Black Trump

  Someone knocked sharply on her office door and she looked up.

  "Come in."

  "Hello, lover."

  The blood washed out of her face like it'd been sucked away by a vacuum cleaner. She opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out as Ray sauntered into her office and perched jauntily on the edge of her desk. "Surprised to see me?"

  "I - I - I - "

  "I bet you are." He grinned his usual boyish grin. His normal face was back, looking, in fact, even better than when she'd first met him. He held himself a little stiffly, as if he still hurt somewhere, but then, as long as she'd known him, Billy Ray had hurt somewhere.

  "How - "

  Ray held up his hand, shaking his head. "We don't have much time and I've got some stuff I have to say." He sighed. "You are beautiful, you know, and I love you. I do. It's too bad you're such a murderous bitch."

  Harvest didn't know what was more stunning, Ray's sudden appearance or his incredible confession. "Billy, I - "

  "Stow it," Ray said. "I can forgive you for trying to kill me. What the hell, I'll bet a lot of people would like to have the guts to try it themselves. Maybe I can even forgive you for being a Shark and doing what you did to all those innocent people. I don't know. But my forgiveness is sort of beside the point. There's a lot of people you have to answer to, April. And you're going to."

  She stood up. "What do you mean, Billy?"

  "I stopped by Nephi's office before coming here. He was really surprised to see me, seeing as how you'd said I'd been killed at Rudo's lab and all. But he caught on quick when I told him the real story. He should be here any second to arrest you. I asked him for a minute or two with you so we could talk over some things."

  Harvest's mind was in a whirl. She collapsed again in her desk chair. "If you love me - "

  "What? I'd let you walk?" Ray shook his head. "I may not be very bright, but I'm not a chump. Not your chump, not anyone's."

  They locked eyes for what seemed like a long time. Ray had left the door to her office open and both heard hurried footsteps coming down the hall.

  "There's a gun in the desk drawer," Ray said. "You could go for it."

  Harvest smiled. It was a cold, brittle smile that almost cracked but didn't. "As it turns out," she said, "you're too fast for me."

  "Yeah. I guess I am."

  Nephi Callendar stood at the door. He announced in a florid, dramatic voice, "Agent Harvest, I'm here to arrest you for murder, attempted murder, assault, conspiracy to commit murder - "

  "She knows, Nehi," Ray said, without taking his eyes off her.

  She stood. "I know," she said and held her hands up, wrists exposed and ready for the cuffs Ray had taken out of his pocket.

  ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

  He walked along the beach with the sunset sea breeze ruffling his tawny hair. He looked like any other surfer dude in Southern California, with his bare, muscular golden-tanned chest and faded dungarees, except perhaps for the combat boots crunching the wet sand.

  He was Radical, and he was a free man. There were still federal warrants outstanding for Mark Meadows and his known aliases, which was to say, his "friends." But while the authorities might well have had certain questions as to why and how the notorious revolutionary ace, Radical had suddenly turned up, a quarter century after his sole known appearance at People's Park and looking not a day older, they had no grounds for asking them. Nor had they any way of linking him to the furtive Mark, not any inkling of such a connection.

  So Radical could walk the SoCal beach as he pleased, without looking over his shoulder for the Feds. However interested in him they might have been, the authorities had to tread warily. Because, after all, he had saved the world.

  He laughed aloud, startling some seagulls standing shin-deep in surf into complaining flight. "This old world is gonna see some changes made," he promised the birds, glowing pale orange in the sunset.

  Approaching through the mauve gloom he saw two tail figures, one slim and female, one male and almost gaunt, with a brush of hair white as the gulls' wings. As they grew closer it was apparent that the man held himself rigidly upright against years whose weight was evident in the way he walked.

  They stopped, facing each other a few feet apart: Radical on one side, Mark's father and daughter on the other. Sprout clung to her grandfather, who wore shorts and a Hawaiian shirt that would have been colorful in daylight. It seemed inappropriate to the military spareness of his frame. He was like some antique weapon, a Government Colt pistol or Mustang fighter, worn but still functional, possessed of nothing nonessential.

  "Where's Mark?" General Meadows asked. His voice grated. Throat cancer, recently diagnosed, would likely kill him in a few months, though he was scheduled for surgery.

  Looking into the old man's eyes, blue as the sky where he had spent his adult life, Radical touched fingertips to his sternum. "In here," he said.

  The old man shook his head. "I don't understand any of this," he said. "Mark never talked to me about any of this ace business. I saw on the news that he could turn into other people, somehow. But I still don't understand." He looked down at the sand, looked up again. "The others went away in an hour," he said, more huskily than before. "Why are you still here instead of my son?"

  Because I was the one who was always meant to be, I am strongest. I am Destiny. But somehow he could not say these things to this proud, erect, doomed old man.

  "I don't know," he said, and that was truth too. "I don't know how to get Mark back. For now - " He spread his hands, "I'm the one who's here."

  He turned to the girl, who had her arms around the old general and looked at Radical with huge eyes.

  "Sprout," he said, holding out his arms, "Come give me a hug, honey."

  She detached herself from her grandfather reluctantly, so that contact between them was broken like something physical, a twig or the surface of a bubble. She stared at Radical with huge uncertain eyes. The lights of a distant pier reflected in them in strange constellations.

  "You're one of Daddy's friends?" she asked in a hesitant, little girl voice. Without waiting she flew to him, threw her arms around his neck, hugged him fiercely.

  He took her in arms twice as strong as the strongest man's. "I'm your Daddy," he said, stroking her hair.

  She burst into tears.

  ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

  On a cool, pleasant autumn day, the site of the mass grave that held the victims of the Black Trump was a pleasant place, high and quiet. Vineyards and bright green fields marched down the valleys. In the distance, the quiet purple hills of the Holy Land looked serene and peaceful.

  Jan clung to Needles' hand. Jan was quieter these days, and she'd always been a sort of quiet kid. She wasn't always in tears anymore; she hadn't cried for almost a week.

  It was mean of Zoe to bring her here, Needles thought, but he hadn't tried to argue with Zoe about it, and Jan had wanted to come.

  Zoe hadn't said a single word for weeks after the UN had brought the Overtrump into the Quarter. Then she'd pulled a chair up to her workstation in the tiny apartment and asked Jan how school was going, just like nothing had happened. Zoe stayed in the net most of the time, the light from the computer screen reflecting on her thin face in the dark hours of the night, a haunted, driven woman researching some project she wouldn't talk about.

  Personally, Needles figured she was seriously tweaked in the head. Seriously gone.

  Zoe walked around the perimeter of the square of raw earth, her attention on the plantings of rose of Sharon. Jan brought out the jug she'd carried and watered one of the shrubs - it was a new tradition in Jerusalem, to carry water here and tend the flowers.

  Jan got up, brushed dust from the knees of her skirt, and walked to a trench cut deep and square in the dry yellow rock of the hills.

  "Next week they'll set up the marble helix," Jan said.

  Zoe had finished her lonely tour. Dressed in black, as she always was now, she came up to the pit in the earth and stared
into it.

  "It won't be like the Vietnam memorial. The names won't be carved in it. Anne Harris. Balthazar Delacourt. James Kilburn, James Russo. The thousand others, bits of bone that came out of the crematoriums after they burned the infected bodies, skulls that no one could identify. Nobody will remember them. Nobody cares. It's last week's news."

  Jimmy and Jimmy were Owl and Angelfish, Needles thought, no matter what Zoe calls them now, and I care. I'll always care.

  We'll never know exactly how they died - most of them.

  I remember too much, Zoe. I remember running for home when Hannah and Hartmann sent me away, and how it felt when there was nobody there. I looked for you, for Anne, for Angel.

  I saw Balthazar die. People boiled out of that rickety stalled truck. The UN started yelling through a loudspeaker when we tried to rush the gates, and Balthazar heard what they said, that there was a cure. Some joker shot him because they thought he was trying to keep us inside to die.

  Angel didn't die of Trump. Angel bled to death. The medics got us to line up and sniff Overtrump, but Anne was coughing by then. Owl - the Trump killed him.

  "There's a lot to be learned from last week's news. From history. I have names, places, actions that people recorded on film, in writing. Addresses."

  Zoe stood at the edge of the empty pit, her fists clenched so tight at her sides that her arms shook.

  "Jack Braun. Thomas Tudbury. Nephi Callendar. A lot of names. The ones who weren't here. The ones who didn't help us, and some of the ones who thought they knew what was best for us."

  "Like Tachyon?" Jan asked.

  "Tachyon!" Zoe spit the word. "He's in a category all of his own!"

  "What do you plan to do?" Needles asked.

  "Kill them."

  Zoe turned her back on the memorial and started downhill toward Jerusalem, her long black skirts lashing at her ankles.

  ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

  "Why did they give you the key to the city?" Jerry Strauss complained as the hostess led them to the big booth in back where Peter Pann was waiting. "I did just as much as you."

  "They gave the key to the city to the agency," Jay said. "I just accepted it, that's all. What are you complaining about? You got to meet John Woo, didn't you?" He slid into the booth.

  Peter looked up from the menu. "Look at these fucking prices. This better be a business lunch." A tink was buzzing around his head, as usual. He swatted at it with the menu, missed, swore.

  Jay sighed. "It's great to be home."

  Bradley Finn looked over the seating and sighed. "They don't design restaurant booths to accomodate people like me."

  "So stand in the aisle the way you usually do," Jay said. "It always makes the waiters so happy." He opened his menu. His face was still mostly black and green and purple, and the bandages made him look like the Mummy's abused child, but he was bound and determined to get some solid food. He'd been living on fruit juice and painkillers all the way from China.

  Jerry was still grousing. "I was the one who took out Eric Fleming. That should have been worth the key to the city. And Sascha and I found Mark Meadows before you did. I was the one who rescued Sprout."

  "You were the one who got caught and wound up with your tits in a wringer," Jay reminded him. "Actually, they were Sprout's tits, but never mind."

  The menu was black and glossy and speckled with stars, like the ceiling overhead. Starfields, it said, and under that, food that's out of this world. Jay looked down at the lunch selections, and wondered why he bothered. He couldn't pronounce the Takisian words and he knew the cuisine by heart. He'd been forced to sample every dish when Hastet was fine-tuning her menu.

  Finn was looking over the selections curiously. "What do you recommend? I've never had Takisian food before."

  "Better get used to it," Jay said.

  "Pardon?" Finn said with a puzzled look.

  Jerry leaned over and pointed out some items. "Here, these are all very good. Little pastries full of spiced meats and nuts and these crunchy little sprouts, very delicate."

  Peter said, "You missed it, Finn. On Thursday they serve bales of hay in this divine hot oat sauce." He took out a long black cigar, lit up, grinned.

  Finn lowered his menu. "This is the smokefree section. And I warned you about the horse jokes, Pan."

  "Pahn," Peter said. "It's Dutch." He blew a smoke ring across the table at Finn, and smiled.

  Finn raised his hands slowly and began to clap.

  Peter sat up, frowning. "Cut that out," he said. A second tink winked into existence and began to flit around his head. Finn kept on clapping. "I mean it," Peter said. A third tink appeared, then a fourth. "You mangy son of a fucking mare," Peter swore, "here, fuck you, you win, Seabiscuit." He ground out his cigar, but Finn just clapped faster, smiling.

  "Oh, applause, applause, did someone do something wonderful?" their waiter asked as he came over to the table. He was a tall, slender young man with a gorgeous tumble of blond hair spilling out from beneath his plumed white cavalier's hat.

  "Clap if you want a big tip," Finn told him.

  The waiter began to applaud enthusiastically, chanting, "Oh, I do believe in fairies, I do, I do."

  "Stop it, you shits," Peter yelled, swatting at tinks with his menu. He bopped Jerry on the head.

  Finn looked around at the lunch crowd. "Clap if you want a free meal," he shouted out. The whole restaurant burst into thunderous applause. In seconds there were so many tinks buzzing around that Jay could hardly see Peter's face. "I'll get you for this," Peter promised Finn as he leapt out of his seat, "you're Alpo, I swear." He fled the restaurant at a dead run, cursing a blue streak, a cloud of tinks trailing after him.

  "Well, wasn't that refreshing," the waiter said when the clapping had died down. He wore purple pantaloons, a gold lame waistcoat over a red silk shirt, a long white scarf, and matching boots in a suede soft as butter. All the waiters at Starfields dressed like Dr. Tachyon. It was part of the Takisian ambiance.

  "Very refreshing," Jay agreed. He nodded over at Finn. "All the free meals go on his tab."

  "It was worth it," Finn said.

  "I'm Rex, and I'll be your waiter today," the waiter said.

  "Real good," Jay returned. "I'm Jay and this is Bradley and this other guy is nobody. We'll be your customers."

  "What happened to your face?" Rex asked cheerfully.

  "If you were really a psi lord, you'd know," Jay pointed out. "I'll have a patty melt. Double onions."

  Rex looked hurt. "Oooh, I'm afraid we don't have a patty melt, Jay," he said, with sincere distress.

  "You're new here, aren't you?" Jay said. "Tell Hastet to fry the onions until they turn black and scream for mercy."

  "I'll have the Ilkazam pie," Jerry said. "No anchovies."

  Finn pointed at something on the menu. "This."

  Rex collected their drink orders and left. "It doesn't feel right, sitting here ordering lunch when so many people are dead," Finn said after he had gone.

  "We saved the world," Jay said. "We deserve lunch. Some day I'm going to die, and millions of people are going to eat patty melts anyway. I'm just returning the favor. In advance."

  "Be serious for once," Finn said. "How are we going to get Clara and all the others out of prison?"

  "I've got three cunning plans, depending on what powers we want to use," Jay said. He ticked them off. "One, we stage a raid on Governor's Island and I pop everybody out."

  "You tried that," Finn protested.

  "I knew it seemed familiar," Jay agreed. "Two, Jerry here turns into Clara and takes her place."

  Finn looked puzzled. "What about Dutton and Father Squid and the rest? And your agent, what's her name, Topper? And if Jerry takes Clara's place, how do we get him out?"

  "Hey, did I say these plans were perfect?" Jay shrugged. "Three, we fly to Washington, take that White House tour, and Jerry turns into President Barnett and pardons everybody."

  To Jay's horror, Jerry rubbed his chin thoughtfull
y. "Barnett," he mused. "Well, I ..."

  Jay cut him off quickly. "Or we could use lawyers. The arrests were illegal, and Dutton is even richer than you are. So we hire Alan Dershowitz or Dr. Praetorius and turn them loose." Jay toyed with his fork, tapping it gently against his water glass. The crystal rang softly. "No one committed any crimes except Topper, and she's cute, and we did save the world. The feds will deal."

  "What if they don't?" Jerry wanted to know.

  "Then we bake Melissa a cake with a top hat inside."

  The unmistakable scent of burnt onions filled the air. Hastet dropped a patty melt on the table in front of him. "Here, I hope we kept it under the flamethrower long enough."

  "My little wanei," Jay said, chucking her under the chin.

  "Do I know you?" She smiled for Jerry and Finn. "Gentles, your meals will be served momentarily. Real food requires more than scorching." Even in her soiled whites, with her soft, brown hair pinned up under a chefs hat, Hastet looked really good to him.

  So did the patty melt. Jay took a big bite, licked grease off his fingers, and nodded. "Not bad." He made the introductions while he chewed. "Dr. Finn, my wife, Hastet benasari Julali Ackroyd, the best Takisian cook on Earth. Honey, this is Bradley Finn, from the Jokertown Clinic. He used to work with Dr. Tachyon."

  "I'll try not to hold that against him," Hastet said, looking Finn over carefully. "Are you always that splotchy green color, or are you sick?" She turned on Jay before the startled centaur could reply. "I thought you were dead."

  "Us?" Jay said. "No way. We're trained professional detectives. We hardly ever die. You got a bottle of ketchup?"

  "You're very close to death right at this moment," Hastet warned him. "Your hunchback was here last week. He sprayed half my customers and the food critic from Manhattan magazine. Would you care to explain that?"

  "Not especially," Jay admitted. "Jerry, how about you?"

  Jerry Strauss cleared his throat. "Well, ah, actually," he began. Then something that looked like a ferret in drag popped up from behind Hastet's shoulder and hissed at him, all feathers and fangs. Jerry jumped a foot. "Get it away!" he screeched. The only thing that unnerved Jay's junior partner more than Jay's Takisian wife was Jay's Takisian wife's pet.