Yes, he said. I think Koh may have been plotting with 8 Smoking Peeper, the Ixian Rattler feeder. Maybe that whole business with the Ocelots getting 8 Smoking Peeper onto their side was just an excuse for her to get away from us. It was setup city.
But the Rattler army was in our own territory, I said. The border patrols out there would have to know where they are.
I haven’t heard anything, he said.
We looked at each other.
Dang.
I started to make a formal apology. It wasn’t like I’d vouched for Lady Koh or anything, but still, I guess I should have seen this coming.
2 Jeweled Skull said I’d done more than any of his other sons had ever done for him.
I gestured, “Thanks to my Father,” and he gestured, “Accepted.”
There was another pause. Behind me 2JS’s commanders were impatient to go. He looked past me at them and gestured for them to wait another ten beats. He looked back at me. Under all the fooferaw, he was starting to look like a worn-out old politician.
I said I supposed no one from 1 Gila’s squad had given him the Scorpion-adders or the tzam lic either. He can’t know about the earthstar drug, I thought. Can he? No, no way. Koh and I’d kept that one too close to our vests. Didn’t “No,” 2JS said. “They haven’t given me anything.”
I didn’t answer. He asked whether I had gotten any idea of where Koh might have gone. I said no.
Was there anyplace they talked about in the region? he asked. Anywhere they might have supporters and space and cover, where they could go to regroup?
I said I didn’t know of any. If anyone had set something like that up, it would have been 1 Gila.
And Lady Koh never told you anything? he asked.
I said no. I thought we’d talked through everything, but evidently she fooled me. I’m a fool, I’m a porcupine, I’m not worthy.
“Nothing?” he asked again.
“No,” I said, “I didn’t-”
I paused like there was something in my throat.
2 Jeweled Skull looked at me.
I looked back.
He’d looked at me that way, with that same scraping-the-back-of-your-skull look he’d had when he first interrogated me such a hard, if not long, time ago, and I understood.
(43)
Without any perceptible change of expression, his eyes shifted to that look that-hmm. It’s that look… let me think… okay. Instead of trying to describe it, let’s do this. If you have a dog, there’s a way to see this that involves scaring yourself. Make eye contact with your dog, command her/him to sit, and reward the behavior with a strip of turkey jerky or bacon or something your dog loves the smell of. Keeping him/her sitting, and keeping up eye contact, take another strip and hold it in front of your face, right between your eyes. Your dog’s expression will shift ever so subtly, but, if you’ve done it right, the shift is terrifying. Something in his face had something of my own mind in its expression, something I could read.
2 Jeweled Skull thought I might be in league with Lady Koh, and he could tell that I could see it in him.
He looked away from me and waved the commanders out of the little courtyard. Suddenly it felt all private, just him, me, the two dressers holding me, his two heralds, and Hun Xoc.
“Well, listen, if you were Lady Koh, where would you be?” 2 Jeweled Skull asked in my own nearly unaccented English.
“Dead,” I said. Hmm, I thought. Guess he’d picked up a little more of my old Jed-mind than he’d let me realize eighty-two days ago.
Idiot.
“Well, I guess it’s nice of you to let the old veil slip and everything, though,” I said in English. “Finally.”
“Oh, well, yeah, sorry,” he said, in practically a Jed voice, just a little higher and older. “You know, I didn’t want you to get confused.”
“I was already confused,” I said.
“Anyway, it’s nice to have someone you can talk to, right?” he asked. No kidding, I thought. Just hearing English spoken again was sending my emotions into a stupid, automatic tailspin.
“Right,” I said.
“I just wanted to double our chances, you know?”
“I know.” I was getting dizzy from the flood of homesickness and had to bite my lip to keep myself from crawling over and hugging him. Maybe we could just go crack a couple of hot cactus ales and grab some cheeseless nachos and kick back and chat about whatever “So maybe we can work together on this,” he said.
“Uh, yeah, and whichever one of us lives is going to go back?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he said, “maybe we’ll both go back. There’s room in the tomb. Twombsome with youse’m. Tomb with a viewm.”
“And they’ll load both of our memories into Jed-Sub-One?”
“Sure,” he said, “I mean, maybe it’s possible, I’ve been thinking about it a lot and I don’t see why not.”
“Nonsense,” I said.
“Give it a little thought. They can probably do it. We just have to make sure they do. Whichever of us gets uploaded first has to make sure Marena girl does the other too.”
“Yeah, sure. That won’t work and you know it.”
“Well, let’s try it.”
“No way,” I said, “You’ll off me a long time before that happens.”
“Why do you think that?”
“Because it’s what I’d do.”
“No, it’s not.”
“Yes, it is,” I said. “As you well know. We’re going to off the Jed that’s back there, aren’t we?”
“What do you mean?”
“That Jed that’s there without our memories, when everything we’ve been through gets uploaded into him, that Jed, Jed-Sub-One, he’s going to basically die,” I said. “And we don’t even care. That’s just the way it is.”
“Hmm.”
“It’s survival of the shittiest. Why are you even asking me, do you think Chacal’s brain is so stunted I couldn’t work this stuff out?”
He grinned. “Well, I had wondered about that,” he said. “Chacal’s ideational skills and everything.”
“Chacal’s brain’s as smart as Jed’s was,” I said. “Maybe not so fast on calculation, but on spatiotemporal it’s way ahead.”
“How nice for you,” 2 Jeweled Me said. “Well, whatever. Anyway, maybe we can work out a deal.”
“I guess-”
“I mean, if you can’t negotiate with yourself, then, with whom?”
“Mm,” I said. “Yeah, I was just about to say that.” This whole thing was bumming me out, I felt naked talking with this hostile version of myself. It’s disturbing enough just to watch yourself on video. “So, you’re just good old Jed, right?” I asked. “You’re totally in control of 2 Jeweled Skull.”
“Believe it or not, yes,” he said.
“I don’t believe it,” I said. “You’re still 2JS. I mean, 2JS’s running you.”
Don’t let his newly cozy persona fool you, I thought. You’re not really talking to yourself, I’m talking to my personal body snatcher pod-person.
“Listen, there was as much of a chance of my getting killed here as your getting killed out there,” he said. “The main thing was just always just getting the tsam lic back.”
