Danube.
To orbit, down.
It was a park. He collapsed on a cast-bench. He panted with reaction. A few blocks away flames danced in the sky. “That was JJ Flash, man,” said the hated voice in his head. “You just lost him. For good. Why don’t you save yourself some grief and pack it in?”
“Fuck you, you hippie piece of shit. You think you’ve won? Do you?” A geyser of yellow flame shot up as the Sofiensaal roof went. “I was gonna give people a chance to give up that shit Matthews. But now I’m going straight to Plan B.” Without even rising from the bench Tom held out a hand. Bricks exploded from the row house across the street as the glare of a sunbeam played across it.
So it began.
26
Monday,
December 21
Ellen Allworth’s Apartment
Manhattan, New York
Bugsy put some bacon on to fry, and started the coffeemaker. The little kitchen radio was turned to an NPR station and he turned it on to drown out the sighs from the living room.
“… Simon and this is NPR’s Morning Edition. Vienna is in flames this morning, victim of an attack by an ace believed to be Tom Weathers, also known as the Radical. Reports say that the destruction has resulted in at lest twenty dead and over two hundred injured.”
Bugsy leaned against the counter, listening with a sense of profound dread in his gut. This was getting out of control.
“The Radical is also believed responsible for the destruction at the Louvre Museum in Paris, where a peace conference between the Caliphate and the People’s Paradise of Africa ended in a bloodbath
…”
He turned off the radio. The bacon popped and splattered. The coffee machine gurgled like someone strangling a cat. The telephone shrilled. This was just not starting off to be a good day.
When, after the fourth ring, it became clear that Ellen didn’t care if the telephone rotted in hell, Bugsy found one of the handsets by the toaster and answered.
“Is this Bugsy?”
“Most days. Who’s this?”
“It’s Billy.”
“Billy?”
“Your translator? From Saigon?”
The dead chimp.
“Oh, yeah. Hey. Billy. What’s… what’s up?”
“I’m going to be in New York next month. I was thinking you could show me where a joker could see a little action, you know what I mean?”
Yes, Bugsy thought, you mean that you still think I’m a joker. Prick. “Hey, yeah. Well, we should check on my schedule. I can maybe
…”
“And I got something to trade.”
“Trade?”
“You help me out, introduce me to the local girls like your woman? You know, who don’t mind that a guy’s got a few differences? And I can tell you who your guy was hanging with before he came to ’Nam.”
“My guy?”
“Meadows. I’ve been rooting through the archives, you know. Just to see? And turns out, he was buddies with a guy right there in New York.”
“You got a name?”
“I do.”
There was a long silence.
“Do we have a deal?” Billy asked.
“Of course we do, man,” Bugsy said. “Us jokers have to stick together, right?”
At the far end of the line, Billy laughed like someone kicking an accordion to death. Bugsy found a pen and copied down everything the translator said. He thanked him. They hung up.
Ellen looked up as he walked back in the room. “Yeah?” she said.
“Yeah. I need to find someone who’ll sleep with a zombie chimp.”
“Anything else?” Ellen asked. “Cure for cancer? Ten million tax-free American dollars?”
“An address for a guy named Jay Ackroyd,” Bugsy said.
Ellen frowned. “You mean Popinjay?” she asked.
In the Jungle, Congo
People’s Paradise of Africa
Jerusha had no idea how far they’d come or how far they had yet to go. She had no way to gauge that. She kept hoping that over the next ridge she’d see the blue line of Lake Tanganyika, but it never appeared. There was only the next ridge, and the next, and the one after that, an eternity of them growing increasingly hazy and blue with distance.
Rusty, why did we do this? Why aren’t you here with me?
There was no answer to that, either. She looked back westward, deep into the heart of the PPA, and she wondered where he was and what was happening to him. She prayed that he was still alive, still safe. She prayed that one day they would see each other again. That was all that kept her feet moving.
That, and fear.
Waikili, when she asked if they were still being hunted, nodded fiercely. “He’s out there, Bibbi. Leucrotta. He thinks it’s a game. He laughs, him and the other one, the hungry one. They think it’s funny how scared you are.”
Leucrotta struck again during the day’s march, as they pushed slowly through a thicket of thornbushes with long, black needles. Naadir, the girl with glowing skin, was snatched away suddenly at midday, a trail of blood leading off into the thornbushes. She’d been one of the four children carrying Eason’s stretcher, lagging behind the main group with their burden. “There was a blur and roar, and she was gone…” the other three children said. They were sobbing and crying, and no one wanted to pick up Eason’s stretcher again. “We need to leave him, Bibbi Jerusha,” Idihi, one of the boys, said. “To carry him is too dangerous now.” He glanced at the other joker children who were being carried. “Maybe them, too. We could all move faster.”
There were murmurs of agreement from within the crowd of children. Eason began to wail, thrashing in the moist canvas, but Jerusha hushed them. “We’re not leaving anyone,” she told them. “No one. We’ll moved slower if we must; we’ll stay together. Those with weapons will stay in front and behind and to the sides. But no one’s being abandoned. That’s not going to happen. Now, I need four of you to pick up Eason’s stretcher.”
Only Cesar moved. She looked around at the frightened faces. “Now!” she barked. Finally, Abagbe and two more of the older children took the other ends of the stretcher. “Good,” Jerusha said. “Let’s go.”
She stayed at the rear alongside the stretcher as they moved, looking behind frequently and fearing what she’d see there, knowing that she’d have to face their pursuer again-not a monster, but a child doing monstrous things.
She looked at the thornbushes, at the seed pods they carried.
She took several.
People’s Palace
Kongoville, Congo
