“When Moonchild was fighting the good fight, didn’t she have any help?”
“Oh, yeah. We had some powers working for the good guys. There was a little asshole called Cosmic Traveler. Total douche, but he got a lot of prisoners free. There was this fire guy took out a bunch of enemy airfields. Some kind of were-dolphin called itself Aquarius fucked up the river patrols real good. And here we go.”
The Hummer broke out of the underbrush and skidded to a halt, gobbets of mud and weeds flying from under its spinning wheels. Two men on motor scooters shouted at them. Billy leaned out the window and jabbered back, gesturing with one skeletal hand. The men made gestures that Bugsy assumed were rude and continued on their way.
In the backseat, Ellen yawned and stretched. “Are we there?” she asked sleepily.
“End of the road for today. I’ll get the archives to you tomorrow morning,” Billy said. He was either grinning at her or his mouth was trapped in the death’s-head rictus. Either way, Ellen smiled back at him.
“Thank you very much,” she said as Bugsy stepped shakily out of the car.
“The rooms are ready,” Billy said. “Just go on in, turn right, and go up the stairs. I’ll get the bags taken care of. No troubles.”
Bugsy walked into the little way house, his legs feeling weak as spaghetti. The great battles of Vietnam had been fought throughout the country, but the final one that broke the New Joker Brigade and put Moonchild in position to reconstitute South Vietnam had been here. And so when the archives had been crated to honor the fallen leader, this was where the government had decided to build the academic and cultural temple.
It was also the best guess for where to find something-a pen, a chair, a ceremonial robe-belonging to her chancellor, the late Mark Meadows.
Bugsy went into the room and lay on the bed, staring up at the faux-bamboo roof. The mattress felt wonderful. Ellen came in behind him, but went straight back for the bathroom.
The more he looked at it, the more plausible it was to Bugsy that the Radical had figured into the events in Vietnam. He was beginning to think Weathers might even have had connections to the Rox War. It was pretty clear that Weathers had been employing the powers of the aces that surrounded Moonchild. And then the notably, vocally pacific Moonchild got taken out, and the Radical came onto the world stage.
It was too convenient to be coincidence. The question was whether the Radical had been stealing the powers, or if there had always been a cabal of aces working with him behind the scenes like a sort of Committee of Evil Wild Cards. He had to agree with Billy that Meadows seemed more like a deuce or a nat than the ace he claimed to be, but he could very plausibly have been the mascot and front man. Once Ellen channeled him, they’d know a lot more.
The shower went on in the bathroom, and a moment later he heard the rush and splatter of water against skin. A beetle the size of a hummingbird buzzed in through the open door, and Bugsy chased it out again with a few hundred wasps.
Billy appeared in the doorway, three suitcases bumping along behind him. He looked at Bugsy, at the bathroom door, and shook his head. “Here’s the stuff. You kids rest up, and I’ll be back in a couple hours, get you some dinner.”
“Thanks,” Bugsy said. He wondered whether it was appropriate to tip one’s UN-provided translator, or if that would just be condescending.
“I got to tell you, man, the world has changed since I was your age,” the zombie chimp said. “Makes me think I was born too early.”
“Yeah?”
“In my day, a hot-looking woman like that with a joker? Would never have happened.”
Bugsy frowned, trying to think of any jokers Ellen had dated. The penny dropped. “Wait a minute,” he said, sitting up. “You think I’m a joker?”
The chimp nodded to the green insects swarming in and out of Bugsy’s skin.
“What would you call it?” Billy asked.
The Santa Cruz Islands
Solomon Islands
“ You call yourself a father?” the pinched, reproachful voice asked in his dream. Tonight Mark Meadows wore faded bell-bottom jeans and a sunburst tie-dye T-shirt with a picture of Jerry-fucking-Garcia on it. “You’re putting children in danger. You’re helping turn them into killers. What the hell is wrong with you?”
“They are warriors,” Tom said. “Warriors for the Revolution. They stand for something. I stand for something. You’re just a drug-soaked old hippie.”
“But I did stand for something. Peace and justice and freedom. And you-you’re losing it. You used to not make war on kids. Now you make war with them. You cared for Sprout. It was your only contact point with humanity. The only thing close to a redeeming feature. How can you look her in the eye now, man?”
Tom swung a fist with all the armor-shattering power of Starshine. Mark’s image shattered like a stained- glass window into an infinity of brightly colored shards.
And each laughed at Tom as they faded into darkness.
18
Sunday,
December 13
In the Jungle, Congo
People’s Paradise of Africa
Jerusha missed Rusty most of all.
The kids were both less and more of a problem than she’d expected. They were frightened, they were abused, and they tended to stay clustered around her as they moved through the jungle. A few of them, like Cesar, spoke French well enough to act as translators for her; a few were old enough and mature enough to serve as leaders for the ragged troop. Their names rattled in her head-Cesar, Abagbe (the finger-studded girl), Waikili (the nearly faceless boy), Eason (the fish-tailed joker), Naadir (the glowing skin child), Gamila, Dahia, Machelle, Rac, Saadi, Efia, Pendo, Pili, Wakiuri, Dajan, Idihi, Hafiz, Kafil, Chaga, and on and on… Jerusha despaired of ever matching all the names to faces.
None of them were aces as far as she knew, though the jokers were obvious enough, the ones that the PPA and Leopard Men of Ngobe had evidently decided to evaluate for possible uses before disposing of them as they had the rest. Since she’d left Rusty behind, she’d been shepherding the group steadily eastward-she’d made sure that Wally had the GPS unit, hoping that a compass would be sufficient for her needs.
All she needed to do was find a telephone and call Babs: the Committee could get her out. Jayewardene could send a fleet of UN helicopters, or meet them at the shore of Lake Tanganyika with boats, or… well, they would have a way. She only needed to head east. Head toward the lake and Tanzania.
And avoid being caught.
Simple.
A good half dozen of the children could not walk on their own, or barely so. Eason had to have his fish tail constantly moistened or he’d cry out in pain as the scales dried and cracked. Jerusha and the older children took turns carrying those who could not walk. Some of the older ones wielded machetes to cut down the worst of the brush. They spread out in a ragged hundred-yard line through the jungle, a line that without her constant attention would have grown so long that the children at the end would have been lost. She had to constantly urge the youngest and weakest to keep moving, had to constantly switch out those carrying the infirm, had to stop those at the front just as frequently so the stragglers could catch up.
She tried counting them frequently to make certain they were all there, but most of the time lost track of the count. Eventually, she abandoned that entirely, hoping that the kids would let her know if one of their own was missing. When they stopped to rest, the children would huddle around her as if they all wanted to press next to her, as if they craved the reassurance of her touch or her voice. For many years, Jerusha had wondered whether she’d ever be in a relationship stable enough that she would feel safe having her own children. Now she’d acquired over
