Dealer's Choice

The Outcast’s heroic features frowned in what — for a moment — looked like a small boy’s grimace of displeasure. And for just a split second, Wyungare thought, perhaps fear. “All right,” he said patiently, regardless of the flash of impatience he felt. “What?”

  The Outcast took a deep breath. “Peace is out,” he said. “So’s compromise. Sorry, healer-man.”

  “Why’s that?”

  The Outcast started to explain about the reports of the jumper massacre back across the river.

  “No,” said Wyungare. “that one I can figure out. Tell me why you’re sorry that the peaceful way seems impossible. Or was that mere politeness?”

  The Outcast looked startled. He appeared to concentrate, gathering his thoughts.

  Good, thought the Aborigine, finally an apparent brain activity.

  “Okay,” the Outcast said. “I was being a smartass. I guess I’ve never really thought that anything else except combat’s going to settle this.”

  The cries of the herons rose in intensity. Wyungare ignored them. “Perhaps you’re right. But battles can still be picked — or declined.”

  The Outcast shook his head. “I don’t think so — not anymore. Up until now, I figured we could hold our own. I was strong enough. Now… it’s like a do-or-die thing, you know? They’re gonna kill us all if they can.”

  Wyungare nodded. “It’s probably good that you’ve begun to register that harsh reality.” He smiled. “So tell me, what isn’t this like?”

  “Isn’t?” The Outcast thought about that one for a long while. Finally he said hesitantly, “It isn’t a game anymore.”

  “Good,” said Wyungare. “Extend that thought.”

  The Outcast stared down at the water’s edge. Ripples formed as though rain were beginning to sprinkle onto the bayou. “Okay,” he said. “I know what you’re getting at. Life isn’t a game where things come about because of a roll of the dice.”

  “You’ve got it,” said Wyungare. “What happens in your reality happens because you — and all around you — take hold of responsibilities. Virtue’s not going to work miracles. Luck’s just about as undependable. What you accomplish, you’ll achieve because you do it.”

  “You’re sounding like my uncle from Maine,” said the Outcast.

  “Sorry,” said Wyungare. “I don’t mean to sound like a sermonizing Yankee uncle.”

  “I liked him.”

  “Good,” said the Aborigine. “Then listen to his memory.”

  “Listen,” said the Outcast. “There’s something else.”

  Wyungare looked at him expectantly.

  “I know it’s no game. I’m sending my friends out to die, some of them. Maybe all of them. It’s not like a videotape where I can rewind it.” His voice was sad. “I don’t want to think about that.”

  Something whistled overhead like a banshee. Both men looked up. Blood burst across the sky in a spray of crimson droplets. As the dispersal sank in a rippling curtain toward the earth, the color muted to brown, then to a dirty black.

  “Is that what I think it is?” said Wyungare. He had a feeling he knew already.

  Something new burst. Bits of flesh, stinking of corruption, rained down. A third umbrella of light, then — excrement, brown and redolent, sank toward the swamp surrounding the two men.

  The Outcast nodded. “I guess so. I didn’t know what they would do.”

  “They can do much more,” said Wyungare. “But for now, ignore them.”

  “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

  “It always does.” Wyungare shaded his eyes, staring up at the proliferating air bursts of translated missiles. He shook his head.

  “I’m sorry,” said the Outcast. “I thought better they should come here than kill more of my people.” He hung his head.

  “All right,” said Wyungare, “then let me give you something to distract you.” He reached over and passed his right hand across the Outcast’s eyes.

  “I don’t think I’m going to like this,” said the Outcast glumly.

  They stood in the dimly lit tiled hallway of a hospital. All in white, two nurses and a doctor bustled past them without a glance. The medical personnel pushed hurriedly through a pair of swinging wooden doors.

  “What’s this?” said the Outcast. “I already know it’s a hospital.”

  “Specifically it’s Atelier Community Hospital.” said Wyungare. “We’re in Jack’s province of the dreamtime, remember. Follow me.” He led the Outcast toward the swinging doors.

  “Shouldn’t we stay out of there?” said the Outcast nervously.

  “It’s the emergency room,” said Wyungare, “but we are effectively ghosts. Come along.” They passed a boy sitting miserably on the bench outside the double doors.

  “It’s Jack,” said the Outcast.

  “Stay close to me,” said Wyungare. The wooden door felt hot against his fingertips, as though the pores of the wood itself were sweating.

  The young girl’s scream stopped the Outcast dead in his tracks. He halted just inside the emergency room’s doors and stared. Then he looked away. “What is this?” he said. “She’s so young.”

  “Eleven,” agreed Wyungare. “Not even a teen and she is bearing a child herself.”

  The girl lay with the sheet across her chest, one nurse holding her right hand tightly. Her sticklike legs were spread wide, and there was a dark tide of blood.

  “Who is she?” said the Outcast, looking back at the girl, then glancing quickly away.

  “Jack is her older brother, but not much older. Considering that their stepfather sired the child, I have no idea what that turns Jack’s relationship to her baby into.”

  More piping screams from the soon-to-be mother ripped through their ears. The Outcast looked back toward the table and shook,

  “Hemorrhage,” said Wyungare neutrally. “There are complications. She was beaten. This is a small hospital with a competent staff, but I’m afraid”

  The wail from the table was echoed by the cry from out in the hallway. The boy’s sorrow continued. His sister’s did not.

  “The baby is dead as well,” said Wyungare quietly. “Come.” He took the Outcast’s arm firmly and steered him toward the door. In the hail, they passed unnoticed by the boy. He looked suddenly as though he carried the weight of mountains on his back.

  “What… happened?” said the Outcast.

  “Before now? Simply the sort of family violence you know in your own fashion.”

  “And what’s going to happen next?”

  “Jack has no magic sword,” said Wyungare. “He will fight his demons inside himself. He will blame himself for the rest of his life, unless”

  The Outcast looked over at the Aborigine with sudden hope. “Unless what?”

  Wyungare stared back for a long moment. “Unless there is a gesture of healing.”

  “Like what?”

  “Empathy,” said Wyungare. “Like to like.”

  The Outcast stared, mute. The surface of his eyes glistened.

  “Think about it,” said the shaman.

  “Empathy … Think about it …” The echo of Wyungare’s voice drifted through Teddy’s thoughts, relentless.

  “I don’t want to think about it,” Bloat wailed. “I don’t want to remember any of it. Stop making me.”

  He suddenly realized that he was back in the throne room, that he was Bloat once more. It was difficult to keep his eyes open — a sapping weariness held him, made it nearly impossible to concentrate or move. Something was going on — jokers were scurrying across the mosaicked tiles of the floor like ants whose nest had been stirred with a stick. Kafka was directing traffic under the stained-glass central dome. The mindvoices of the Rox were yammering and shouting; Bloat was too exhausted to even try to sort them out.

  Kafka had stopped waving his arms to glance up at Bloat. Under the carapace, his eyes glistened. “Governor?”

  “I’m going back to sleep, Kafka,” Bloat said. “I don’t want to have to think
about it, okay? I need… need to find the Outcast…” Bloat’s eyes closed, but he kept mumbling, not quiet sure what he was saying. “Don’t want to go back with Wyungare again… need to find something pleasant… something of mine…”

  He realized that he wasn’t in the throne room anymore.

  He fell into memory…

  “I’ll… I’ll tell my dad,” Teddy said. “Really. He’ll do something about it.” Teddy didn’t know what his dad would really do. Actually, he couldn’t imagine his father doing anything, not really, especially not standing up to Uncle Alan, who looked like the brawny steelworker he was. Teddy’s father looked like, well, Teddy; soft, overweight, and not very brave.

  A slug.

  Teddy just wished he were back home. He wished he’d never come to stay overnight with his cousin.

  “No!” Rob half shrieked, half whispered in the warm darkness under the covers. His voice sounded like Jack’s. Teddy hoped desperately that his uncle and aunt didn’t hear them. “If you tell, then your dad’ll say somethin’ to mine, and he’ll just make it worse for me. So shut up, Teddy.”

  “Rob —” The image came back to Teddy, the quick frightful glimpse of Rob’s tear-streaked face crushed against the bed, of his uncle … I should have said something but you never say anything to grownups. They can do whatever they want. That’s why I just went back downstairs to the porch and waited until I saw Uncle Alan come downstairs buckling his pants. I didn’t mean to see it. I didn’t want to see it.

  “Just shut up, I said. There’s nothin’ you can do about it. Nothin’. Don’t your dad never hurt you?”

  “Yeah, I guess. He’s spanked me before.”

  “Well, what would your dad do if my dad told him to stop spankin’ you?”

  Teddy knew the answer to that. His dad would give that stupid, nervous half laugh and say “Sure” because he wouldn’t want to fight, but it wouldn’t change anything. “Nothing much.”

  “Yeah. Right.” Rob huddled in a fetal crouch under the covers, hugging himself. “So don’t you say nothin’, you hear? Never.”

  Teddy heard. And he never said nothin’, even though he somehow knew he should and even though the guilt gnawed at him and even though it was awfully hard to joke with Uncle Alan the way he used to. He stopped asking to see Rob. He never asked Rob to spend the night with him, not after that night. After a few years, when Uncle Alan and Aunt Eileen and Rob moved away, Teddy even believed he’d forgotten the entire incident. Damn Wyungare. Damn him for making me remember. Damn him for expecting me to do something.

  There was a continuous roar from the Jersey Gate. Things sounded pretty bad there.

  But still the bombardment was not as effective as it might have been. Patchwork’s prediction of shoot-and-scoot tactics had been correct: each battery fired no more than five shots per barrel before shifting position. And the fire hadn’t been terribly accurate — the fog and the radar spoofing had diminished accuracy considerably.

  Travnicek was on top of his tower, enjoying the show. Fog and spoofing didn’t seem to affect his perceptions much.

  Modular Man stood with Travnicek. Waiting for orders.

  The android’s radar detected more shells arcing toward the Rox, saw a discontinuity appear, a strange little gap in the world that gave off radio emissions rather than let them pass.

  So far Bloat hadn’t been so busy that his abilities were in danger of being swamped.

  So far…

  Pulse zipped overhead, burning a few shells that the Outcast missed. So far the job hadn’t required a dangerous amount of energy.

  So far…

  But despite all efforts a few shells got through. The ramparts shook; battlements crumbled; a few people died or bled.

  Still, no damage was critical. So far, despite the trickle of injured to the hospital tunnels, the Rox was perfectly secure.

  So far…

  Travnicek’s neck organs shifted, as if scenting a new breeze. “I think we’re being painted with a laser,” he said. “The fog’s diffusing it, but there’ll be missiles any second.”

  His neck organs gave a little twitch, and then Travnicek flung himself on the floor. Modular Man thought that was a good idea and imitated it.

  Hellfires shrieked overhead, slammed into battlements. The android could hear screams.

  “More coming,” said Travnicek.

  The air cracked as Pulse lasered through it. Missiles detonated in his wake. Several still hit the outer wall. A mortar bomb, unnoticed in the tension, dropped into the middle bailey and briefly turned the fog red.

  “More coming,” said Travnicek.

  The attackers turned out to be a flight of helicopters firing full loads of sixteen missiles each. One of the outer towers took a pair of missiles that punched through the stonework and sprayed white-hot superheated metal through the interior. Another three slammed harmlessly into the wall of the inner bailey, and one hit the Crystal Keep itself, turning one of the upper rooms into an inferno.

  Travnicek rose, walked toward the hole in the floor. “Chubs and Pulse are getting tired. Life gets dangerous from this point on.” He turned to Modular Man. “Go to the slug. Find out what he wants and do it.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  It was all he could say.

  Bloat was going to turn him into a shooter again.

  The tunnel was hotter. Sweat ran down Ray’s forehead and into his eyes, making them sting. There was a distinct smell of sulfur to the musty-tasting air. Where the hell, Ray wondered, was the tunnel taking them?

  He stopped in front of a huge open archway that looked like it’d been taken from some old church. It was backlit in dramatic fashion by a lurid, ruddy glow that cast flickering shadows on the leering gargoyles clinging to the niches within the archway’s elaborate fluting. Ray watched the carved stone figures for a long time before he was convinced that they were only carved stone figures, and even then moved quickly through the arch lest one of them suddenly pounce on him.

  Clinging to the shadows, Ray found himself at the edge of a large platform jutting over an abyss that went way, way down like a knife wound in the flesh of the earth. Running in the wound was a river of molten lava, red and shining and damn hot. All around the side of the canyon was a stone ledge. It wound off north and south into darkness. It looked rather narrow and crumbly.

  Running east, spanning the chasm, was a narrow stone bridge that arched high over the glowing river. There was a man standing in front of the bridge, wooden staff in hand. He was an old joker, with a seamed and wrinkled face and a wild mane of crazed white hair. He had two pairs of skinny, veined arms and he was wearing a T-shirt that proclaimed I SAW THE BIG BLOAT MOAT. Hanging over the T-shirt was a big, shiny gold medallion like the ones Wayne Newton wore in Vegas. Ray watched the old man closely. He didn’t move much, except to pick his nose and then wipe the booger on his tattered cloak. That convinced Ray that the geezer wasn’t one of Bloat’s apparitions. He was real.

  Ray withdrew to where the others were hidden in shadow.

  Battle looked at him impatiently. “He doesn’t appear to be much of a threat, but there’s no way to sneak up on him now that Black Shadow is gone and Ackroyd turned out to be an imposter.” He spared Nemo a bitter glance. “If he’s not a construct, then Bloat can detect us through his mind. It’s time for a diversion.” Battle turned to Danny. “Tell your sisters to go.”

  “Go,” Danny whispered urgently. Somewhere off in the fog, a church bell was tolling the hour.

  Tom pushed off with his mind. The shell lifted and slid silently out of the ferry slip where they’d lain concealed. Not that they needed much concealment. Not in this fog. The Staten Island Ferry could have been twenty feet in front of him, coming dead on. and Tom wouldn’t have had a clue.

  The Turtle moved out low and fast, like a stone skimming across the waves. A bare foot below him rolled the cold green waters of New York Bay. On his rear screens, Battery Park and the ferry terminal vanished in the fog. Then
his cameras showed nothing but the strange, cold, gray-green fog that had swallowed them… and Danny, stretched out on her stomach atop his shell.

  She was still pissed. “Go” was the first word she’d spoken to him since they left Ebbets Field an hour ago. Nothing Tom said got past her icy silence.

  Somewhere off in this too-dark morning, the rest of the assault force was moving in simultaneously. Back at Ebbets Field, Zappa or von Herzenhagen had given the order to the pregnant Danny, and her sisters had all whispered “Go.”

  Punk Danny had whispered it to Detroit Steel and the Reflector, in Liberty Park over in Jersey. Now they were charging the Jersey Gate, while a detachment of heavy armor provided supporting fire.

  Starlet Danny had whispered it to Mistral and Cyclone in the old fort on Governor’s Island, and watched their capes fill out like parachutes as they summoned the winds, and flew.

  Corporal Danny had whispered it to the elephant perched atop the Stock Exchange. And Radha had leapt off the roof, flapped huge gray ears, and began to climb, spiraling up above the fog, above Bloat’s Wall of fear.

  “Danny,” Tom said. The volume on his speakers was turned way down, but in the eerie silence of the fog the word rang.

  “Not now,” Danny said, her voice soft but urgent. She had traded her baseball cap for a helmet and infrared goggles that made her look like some strange species of insect. The Army had welded brackets on top of the shell. A net of canvas webbing strapped Danny in place, for safety during violent maneuvering. But just in case, she was wearing a parachute. Her hands were tight around the stock of her M-16.

  Tom sighed, turned. His screens were empty. There was nothing to see but Danny’s face. The wall of fog receded before them and closed in behind. It was like being in a small gray-green room. Without the water sliding by beneath them, even the sense of motion would be lost.

  The Rox was out here somewhere. Tom checked the compass, consulted a harbor map. He veered off toward the southwest. “Hurry,” Danny urged him. “Steel and Snot just hit the Jersey Gate. They’re under fire.”

  Tom pushed harder, driving silently into the fog.

  “Radha’s still climbing,” Danny whispered. The elephant made a slow, cumbersome flyer, and they had to reach two thousand feet, to come in over Bloat’s Wall of fear. “Mistral and Cyc are circling, whipping up the tornado. C’mon.”