a wheelchair. With a shock, Gregg recognized the crippled giant: Sayyid, the Nur's general. The scene before him was - eerily - nearly a mirror of the one seven years before. The power squirmed like a maggot inside him. "Oh, no," Gregg whispered, involuntarily.
"Yes, I remember, too," said a voice, and a man in white robes strode out from behind a curtain on the dais.
Seven years had done little to touch the Nur. His raven hair was now shot through with gray and he'd added a paunch to his once-athletic body, but his skin still glowed emerald in the dusk, and the eyes were still coal-black and piercing in the handsome face. One thing only had changed - the Nur al-Allah's throat was crossed by an ugly, twisting scar that was a darkness on the lambent skin, the legacy of a knife wielded by Kahina, his sister, a knife that Gregg's will had guided. There was a faint smile on the Nur al-Allah's face as he approached the edge of the dais and looked down at the trio. Gregg was cold; a coldness deeper than the approaching night chill. His body trembled on me edge of overdrive; he wanted to run. The Nur stared at them: a joker with talons for hands, a blond nat woman uncomfortably dressed in chador, and Gregg: something only barely humanoid.
The Nur al-Allah threw back his head and laughed.
The sound was like a ringing of chimes, like a chorus. The amusement touched each of them. The guards around him chuckled with the Nur; Needles looked around sheepishly, a half smile pulling at his own lips, and Hannah smiled uncertainly, caught in the Nur's magic laugh. It caught Gregg, too, a need to please this charismatic man, to share his laughter. Down below, where the old strings were attached, a voice railed, cursing.
"Marhala," the Nur said: Greetings. "So this is what has become of the great Gregg Hartmann. In sha' Allah, after all, and I see that He has given you a body to match your mind. You are cursed of Allah, infidel; He has finally made it visible."
The Nur's voice: Gregg remembered that glorious instrument, that cello of a voice which rang and reverberated, gleaming with power as vivid as that of the ace's glowing skin. Kahina's knife had shaved some of the power, had carved the purity from the tones and left the instrument scratchy and uneven. Still, Gregg could feel the power behind it - damaged the voice might be, but not powerless. Not at all. Hannah's smile had wavered and disappeared with the words. When she spoke, her voice sounded weak and puny alongside that of the Nur. "Neither Gregg nor Needles is 'cursed of Allah,'" she told the Nur. "They are just victims of a virus, as are you."
The Nur smiled at her and spread his hands wide. He gleamed in the lamplit dimness of the mosque, like a luminescent emerald. His eyes gleamed, depthless. "Do I seem a victim?" he asked, and the voice dripped reasonableness, it begged agreement. "Young woman, I sense your faith, and Allah has protected you for it. The two of us might call our God by different names, but He is the same. You pray to God because you believe that His will can accomplish anything. I agree; Allah is supreme; and knowing that, you must also know that there are no 'victims.' Not the slightest grain of sand stirs without Allah's knowledge and consent, and even the desert wind is Allah's tool. This sickness of yours is no different - it is but another weapon in Allah's hands. Those who are worthy, Allah rewards, those who are not ..." The Nur stopped, and his gesture took in Gregg and Needles. Needles hung his head under the influence of the Nur's admonishment; Gregg lowered himself to all sixes.
"You once dangled people from the spiderweb fingers in your mind, Gregg Hartmann," the Nur continued. "My sister was one of them. Tell me, Gregg Hartmann - is my Kahina still alive?"
The Nur stared at him, as did Sayyid. Kahina: the Nur's prophetess sister, and Sayyid's wife. I let Mackie Messer slice open her living body in front of Chrysalis and Digger Downs, and I gorged myself on her dying agony ... "No," Gregg answered, because he found that he could not lie into the Nur's gaze. "She's not."
The Nur nodded; Sayyid seemed to sink heavier into the seat of the wheelchair. "I knew she was gone," the Nur said. "Allah told me, and I have already mourned her loss and forgiven what she did to me. If only her faith had been s
tronger ..." The sadness in the prophet's voice throbbed. Gregg could see tears in Hannah's eyes, a reflection of the Nur's pain, and Gregg found himself wanting to confess, to shout out his guilt and cast himself down before the Nur and await his judgement. I'm sorry. It wasn't me, not really. It was Puppetman, and I've rid myself of him. I control the power now. I'm using it for the right things finally ...
But the Nur shook away the memories of Kahina. "And now Gregg Hartmann is only a messenger boy for the dog-faced jackal howling in the Holy City." His voice was a lash, and they all cowered before it. "That is the only reason why your presence is tolerated - because you are not even worth our contempt. Give me the Dog's message, and I'll give you the reply of the Prophet."
Gregg struggled against the voice. Hannah's face was flushed under the black cowl of her clothing, as if the words she wanted to speak were trapped; Needles stared at the glowing Nur with his mouth open, his claws dangling at his side. The strings are still there, the ones you set long ago, the voice whispered.
But he knows! Gregg wailed. He felt it when we touched him, all those years ago. He felt it and he laughed. Remember?
The strings ...
The Nur waited, seemingly patient. Sayyid stirred in his wheelchair, and even without the link, Gregg could sense the eternal pain of the giant, his body crumpled under the anvil of Hiram Worchesters ace. Sayyid's mind was wrapped in the fog of the pain, the brilliant tactical instrument blunted by its internal torment. "Nur al-Allah," Sayyid said, though his eyes were on Gregg. "We waste time with the abominations. Destroy them as they deserve. There is no dealing with fanatics like the Twisted Fists."
The Nur raised his hand. "I know I allowed them to come here against your wishes, my brother," he said, his voice soothing honey. "Let us hear them. Even Mohamet listened to the petitions of his enemies." The Nur turned back to them. "Say what you have come to say."
Gregg glanced at Hannah; she seemed in a trance, lost in the Nur's influence, her defiance exhausted with her first protest. Needles stared at the floor, not even able to lift his head. "We know about Pan Rudo," Gregg said, his voice sounding weaker and thinner than ever against the rich texture of the Nur's words. "We know about the Black Trump."