Dealer's Choice

  Danny’s shoulder had been cleaned and bandaged. “LEGION,” Tom said in a flat, stiff voice.

  She ignored the ice in his tone. “I’m going to live,” she announced cheerfully. “Lucky it wasn’t my pitching arm.”

  Tom spoke to Finn. “WHAT ABOUT RADHA?”

  The centaur fiddled with his stethoscope. “She’s resting comfortably,” he said. “We’ve sent to the zoo for a specialist. She’ll have to stay an elephant for a while. Those wounds would be mortal in a human.” The joker doctor shuffled his hooves. “Our nutritionist is having kittens. Know anyplace we can get a deal on hay?”

  Tom had no answer for him. The silence hung in the air.

  “My, ah, sister’s okay,” Danny said. “The winds pushed me clear of the Wall, thank God. Another me went out with the Coast Guard cutter, so they had no trouble picking me up, even in the fog. I’m back on Governor’s Island now.”

  “GOOD FOR YOU,” Tom told her.

  “Speaking of which,” said Finn, “we’ve had a visit from your army friends. A major. He’s upset that you folks came here. It seems they have a military hospital set up on Governor’s Island. All the wounded were supposed to be taken there. He wants to transfer Miss O’Reilly.”

  That was gasoline on Tom’s smoldering fires. “TELL THE MAJOR TO FUCK OFF,” he suggested. He wasn’t about to trust a bunch of army doctors when the Jokertown Clinic had been dealing with the unique medical problems of aces and jokers for decades.

  “I did,” Finn said. “More politely, of course.”

  Danny cleared her throat. “Von Herzenhagen phoned. He wants us back at Ebbets A.S.A.P.”

  Tom zoomed in on her face. She was so pretty. And right now he just wanted to grab her and shake her. “COVERT TEAM NEED ANOTHER DIVERSION? TELL HIM I DECLINE. ONE SUICIDE MISSION PER DAY, THAT’S MY LIMIT.”

  This time the anger in his voice was unmistakable. Danny chewed on her lower lip thoughtfully, then turned to Finn. “Dr. Finn, would you mind? Turtle and I need to talk.”

  Finn didn’t mind; there were always patients to attend to. After he had trotted back inside, Danny turned and looked straight into a camera. “What’s going on?” she asked.

  Tom lowered the volume on his speakers, then found he had nothing to say to her.

  “I don’t deserve this,” Danny said. “Friends don’t”

  Tom interrupted. “Friends don’t lie to each other. You knew about this covert team bullshit all along.” She didn’t deny it. “I’m the link. I had to know. One of me is with them. They’re down in the catacombs right now. Black Shadow’s been hurt, and Popinjay really isn’t”

  Tom didn’t give a fuck about any of that. “You knew, we were only a diversion, and you didn’t say a fucking word.”

  This time Danny flared right back at him. “I had orders! I’m in the goddamn army; one of me is anyway; they can shoot you if you disobey a direct order.”

  “I’m glad you’re a good little soldier,” Tom said. “But do me a favor, don’t talk to me about friendship.”

  “What the hell would you have done?”

  “I would have told my friends the truth,” Tom snapped back. “You think we would have played it the same way if we had known we were just a fucking diversion?”

  “If you would have known, Bloat would have known the minute you passed the Wall,” Danny argued. “That would have compromised the whole —”

  “Compromised?” Tom said. “You even talk like them. Well, fine. You kept your little secret, and we all went in there like it meant something. Nothing got compromised but our lives. Cyclone probably died thinking he was doing something real.”

  “He was. And he knew the job was dangerous when he took it. We all did.”

  “I killed God knows how many people at the gate,” Tom said flatly. “For nothing. For a diversion. And you let me.”

  Her face filled his big screen. She was so pretty; it broke his heart. Tom could see tears in her eyes as she struggled for words. “I don’t… I didn’t mean…”

  He snapped shut his shoulder harness, pushed off. The shell drifted clear of the roof. Danny looked up at him, stricken. “Turtle… don’t… where are you going?”

  His shadow darkened her features, turned her eyes into deep black pools. Her ponytail was moving in the wind. He tried to answer, and the words caught in his throat. He pushed himself away from her with an effort, out over the street, across the rooftops of Jokertown. But long after the clinic was out of sight, he could feel the weight of her eyes.

  “These MREs really suck,” Danny said, sticking a fork disgustedly in a congealed mass of chicken a la king.

  “I know.” Ray said. He shucked off his backpack and rummaged in it for a moment, finally coming up with a foil-wrapped package. “That’s why I usually carry my own rations. Try one of these.”

  He handed it to Danny, who unwrapped it, sniffed, and smiled. “Pastrami on rye,” she said. “I shouldn’t. It’s not exactly on my diet.”

  “You don’t look like you have to worry much about your diet.”

  “Of course I do.” She flexed a bicep. The muscles stood out like clearly defined metal cable wrapped in their veins and arteries. “The Ms. Tri-State contest is in two weeks. I’ve got to keep up the definition.”

  “You’re plenty defined,” Ray said with as much gallantry as he could muster. “Besides, you can worry about that in two weeks. For now you have to eat to keep your strength up.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” Danny said.

  “I have some health food too.” Ray took an apple out of his pack, cut it in half with a nasty-looking dagger he took from an ankle sheath, and handed a piece to Danny.

  “Thanks,” she said, and the ground suddenly shook like a giant had rolled over in his sleep.

  “Earthquake!” Ray shouted, doing a little dance to keep his balance as the floor shifted under him.

  Battle, leaning against a stalagmite a few feet away, slipped, fell, and rolled around like a man with pants full of ants.

  “Its not a quake,” Danny said. She managed to brace herself in the angle between the chamber’s wall and floor. “They’re shelling Ellis from the battleship New Jersey. Brace yourselves! Here comes another shell!”

  Battle wiped blood off his face and felt his nose gingerly where it’d been smashed against the floor. “Finish your rations and let’s get going. We can’t lollygag all day. We have a mission to accomplish. Corporal Shepherd can let us know when another shell is approaching so we can brace ourselves in time.”

  Ray sketched an ironic salute and helped Shepherd to her feet. “You have another sister on the New Jersey?”

  She nodded.

  “How many of you are there?”

  “Seven,” she said.

  Seven, Ray thought. The mind boggles.

  “Hold on,” Danny warned.

  Okay, Ray thought, and grabbed her around the waist and anchored himself to a nearby stalagmite. She didn’t seem to mind.

  Wyungare was brought abruptly back to the Tya world, the earth, by the sound of agitated voices. He entered the consciousness of being confined in the rude stone cell with a recognition of the harsh, familiar voice of Kafka.

  The jailer smashed his key-ring against the bars of the woman’s cell a few meters away. “Hey!” he said. “No pets, lady. House policy.” He looked closer into the shadows. “Okay, kitty, we wondered where you disappeared to.” He selected a key and started to insert it in the lock. “Time to hit that big sandbox in the sky.”

  The black cat hissed like a steam boiler hitting critical and swiped out with his right forepaw. The curved, needle-sharp claws flashed. Plated hide or not, Kafka jerked back. “All right,” he said. “Chill out. You like it here? Fine. I’ve got better things to do than argue.”

  With his other hand, he held a chain looped through two prisoners’ manacles. The new arrivals were two men. Kafka pulled them along toward the cells beyond Wyungare’s own place of confinement. The bigger prisoner
moved slowly. Bruises were evident on his brawny arms. The other man was bound hand and foot, carried along by two jokers.

  “Welcome,” the Aborigine said to them. “The name is Wyungare.”

  All three in the hall stared back at him. “Mike,” said the big prisoner, aiming a thumb at his own chest. He grinned a little crookedly. He ran the fingers of his free hand through his close-cropped blond hair. “You maybe heard of me as Detroit Steel. Right now I feel a little underdressed.”

  Wyungare smiled back. The other prisoner, another European but built shorter and more compactly, nodded slightly. “This here’s good old Snotman,” said Kafka.

  The brown-haired man’s teeth drew back in a snarl. “It’s Reflector,” he said. “Goddam it, Orkin-bait, you can at least call me by my right name.”

  “Your right name’s for shit, dipstick,” said Kafka. He swung open a cell door. The tarnished steel shrieked. He keyed Detroit Steel’s cuffs and motioned the big man inside. Kafka put Reflector in the adjacent cell.

  The brown-haired man abruptly smacked his head hard against one of the doorframe posts. Again. A third time.

  Kafka shook his head in disgust. “Don’t bother,” he said to the man called Reflector. “Your skull’ll give out long before you’re recharged.’

  “Enough.” said Kafka. “I gotta get back up topside. All of you just thank your lucky stars you’re not outside in the line of fire. This is maybe the safest place on the Rox.”

  “Swell,” said Detroit Steel. “we’ll try and be properly grateful for the hospitality.”

  The woman prisoner began to weep, keeping her sobs low and strangled in her throat.

  “What’s with her?” asked Snotman.

  “Problems with her old man,” said Kafka. The woman’s weeping escalated to a virtual wail. Wyungare looked from her to Kafka and then back to the woman. “Don’t you recognize Mistral,” said the jailer. “I admit, she’s had a real bad day.”

  “Haven’t we all?” said Wyungare.

  Kafka shrugged, smiled after his fashion, and left. At the door at the end of the hall, he turned and called back, “No fraternizing, you four. This ain’t no day camp.” He left, locking the door after him.

  After what seemed a suitably decorous time to Wyungare, not to mention safe, he said to his fellows, “Let’s continue with introductions. Consider it an inventorying of resources.”

  They all heard the sob from Mistral’s cell. They also heard the black cat’s loud purr as he tucked himself against the woman’s crouched body.

  “Ain’t no resource left there,” said Detroit Steel, voice sounding more concerned than his words suggested.

  “Don’t be too sure,” said Wyungare. “Look a little deeper.”

  The old man stood on a rolling, endless prairie. Grazing buffalo covered the hills just behind him like a black, restless blanket. The smell of them was strong on the breeze, as dark as the creatures themselves and as earthy. The ancient one held his hands out — of the fingers, only the first two on his right hand were whole. There was at least one joint missing on each of the others, the flesh puckered and scarred around ancient wounds. Ancient, that is, except one: the second joint of the man’s little finger was a fresh cut, the joint amputated only minutes ago. The coagulating blood was still bright and wet, and a leather thong was strung tightly around the base of the finger as a tourniquet.

  “I am One Blue Bead,” the old man said, and though he spoke in his own language, Teddy could understand it.

  “Look, I really can’t stay here,” Teddy said. “I gotta go. I gotta go right now. They’re bombing my Rox.”

  One Blue Bead smiled, gap-toothed. “Time doesn’t matter here. You should know that. Because you don’t, I name you Eyes Looking Backward.”

  “Name me Sally. I don’t really fucking care. Just let rile out of this fairyland.” Teddy concentrated on the Rox; as he did so, the landscape wavered around him. As if through a stage shim, he thought he glimpsed the ramparts of the Wall and the tumbled-down Manhattan Gate behind the prairie and hills.

  No. The Rox was gone again. A compelling weariness hit Teddy, like he’d just done a set of pull-ups. His body sagged. Just wait a minute, then try it again.

  One Blue Bead just continued to smile. “You are as impetuous and as ignorant as they have said. And as powerful. But I offered a finger joint to Wakan-Tanka to bring you here. My flesh holds you, at least for now.”

  “You’re killing people then. The shelling —”

  “Time does not move here as it does in your shadow world. To them, you will be gone but an instant.” The man smiled again.

  “The last one who brought me here tried to kill me.”

  “Viracocha. I know. I have spoken with him about that, as I’ve spoken to Wyungare. I might try to kill you also, later. But not now.”

  “What, then?”

  Furrows deepened around the eyes and mouth, deep sun-baked canyons. “I wanted to see you. I wanted to see the face of the one who hurts my people. I wanted to see if it was the face of an enemy.”

  One Blue Bead reached out with a mutilated hand, stretching it toward Teddy’s face. Teddy froze, enduring the callused touch on his cheeks, blinking as the hand strayed near his eyes. One Blue Bead’s cobwebbed eyes stared, his breath smelled of herbs and fire and decay. At last the man drew back.

  “You are just a fat little boy,” One Blue Bead said. “Not a shaman. Wyungare is wasting his time with you.”

  “I’m a fucking joker, asshole. Or don’t you have jokers here in fantasyland?”

  “We have nothing here that doesn’t wish to be here,” One Blue Bead replied.

  “I’m here.”

  The sarcasm seemed wasted on the shaman. “True. And you sent the screaming birds of shining stone, the ones whose wings were flame and who plucked the children from the huts and ate them before the eyes of their mothers.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “In your world they may have looked much different, but you opened the way for them.” One Blue Bead shook his head. “Boy, don’t you know or care what you do here? Look at the herd.” One Blue Bead gestured at the distant buffalo. “A short time ago they would have hidden the hills entirely. They have sickened because the power of their souls are being stolen from them. The Eagle spirit flew here, but now he hides in his high nest because he is weary. Even the trickster Coyote stays in his lair.”

  “Look, don’t you understand? I’m just using what the wild card gave me.”

  “Using is not understanding. Listen: in the tales of my people, the first humans were poor and naked and knew very little. So the Old Man who had made them came and showed them which roots and berries they could eat and which they could use for medicine. He showed them how to make hunting weapons and how to kill and slaughter the buffalo, how to make fire to cook the flesh. He also told them that if they wished to have the power of magic, they must sleep. Old Man whispered that a spirit would come to them in their dreams, in the form of an animal. He said that they must do whatever that animal tells them to do. That is how the first people got into the world, boy, through the power of their dreams. Tell me, Eyes Looking Backward, do you listen to your dreams?”

  “I don’t listen to skating penguins with stupid hats, and I don’t listen to dreams. I make them.”

  One Blue Bead scowled at the defiance. The gesture seemed to dissolve the hold that One Blue Bead had on Teddy. He felt a renewal of the link to Bloat and pulled at the delicate connections. The power filled him and he brought it forth. The prairie faded, the buffalo became the stones of Bloat’s Wall and the clouds the fog of the Rox.

  One Blue Bead remained, standing on the stones at the summit of the Wall. Teddy could see jokers all around them, frozen into stances of fright and horror. Shroud was there, pointing at the Outcast and the old Indian with his mouth open in soundless surprise. “You fail the test,” One Blue Bead said. “Again. How many chances do you think we can give you?”

  “And I was alwa
ys such a good student too,” Teddy told him.

  The shaman’s face fell into expressionless folds. He spread his truncated, bloody hand, and the world jolted back into motion around the Outcast. Gargoyle sirens were wailing: like a hundred coyotes baying, like the film Teddy had seen of the Howler trumpeting down the walls of the Cloisters. Teddy could sense bodysnatcher flashing by overhead, his mindvoice far too fast and high for Teddy to understand any of the words, and then Pulse’s body was past the Wall and silent, heading out over the bay. A wind parted the fog for a moment: Modular Man, flying outward himself.

  “— ernor!” Shroud shouted. “What’s going on?”

  “A lot of dying,” Teddy grated out. He could still smell the prairie and the ripeness of the buffalo. The power emanating from the body of Bloat was like a stream in a drought, a bare trickle. “Let me listen, would you?”

  I am so tired… I don’t know how much I’ve got left…

  Something shrieked overhead, tearing the fog. There was a brilliant explosion behind them: tracers of white and acetylene blue. The sound followed a second later, a concussive wave that staggered the Outcast’s body. In Teddy’s head, voices screamed in terror and pain. More banshee wails followed: the Wall shook from the multiple impacts, the thunder of the shells was deafening, and a grotesque yellow glare illuminated the fog, fading to a persistent orange.

  Governor!

  I just want to leave want to leave go HOME…

  Another shell; this one Teddy saw clearly in a rift in the fog, and he lifted his staff. Energy leapt from the crystal to the sky; the shell canted sharply right and plunged into the gray nothingness beyond the Wall. Waves crashed into the base of the stones a few seconds later. “Damn you!” Teddy shouted, and his rage was echoed in the mindvoices of the Rox. “Damn you all! Can’t you leave us alone?”