Black Trump

"We have to do something," Jerry said. His voice had changed.

Jay was startled to see Sly Stallone standing beside him, assault rifle in hands. He looked at what remained of their stalwart crew. Him, Rambo Jerry, and a half-dozen pirates. "Any of you guys fly a helicopter?" The pirates looked at him blanldy. "A chopper," Jay said, "you know." He spun a hand over his head and went, "Whoop whoop whoop." It didn't seem to help much.

"I don't think they speak English," Rambo Jerry said.

"Real good," Jay said. "Shit. I guess it's up to me."

Jerry said, "You can pilot a helicopter?"

Jay shrugged. "How hard can it be?" He thought a moment. "I'll go for the chopper, you guys take out Casaday." He made gestures at the pirates, pantomiming. "Run. Shoot, Ratatatatata." More blank looks. "This is working swell. Maybe we have to lead them by example."

Jerry took a deep breath. "Yo," he said. "When?"

"Now," Jay said. He ran. Jerry fired a burst toward the distant hangar, then came pelting after him, shooting on the run.

Every step felt like someone was probing Jay's nose with a dental drill. After about five feet he figured the pirates were a little slow on the uptake; after ten he knew they weren't coming.

Their dash took them past the spot where Radical had fallen. The ace looked a cat who'd been run over by a cement truck. But even in the thickening doom there was no mistaking it: the lung exposed in the shattered ribcage was unmistakably pumping. Jay leapt over him and went on; he had problems of his own.

"Wait, he's alive," he heard Jerry call out behind him. He glanced back and saw his junior partner kneeling beside the body. There was no time to go back and argue; Jay kept running.

A sudden burst of machine-gun fire spurred him on. Whether it was O. K. Casady shooting at Jay or Jerry shooting at Casaday or the pirates finally pitching in with covering fire, Jay had no idea. Someone was shooting; that was enough for him. He lowered his head and sprinted. His footfalls drove spikes through his head and the wind off the chopper's rotors buffeted him as he got close. He was so blind from pain he almost ran right into the blades, but somehow he managed to reach the cockpit and pull himself inside. The pilot was still in his seat. "Follow that blimp," he told him, panting.

There was no reply. Jay looked over. A neat little hole had been punched through the canopy, and half the pilot's head was gone. Blood was drying on what remained of his face, and fat Chinese flies were crawling across his brain. Jay's stomach turned over.

The Harmony was far to the southeast, picking up speed. Jay shoved the body out onto the tarmac and slid over into the pilot's seat, still wet with the blood of its last occupant. He looked at the dials and gauges and sticks. The blades were already spinning; Jay figured that meant he was halfway there.

"Ackroyd!"

At first he thought he was hearing things. Then the shout came again, high and thin over the whap of the rotors and the chatter of automatic weapons. J. Bob Belew was pulling himself across the tarmac on hands and knees, leaving a trail of blood. "Ackroyd!"

Swearing under his breath, Jay jumped out of the helicopter and scrambled toward Belew. "I thought you were dead," he said as he knelt down beside him.

"Sorry to disappoint you," Belew said between clenched teeth. His handlebar mustache was sticky with blood, and more blood bubbled out between his lips when he spoke. "Help me up."

"Can you fly a helicopter?" Jay asked, like an idiot. What was he saying? Does the Pope shit in the woods? The Mechanic could be a helicopter.

Belew's face was white as bone, drained of all color. Jay got an arm under him and helped him to his feet. Belew moaned and closed his eyes. For an instant Jay thought J. Bob had fainted on him, or maybe died, but then his eyes opened again. "Hurry," he whispered. Jay supported him as they staggered back toward the chopper. Bullets whined around them.

The Harmony was well to the south now, dwindling visibly as dusk settled around them.

As they limped past the chopper's tail, Belew thrust his hand into the spinning rotor. There was a wet meaty sound. Blood spurted. Fingers and bits of bone scattered like jacks. Jay shuddered. "I hate it when you do that," he said fervently.

Belew pulled his ruined hand close to his chest and tried to staunch the bleeding with his good one. "... get ... me ... on ... board..." he said. Jay could barely make out what he was saying, but Belew's eyes were wide open, feverish.

Somehow Jay managed to shove him into the chopper, lifting him over the pilot's body. J. Bob ripped off a panel with his good hand and shoved his bloody stump into the wiring beneath. Bone and blood and muscle became one with steel and aluminum and plastic; the Mechanic's soul entered the machine.

The copter began to lift, leaving Jay standing flat-footed on the field. "Hey, wait a minute!" he yelled.

And then he saw him.

Rising from the weeds beyond the field, not ten feet away, grinning his jack-o'-lantern grin, rumpled and evil, O. K. Casaday raised the snout of his machine gun. "Belew, you hoary old fuck," he screamed over the rotors, "where do you think you're going?" Laughing, he hosed down the front of the chopper with a stream of fire. The glass canopy exploded in a million pieces, and Jay could see Belew's body shudder under the impact of the bullets.

The chopper's tail angled up, the nose fell, and for a second Jay thought it was all over. A second was all it took. Instead of crashing, the copter lurched forward, right at Casaday. Bullets sparked wildly on steel. There was just enough time for O. K. Casaday's laughter to turn into a scream before the main rotor took his head off. The blades angled down a shade more and cut him clean in half before the body had even begun to fall.

Jay ran and jumped, pulling himself up and in as the chopper went screaming into the sky. "Jesus, Belew, I thought you were dead for sure that time," he shouted.

Then he realized that Belew was past listening. J. Bob was slumped against the controls, his warm blood leaking from a dozen bullet holes to mingle with the hot hydraulic fluids leaking from the chopper. Whatever life and strength he had left in him was going into the helicopter now. The Mechanic had become the machine.

The airfield fell away below them. The Harmony was miles ahead, lost in the gloom to the south.

The sun had set, Jay realized. On Canton and maybe the world.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

Croyd was fast, all right. They sped over the dunes with a stampede of racing camels behind them, but the herd fell farther and farther behind.

"They can't keep up," Croyd said.

"They're falling behind, all right. Damn it, Croyd, they'll circle back to camp if they lose sight of you. You'll have to slow down," Zoe said.

Croyd braked, a tilting and scary procedure all by itself. Zoe held on for dear life, glad of Billy Ray's strength, for he managed to keep both of them attached to Croyd.

Croyd wheeled around and looked back at the herd. "You're right. They'll go where they think the closest water is. I'm thirsty myself." He knelt on the sand. "Now what?"

"Beats me," Billy Ray said.

Zoe slid off Croyd's back, pulling her rolled kilim with her. Her knees felt shaky.

"I guess it's time for a magic carpet." Croyd picked up the kilim with his big teeth and shook it.

"Oh, fuck," Zoe said.

If antigravity were a force, it was one she had no idea how to engineer. Wool, sand, wind. Zoe knelt on the spread kilim and held a corner of it in her mouth, tasting the structure of coils in the soft wool, traces of ammonia from sheep urine, and the simple bitterness of analine dyes. Carbon strands, ammonia. Cadmium? Cadmium is supposed to be a no-no, Zoe remembered. No more yellow paint for artists.

Cadmium made such a good catalyst. Hydrogen. Hydrogen from water, cadmium-drive catalysis, hydrogen cells to push against the wind and provide some lift. A strong alignment was needed, a perfect directional twist on the cells honeycombed from the structure of the wool. We may burn up, the carbon will melt - melt into diamond, if need be. Needs be. Waffled diamond for insulation, Croyd, here we go.

Wondering, as she breathed the changes into the hand-woven twists of wool, if Croyd could still function sexually when he was this far gone into craziness. Wondering if Turtle was making love to Danny, laughing on old sheets washed to the texture of silk, sunny and cool in the Venice apartment. Wondering if the boy Pan Rudo had been was now at peace, his silky skin and delicate touches bringing unspeakable pleasures to an alternate woman in an alternate, benevolent universe. She hoped so.

The kilim writhed, expanded, went rigid as sheet metal.

Zoe ripped two of the water packs away from her waist and dropped them beside Croyd. "Here's a bribe for your friends." She handed two of the bags to Billy Ray. "Get on behind me," she said. "And pour. This may be a bumpy ride."

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

Gregg was glad for Needles' company as he walked around the Quarter - if Ray showed up again, he'd use Needles to make damn sure that this time the ace stayed dead.

Guilt tasted of licorice, fear of anise, and anger was as sweet as sugar. "You know what the Black Dog has planned, don't you?" Gregg asked Needles. They stood in front of an orange-seller's stall. The odor of citrus wasn't nearly as strong as the scent of Needles' confusion. "No," he said loudly and fast, and the lie was distressingly obvious in his face. Needles knew it; the boy became far too interested in the orange he held in his clawed hand. "I'll take this one," he said to the joker behind the stall, whose skin was as pulpy as the orange. "How much?"

"Needles, Gregg persisted. "You've heard rumors or you've heard the Black Dog say it outright. What's he planning?"

"I ... I can't tell you."

"That's a little different than 'I don't know,' isn't it?"

Needles colored nicely, like a teenager caught necking in the car. Gregg sipped at the taste, sampling its sweetness, and he yanked on the strings: pulling here, pushing back there. "Look - " Needles dropped the orange back onto the pile as the seller yelled at him in Arabic. "Let's walk. Too many people listening."

They left the Quarter, moving into the suq just beyond the gate. Needles didn't speak as they moved through the crowds of mingled nats and jokers. Gregg didn't push, letting him walk and enjoying the taste of the internal battle going on inside him. "Damn it," Needles breathed. "I shouldn't ..."

"You have to go with what your heart says," Gregg told him, and as he said the words, he pulled aside the doubt in Needles' mind. With the power, he strengthened the underpinnings of old lessons, brought up the memory of how horrible Needles had felt when he'd first killed. He conducted the orchestra of the youth's mind, playing a symphony whose ending he alone knew. "Listen to your feelings, and you'll know whether to tell us or not. Hannah and I want to help you, Needles. We want to do what's right, that's all."

Tugging, making him dance to our tune ...

Needles stopped and looked down at Gregg as the crowds moved around them. "I'll tell you," he said, and started walking again. As they moved through the suq, Needles began to speak, haltingly at first.

And in the silence of Gregg's mind, Puppetman laughed in delight.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

Radical came back to awareness in a plenum of pain.

For a time he lay there, feeling semi-regular jolts slam through the throbbing wound which was his body like Richter 8 earthquakes. Nowhere in his various lives had he or Mark or anybody gotten a clue that this much pain existed. Even the death of Starshine - a suddenly-vivid memory, passing like a train bound the other way - hadn't hurt this much.

He opened his eyes. The full moon had begun to rise. The light fell between the upright stakes that surrounded the truck bed in bars, striping his body. When it entered his eyes it hit him like a drug.

Moonchild, he thought, as the pain receded like the ebb tide. She had the power of healing herself, and moonlight augmented her powers, as the light of the sun fueled Starshine's. The moonlight's healing me.

He stirred, and it was like being broken on the wheel all over again. Moonchild's gift was healing his hurts, but it and the moon had their work cut out for him.

He looked around. It was full dark. The truck was jouncing toward the light-dome of a huge city, with Sly Stallone behind the wheel. Creighton.

And it hit him, like the RPG warhead going off all over again: I've been here more than an hour.

I'm free. Really free.

Inside, he felt a clamor of voices. And panic, rearing and swelling like an angry king cobra: the blimp! Had it reached Hong Kong by now? Was the very breeze become a messenger of death, infecting all it touched with cool fingers?

He laughed though it seemed to tear tissue from the inside of his throat in handfuls and made his lips feel as if they were being sliced with razors.

"I'm alive," he said. "And I'm back to stay. No way do I lose. No way."

He coiled himself and leapt through pain into the sky.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

"So you know what they have planned," Hannah said to Needles. They were walking in the crowded bazaar near the gates to the Jokers' Quarter, isolated in the midst of the afternoon throngs and the calls from the sellers in the stalls. The Quarter was noisy and oblivious to the plot being launched underneath its streets. The teeming colors of the people brought Puppetman crawling to the edge of the cage, peering out hungrily; Gregg pushed him back.

"Yeah," Needles said. "Most of it, anyway. The Black Dog's had the nuke altered since Zoe brought it back - they rigged a timing device and mounted the whole thing on a truck bed. The plan is to have that Highwayman guy drive it in - he's got some old truck, about the same size as that one." Needles indicated a battered, dusty water truck sitting on the other side of the open square. "They'll off-load the bomb, set the timer, and get the hell out. By the time anyone figures out what's going on, Bruckner's gone, and Boom!"

Needles made a mushroom cloud with his daggered hands.

The driver had climbed up on the roof of the water truck across the way. Gregg could see her through gaps in the crowd: a tall woman with her hair tucked under a military-style cap. In the sunlight, sweat gleamed from her fair skin. Gregg looked again, squinting. The woman wore a gauze mask over her mouth. She was holding something in her hands - a long hose that trailed back to the rear of the water truck. Given the sandy dust coating the stainless steel cylinder, Gregg wasn't surprised that the driver would want to wash down the truck, though why she would do so in the middle of a crowded square escaped him. Hannah had noticed her, too; she was staring at the woman.

"All this garbage just means we can't wait any longer," Gregg said, still watching the woman. "You were right, Hannah. We have to get word to someone as soon as we can. Maybe even Ray ... Hannah?"

She didn't answer. The hues of her mind weren't even directed toward him. They flared outward, the colors strange. Gregg looked up at Hannah. She too was staring at the driver on the cab of the water truck. Water gushed out from the nozzle of the hose. The woman directed the fine spray out into the crowd around the truck, turning to douse everyone in range. There was a sudden eruption of shouts and curses and laughter. Several joker children screeched in delight and began frolicking in the mist and mud.

"Did you hear me, Hannah?"

"That woman," Hannah said. "What in the hell is she doing?"

Gregg squinted again. "I don't know. Needles, what is this? Do they bring out the water trucks to cool things down, keep the dust settled?"

Needles shook his head. "Never heard of it."

The woman continued to spray. Gregg noticed something else. There were armed guards around the truck. Several of them - stern-faced nats, each one.

"Except for the kids, no one looks to be enjoying it very much. And she still has her mask on...." Hannah was frowning, and her colors went a sudden alarming purple. "Jesus! Gregg, that's the woman who's working with Billy Ray: April Harvest. We have to get out of here," Hannah said urgently, suddenly. "Needles, come on ..."

"Hannah?"

"I don't have time to explain," she said. "Just trust me. Come on!"

Hannah hurried them back into the Fist compound at a run, pushing through the throngs around the suq, not stopping until they passed the startled guards and passed back into the catacombs. "Get the Black Dog!" she snapped at Needles. "And tell them to keep the damn doors closed. Don't let anyone else in who's still outside. Not until everyone here is wearing masks, gloves, and filters."

"What's going on?" Gregg managed to ask her. Puppetman howled inside him, a sound of animal fear, and Gregg suddenly knew. "Oh, Jesus," he said. "You're wrong. You have to be wrong."

"I hope like hell I'm wrong," Hannah said, and shades of purple and red wrapped around her like an unseen veil. "We have to get to the Black Dog. They've got to stop that truck ..."

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

ZERO

The Harmony swelled ahead of them, a white whale shimmering in the moonlight. "Slow down," Jay told Belew, shouting to be heard over the rotors. "You want to match speeds. Bring us in alongside the gondola, close as you can get, and I'll jump across."

Even as the words were leaving his mouth, Jay wondered what the hell he was saying. He'd jump across??? He looked down, at the ghost moon shimmering on the dark waters below. It was very pretty. If Jay slipped while he was jumping across, he'd have a long time to admire it on the way down.

The Harmony filled the world. "Not so fast," Jay cautioned Belew. "You can slow down now." He could see pale tourist faces pressed to the windows of the gondola, watching their approach. "Any time," Jay said. The huge envelope of the airship loomed over them like the face of a cliff. "Now," Jay said, "now would be a good time to slow." The cliff was about to fall on them. The tourist faces were screaming. "Veer off!" Jay shouted.

They ploughed into the side of the gondola in an explosion or glass and metal. Something slammed Jay in the face, hard, and the bolt of pain that went through him was so bad that he lost consciousness for a moment, or two, or ten.

When he opened his eyes again, he could hear the shriek of the wind and the sound of people screaming. His head was ringing. There were two Belews in the seat beside him, spinning around each other. Both of them seemed to be unconscious or sleeping or dead.

Jay crawled out of the helicopter on his hands and knees, through a tangle of twisted metal and broken glass. He dropped a couple of feet, slammed into an unsteady floor, and blacked out again. Then there was a blaze of pain. He opened his eyes to find a pair of hunchbacks croucned over him, shaking him. Their eyes looked down at him soulfully. "You can't die yet," they said in chorus, shaking him. "You can't die yet."

The two hunchbacks became one. "Quasiman," Jay muttered. The cavalry had arrived, drooling, "What are you doing here?"

"I always come here," Quasiman said, perplexed. "I have to do something." He frowned, trying to remember. "There was a paper. I need to get drugs for Mark."

"I think you did that already," Jay told him. The hunchback looked lost. "Help me up," Jay urged.

"Hold on to me," Quasiman said. Jay draped an arm around his neck. Quasiman pulled him erect. Blood was running down his face and soaking through his bandage. The floor slanted under his feet. The tourists were as far away as they could get, clinging to the walls and hiding under the furniture. Jay looked behind him and saw the wreckage of the helicopter where it had punched right through into the cabin. He reeled unsteady, blinking. He felt as if he were trapped in a dream. There was something strangely familiar about all this. He could not remember what it was, but the sense of deja vu was overwhelming.

There was a sharp crack and something whistled past his ear. Quasiman vanished as suddenly as he had appeared. Somebody was shooting at him, Jay realized dreamily. "Freeze, or the pony gets it!" a shrill voice screamed.

Across the cabin, a man with half a face stood with a gun in one hand and a spray nozzle in the other. The gun was pressed to Finn's head. The spray nozzle was pointed at Jay. It was fed from a long hose that led back to a bulky metal cannister on the man's back. Jay didn't need three guesses to figure out what was in the canister. There were other canisters on the floor behind Finn.

"I'm sorry, Jay," Finn said mournfully. "I blew it."

Jay realized blearily that there were bodies littering the deck; Shark gunmen, four of them at least, and a fifth wounded and moaning in the corner. The little centaur hadn't done badly at all, from the looks of it. Half Face looked to be the only guy still standing.

Half Face pressed the barrel of the gun against Finn's temple and shouted, "I mean it! One move and the joker's dead." The right side of his head was a mask of blood, and the shoulder of his white lab coat was stained a deep red. He waved the spray nozzle around threateningly.

"You release that shit and the joker is dead anyway," Jay told him, playing for time. "Along with me, you, and the rest of the world. What would you say if I told you your precious Black Trump kills nats too?"

Half Face giggled crazily. "I'd say, Liar, liar, pants on fire. You can't fool me. I'm a trained scientist."

Finn gaped at Jay. "Nats too? Everyone? Clara?"

Jay nodded.

Finn lifted a forefoot and slammed a hoof down hard on the instep of the man with half a face. Jay heard a crunch as bones snapped. Half Face screamed. Finn ducked, kneed him in the groin, and wrenched the pistol out of his fingers.

By then Jay was moving. By then it was too late.

As Finn wrestled with him for the spray nozzle, Half Face clenched his trigger finger. A fine mist sprayed out. It felt like a soft drizzle as it touched Jay's face. Half Face giggled. "Ooops," he said. "Sorry, you're dead."

Finn wrenched the nozzle away, and gave him a backhand slap, hard across the cheek. Half Face went down like a sack of potatoes. Finn slumped helplessly. "I'm sorry," he said. He sounded so tired "I tried, but ... oh, God ... Clara ..."

Jay bent over Half Face to examine the tank on his back. One chance in four, he thought, thinking of Hastet. And there it was: a mark on the bottom of the cannister.

The world spun dizzily. "We can't die yet," Jay said. "We haven't seen The Jolson Story."

Quasiman materialized out of nowhere. "Don't drink the wine!" he shouted in alarm. "They put it in the wine."

Jay didn't know what the fuck the hunchback was talking about, but he had an idea. He took the spray nozzle from Finn and gave him a quick spritz. Then he hosed down Quasiman.

"What are you doing?" Finn said, horrified.

"Saving the world," Jay said, yanking Half Face's arms out from the straps that held the tank to his back. Half Face groaned in protest. "Quasiman, come over here." The hunchback stepped close. Jay hefted the bulky tank onto his twisted back and helped him tighten the straps. "This is Mark's Overtrump," he told him. "Do you know what you have to do?"

"I remember now," Quasiman said. "I have to take it ..."

"Everywhere," Jay finished for him. "Hong Kong, Saigon, Jerusalem, New York, Paris, everywhere there are aces and jokers. Spray Hannah and Father Squid and Peregrine and everyone else you know, no matter where they are. Spray Squisher's Basement and Aces High and the Louvre and the Kremlin and the Taj Mahal. Spray O'Hare and Tomlin and Heathrow, all the big airports you can find. Keep moving. Don't waste it all in one spot. This is all we have, and there's a whole world out there to dose. Do you understand?"

The hunchback nodded. "What if I forget?"

"You won't," Jay told him, praying that he was right. "You won't forget."

"I won't," Quasiman said, vanishing.

Finn was staring at the place he had been. "Overtrump," he said. "You mean ... a cure ... a vaccine ... my God, you entrusted our only hope to a, a, a ..."

"A joker," Jay said. Finn shut up.

There were still three canisters to take care of. The Black Trump, the real Black Trump. If this stuff got loose, it would be a horserace between the two viruses. Win, place, and die. Jay shaped stiff fingers into a gun. A canister vanished with a soft pop. Then a second one ...

He was pointing toward the third when the tourists began to scream. The floor was tilting under him. Jay looked over his shoulder, just in time to see the wreckage of the helicopter shudder and slide backwards and fall away, leaving a jagged hole in the gondola. A sudden gust of wind plucked at him with cold fingers. Finn clutched for a handrail. Jay clutched at Finn. Tourists grabbed furniture and children. Souvenir booklets and maps and postcards skittered across the floor and were sucked out through the jagged hole into the night. A Chinese woman followed, screaming.

"The Trump!" Finn shouted.

The last cannister of Black Trump was rolling across the gondola, toward the darkness. Jay lurched for it as it went by, missed, and hung on to Finn for dear life.

The tank bounced across the deck and slammed into Half Face where he lay. He clutched it to him, embracing it like a lover. "Mine!" he screamed. He hooked a leg around a railing as his plump hands fumbled greedily with the valve.

Jay let go of Finn.

The wind took him. He flew across the cabin. Half Face saw him coming. He lifted the cannister with both hands and smashed Jay full in the face with it. The pain was blinding, and Jay heard bones crunch in his cheek, but somehow he managed to get one hand on the tank and the other one in Half Face's hair.

They rolled over and over, and went out the hole together, into the empty, moonlit sky.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

The night air several hundred feet up was cool, not the usual Southeast Asian 22-degrees-of-latitude furnace blast. The lights of the New Territories appeared below him like pinpricks in the mantle over Hell. Radical flew on, upheld solely by the light of the moon and his own long-chained will to struggle.

His mind phased in and out of consciousness. Sometimes he almost lost track of who he was; sometimes he seemed to be JJ Flash, or dour Aquarius, or Cosmic Traveler, or even Mark. Sometimes he had flashes of Moonchild and once or twice even dead Starshine.

The moonlight was energizing him. But his body was trying to use all that energy to repair the terrible damage the missile warhead had done. It took constant application of willpower to hold himself in the sky - and when he would begin to fade again, the borders of his personality to blur, he would find himself dropping at an alarming rate.

Focus wandering ... a small boy on a stove-hot sidewalk, under blinding Southern California sun. A little girl on a tricycle, with black hair in pigtails and lavender eyes....

He was falling again. The cool rush of air saved him, caught him, returned him to himself. He shook his head, and he reveled in the agony-waves that motion sent crashing through his body; they returned him to Now.

Ahead; a half-ellipsoid shimmer of light. The lights of Hong Kong, reflected on the underbelly of the airship Harmony.

He sped up. The effort felt as if it were tearing his mind like a sheet of rotten cloth. He forced his arms out straight in front of him, fists clenched, and drove onward.

The airship swelled in his vision. He saw the air around his out-thrust fists shimmer and turn red as subconsciously he summoned a JJ Flash fireblast. His body dipped toward the hungry water.

No, he reminded himself. I can't burn the blimp down. I can't be sure of getting the Black Trump that way....

From the gondola, an object detached itself, dropping toward the choppy waters of the harbor below. On raptor instinct alone Radical dove, using gravity's insistent pull to gather speed.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

The wind shrieked and the stars pin wheeled around them as they fell, tumbling, locked together tighter than honeymooners, arms and legs entwined around the cannister.

Half Face was screaming, "Let go! Let go! It's mine," and hitting him in the face, over and over. Every punch felt like an icepick up his nose, but Jay wouldn't let go.

He tightened his legs around the canister, dug his fingers into Half Face's hair, and began to slam his forehead into the valve. Half Face shrieked and kicked at him. The moon was below them, then the water, then the moon. Half Face screamed as a handful of hair and scalp ripped off in Jay's fingers. "We're going to die!" he yelled.

"Might as well," Jay said. "Can't dance." The moon spun around them dizzily.

Then the sky came lurching to a sudden halt.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

Arm locked around Jay's waist, Radical fought to level off. He knew how an eagle felt, trying to lift a hare.

Jarnavon clung to the canister, blood-masked half-face distorted with emotion beyond the point of madness. Ackroyd likewise clutched the metal container, like Sprout with a favored teddy bear.

"No!" the scientist screamed at Radical's face. His legs flailed night air, pants cuffs hiked well up over his brown shoes. "You cant! All I've worked for - the brave new order - "

"Ackroyd," Radical said in the hoarse, wind-torn whisper that was all he could force out still-blistered lips. "Just let go."

From a handspan away the detective's eyes stared into his without comprehension. Then he said, "Oh," and relaxed his deathgrip on the metal cylinder.

Jarnavon fell away beneath them. A bony hand feverishly turned a stopcock. "You'll see!" he cried. "I'll release it anyway! I've still won, you fools!"

Radical let himself and Jay fall free. He flung his arm down, hand outstretched. "No," he rasped. "You lose."

And a wash of plasma fire jetted forth. Jarnavon shrieked as flame vaporized him and the canister.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

Zoe and Billy Ray rode the winds, leaving Croyd and his camels far behind. Sand ground against the carpet and needled the faces of its riders. Billy Ray dripped water on the carpet; molecular hydrogen hissed energy to drive them south, Zoe breathed instructions to the carpet and it found a place in synchrony with the wind, a calm place where its energies grew incrementally, an asymptotic curve on the graph of improbability.

They could ride this current into Jerusalem, this peaceful nexus between energies. They sat on the carpet as if it were a bobsled. Billy Ray had his knees locked around her waist. She leaned back against him, wanting to cringe from his ugliness, but grateful for his warmth. The air was cold up here.

A woman named April Harvest drove death toward Jerusalem. Zoe looked for any sign of a truck, for any fresh tracks made by anything, but the scouring sand hid all traces of roads and nothing moved across the dunes but the wind. This is the way the world ends, she chanted to herself. Not with a bang but a sneeze.

Stars broke through the clouds of sand and winked away again. One of the clouds rolled over and smiled at her. It wore the face of the dead skinhead who had killed Bjorn. The Russian enterpreneur stood up behind him and tried to hand-roll a cigarette, but the wind kept blowing the tobacco away, each of the shreds a drop of brownish blood.

At least she wasn't hearing voices again.

"I'm muddy," Billy Ray said. "I hate being dirty."

"I'll never get the sand out of my hair," Zoe said.

The man behind her was in superb physical shape, his muscles taut as plates of steel. She guessed he worked out as a sort of defense against his ugliness.

"How long until we get there?" Billy Ray asked.

Zoe looked at the little pocket locator. "Half an hour," she said.

"We can't go faster?"

"No."

The joker behind her shifted his posture. "Damn," he said. She could feel the tension in him, a rage that seemed personal rather than righteous. But he wasn't the kind to talk much, it seemed.

Zoe watched for roads, for trucks, for people who might shoot at them. We're dead, Daddy, she told Bjorn. I don't think I can get Mommy out of this, or the kids, or me. I'm sorry.

You aren't dead yet, honey. Bjorn spoke to her, his voice a voice of wilderness, so that she tasted fresh-caught salmon tossed on spring riverbanks, and nosed for honey in the tickling dust of dead trees.

She was hearing voices, yes, but at least she wasn't hearing the voices of strangers, or of sand.

"Don't fall asleep," Billy Ray said.

"Sleep? Sleep would be so nice, but I won't sleep. I'll be good. Sorry, Daddy," Zoe said.

Billy Ray shook her. "Stop that! Don't flip out, okay?"

My world is dying and I can't stop it. We're all going to die, but this man says don't flip out. He's crazy, Daddy. "Okay," Zoe said.

A hunchbacked man sat on the air beside them. He had something like a scuba tank strapped on his back. "Billy Ray," the man said. "I know you."

"Quasi? What the hell are you doing here?" Billy Ray said.

"I have to go. Everywhere he said. Spray them all. I have to remember. Be careful." He fumbled for something attached to the tank on his back, but before he reached it, Quasiman dissolved into the air.

"Yeah, right, Quas." Billy Ray shrugged and stared at the landscape. Dawn showed roads below them now, and scrubby fields, and the earthen ramparts and barbed wire fences that marked a land in turmoil.

"Zoe? That's Jerusalem, up ahead," Billy Ray said. "Maybe you'd better bring this thing down."

She smelled smoke. Something was very, very wrong. The popcorn sound of gunfire rose toward them from the huddle of yellow stone, the maze of streets where people rushed back and forth like ants fleeing a kicked anthill. The streets were filled with cars and donkeys and camels and trucks, but none of them were water trucks.

She had to get Anne, get the Escorts, get them out!

The city was on fire. Zoe spiraled the carpet down toward Jerusalem.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

Ray was worried about the attention they might attract as they approached the city on the flying carpet, but he soon saw that Jerusalem had other things to worry about. As they swooped down over the Walled City they saw smoke, street fights, and bodies lying everywhere.

"Jesus," Ray said. "It's a madhouse down there."

They landed on the flat roof of an apartment building avoiding the gates that were heavily guarded from the outside.

"I've got to find my mother and the kids," Zoe said. "What are you going to do?"

What was he going to do? He didn't know. He had to find Harvest and stop her, although it looked like they might be too late for that. He hated her. He should hate her. But he realized that he didn't. She'd betrayed him. Betrayed, hell, she'd tried to kill him in a particularly excruciating manner. But he could only think of her beauty, her cockiness, her coolness under pressure, her near-insatiable desire. She was everything he ever wanted in a woman, and by God he loved her still. He would always love her. Shit. What was he going to do? He gave Zoe the only answer he could.

"Kick ass."

Ray inserted clean filters in his nose and put one of Zoe's extra surgical masks over his mouth. He felt feverish and light-headed. It could be an army of microbes working on him, whittling down his defenses until he collapsed in a pile of red goo. Or it could be the fact that he'd lost his woman, broken his arm, and hadn't eaten for twelve hours. Whatever, it wouldn't hurt to be a little cautious, what with the Black Trump raging through the city.

"So long, Ray," Zoe said.

"So long. And good luck."

They opened the hatchway on the roof and went downstairs. It was a death house. An entire family, kids, parents, and grandparents had perished in their own blood. He and Zoe parted at the door. She went to seek her own family.

Ray went to look for April Harvest.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

"They've found the truck!" Needles burst into the room where Gregg and Hannah waited. "It's near the Wailing Wall. Come on - the Black Dog's already gone after it."

Puppetman shrieked inside. No! We can't go out there! Hannah was already up. Her face grim as she pulled her filter mask down, her hands covered in a double pair of rubber doves, she took the Uzi that Needles offered her. "Hannah," Gregg began, "We don't know if masks and filters are going to stop the Trump. We can't - "

"We have to," Hannah said. Her voice was muffled but her conviction was clear to the power inside Greg. He could barely see the core of doubt inside it. "I'm not going to stay here. If you can't, fine. But I'm going."

"But I don't ..." Gregg stopped. He wore a mask, too, one jury-rigged to fit him as best they could, and his feet were swathed in wrappings of plastic that made it difficult for him to grasp anything. If I get out there and one part of this garbage doesn't work, I'm dead! he wanted to cry, and he knew the power inside him was shouting the same words. But Hannah was already heading out of the door behind Needles, and he didn't want to be alone.

Not here. Not now.

"Wait!" he called. "I'm coming with you."

Together, they went from the catacombs out into the streets of Jerusalem.

In the hours since Hannah and Gregg had seen the water truck, the Black Trump had begun its terrible reign in the Jokers' Quarter. For those infected, the first symptom was a raging headache, followed quickly by a fever that would not break. Still, this was no worse than a bad sinus infection. "A few days bed rest, some decongestants ..." That was the doctor's reply to the first calls from the parents of the joker children sprayed by Harvest.

In another few hours, those same parents called again, in fear and panic this time.

The virus attacked the bloodstream, tearing apart the red blood cells and at the same time sending a series of disastrous clots throughout the body. The skin became a network of bruises, and the thinning soft skin tore open with the slightest provocation - the bleeding, once begun, would not stop. Purple lesions were visible within six hours, and the victims bled from every available orifice: the mouth, the nose, the anus, the eyes, from the ripped skin. That blood was laden with the virus, and a touch was enough to infect someone. Coughing, the victims sprayed poison into the air. Later, the victims would vomit immense quantities of black fluid: clotted blood and bile.

As the clots rippled through the body, strokes were common. Victim's faces became rigid, masklike, expressionless. Like a zombie, they might lie unresponsive or their personality might change: rage and acute paranoia were common. Bleeding, dying, some fought those trying to care for them, breaking away with desperate strength and escaping out into the city.

In every case, those infected would die. There was no reprieve.

The Black Trump was the Black Queen done slowly. It was the rot of the grave inflicted on a living, aware host. It was agony and torture and anguish, and death was the only release from its grasp.

The evening breeze scattered the seeds of terror, and they grew.

Gregg and Hannah entered into a scene of carnage. Fires were burning in several of the houses - whether set by the infected themselves or by terrified neighbors, they'd never know. The strobes of police and fire vehicles bounced from the walls.

Gregg could sense the quick rise of fright in Needles. The boy's face was drawn and pale. He cradled his Uzi in his hands, twisting them around the short, ugly barrel, his claws clattering against the vented steel. Gregg could see his fear, coiling green around him. Puppetman hollered and fought - Stop it! Goddamn you, stop it! - but the bars held. "I wish I knew where Zoe was," Needles said as they came to the gate out of the quarter. "Jellyhead, Angelfish, Anna. I wish I knew they were okay."

Hannah glanced at Gregg. Don't let him go! "Go on," Hannah said. "We know how to get to the Wall. One person more or less isn't going to make any difference. Not now. Go on."

Needles hesitated. Then he nodded. As Puppetman shrilled curses, he took off running back into the Quarter. The strings to the youth pulled taut, thinning with distance, and then Gregg could no longer feel him. Hannah sighed, and Gregg saw the tears behind the glass ports of her mask.

What the hell. There's a thousand more out here tonight ...

He had no idea how long it took to move through the nightmare streets to the Wailing Wall. Crowds raced through the narrow streets, screaming and raging, breaking windows of the shops, looting, attacking people blindly. Twice, Hannah had to fire her weapon in the air to frighten off attackers. There were bodies everywhere, and it was difficult to tell if they'd been killed in the rioting or by the Black Trump. Gregg didn't bother to look closely enough to tell. Puppetman screamed the whole time, shaking the walls of Gregg's mind in terror, afraid that with each ragged inhalation Gregg was breathing in their eventual death.

As they approached the square before the Wall, they could smell smoke and see firelight bouncing from the fronts of the stalls. "Shit," Hannah breathed, and ran.

The water truck was burning, the smoke black and full of the smell of burning rubber, gasoline, and flesh. There were bodies scattered around the truck; some Fists, but most of them in the uniform of the Sharks. "I don't see Harvest, or the Dog," Hannah said. She leaned down, peering at the nearest body, and Gregg saw her pull back as red terror shot from her mind. Puppetman moaned. "Christ!" Hannah said. She backed away.

"What?" Gregg asked. "Who is it?"

"A Shark. A nat," Hannah answered. "But look - " She pointed, and her finger trembled. Gregg sidled forward on all sixes, ready to retreat and feeling his body trembling. In the light of the burning truck, he could see the man's face.

Dark blood was still pulsing from his mouth, from his nose, from his wide-open eyes. His arms were covered with purple bruises, and they leaked blood as well. He smelled of corruption.

"Yes," someone said harshly to their right. The voice was familiar. "Humorous, isn't it?" The speaker came around the corner of one of the stalls, using an automatic weapon for a crutch, and Gregg saw the mask: a hound's face. A bullet had shattered the man's right leg; Gregg could see the blood and the fragments of white bone in the gaping wound. The Dog had wrapped a tourniquet about the leg just below the knee.

"What's humorous?" Gregg asked.

"The Black Trump kills nats, too. Don't you find that funny? I do. It's the funniest damn thing I've ever heard."

The Black Dog laughed, a sound dark as the blood.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

It's a war, Zoe told herself, it's a war and people are dying, but it can't be the Black Trump. It can't be!

Billy Ray led her into a room where her last shreds of hope lay dead, where huddled corpses lay in heaps. The simoom howled outside and the Black Trump was loose in Jerusalem.

"Come on, Zoe!" Billy Ray shoved through the doorway of the tiny rooftop room. Zoe scanned the huddled corpses as she went past them, looking for Anne, or Owl, but these were strangers. They weren't hers, thank God. She followed Billy Ray out, down ancient stairs whose steps were smooth curves, the stone worn away by generations of human feet.

Billy Ray vanished in the crowd on the street. A joker appeared out of the haze and snatched at the pink snout of Zoe's surgical mask. Zoe straight-armed the poor devil out of the way. Damn, if only she'd thought to carry the carton of masks out of the lab! Too late, too late. She pulled the kilim over her head to hide the mask and kept running.

Got to get Anne. Got to get the kids. The Trump is loose and they might die, but I know enough isolation technique so we won't spread it to each other - so does Jellyhead, she's had some medical training; she can take care of the others if I die.

Gunfire broke out where two alleys intersected. Zoe caught a glimpse of the black robes of Fist guards battling nats in green-and-brown camo. She dodged into a twisting alley, away from the guns and the screams.

No go. The alley dead-ended in a pile of burning mattresses. Clouds or black smoke that reeked of kerosene rolled toward her. Zoe ducked under an awning and jerked a table out from beneath it, scattering cucumbers and lemons into the street. She hoisted herself onto the awning and climbed the wall.

Others had taken to the rooftops, trying to avoid the crush of the streets. Zoe saw a rifle aimed in her direction, dropped and rolled, and ran for home. Someone screamed behind her. In the alleys below, coughs and pleas rose from the swirling crowds. A few robed figures crawled toward the city gates, or lay against the walls, no longer able to crawl.

But Zoe was running the other way, into the Quarter.

She reached her own roof, dropped onto the tiny stoop, and pounded on the door.

"Mama! Mama, let me in!"

"Zoe!" An adolescent's voice cracked on the shouted word; Owl? Angelfish? The door opened and Zoe faced a rifle barrel, Angelfish above it. Anne sat on a chair, her hands behind her. Both of them were masked in doubled bandanas, but they were masked.

"Don't touch me!" Zoe slid inside the door and braced her back against the wall, her hands behind her. A newscaster's rapid patter came from Needles' boombox in the corner. "Where's everybody? We've got to get out of here!"

"Jellyhead's out with Jan and Balthazar, setting up quarantine shelters where they can," Anne said. "Angel tied me to this chair when I tried to leave with them."

"I had to," Angel said. "I'm sorry, Zoe, but - "

The stripes on Angel's face pulsed with color; he was nervous about Zoe's reaction. "Good for you, Angel." Food, some water, the rifle Angel held should keep people from coughing in their faces. Zoe grabbed a clean garbage bag and pulled food and a plastic jug of cold water out of the tiny fridge. Were the waterlines contaminated? We'll boil it before we drink it.

"They say it's a biologic weapon that kills jokers. We have to fight it, Zoe. Let me help them. I'm going to die anyway," Anne said.

"Ma! Listen to me! There are dead nats on the streets out there! This plague kills everyone who gets it! The Black Dog has a nuclear bomb, and if the Black Trump doesn't kill us, he'll set it off, or the UN will use one of theirs to do the job! We can try to live through this or we can get blasted into atoms!"

"We can't leave," Anne said. Even perched on a kitchen chair with her hands tied behind her, she spoke with sweet reason. "The UN has set up roadblocks. So if you'll just have Angel untie me, we can get to work. While we have our strength, we'll do what we can."

"... repeat, do not try to leave Jerusalem. If you feel ill, please report to the medical stations in your neighborhood, where UN workers will assist you. Do not pan - "

The announcers voice stopped abruptly, replaced by static.

"Angel?" Zoe tied the plastic sack of food and water to the belt of her robe and signalled Angelfish with a look. He untied Anne's bonds. She blinked at the smoke outside and started down the stairs.

"No, Ma," Zoe said. "Up on the roof."

"What?"

"There's transportation there," Zoe said. She leaped and scrambled up, Angel beside her with his rifle.

"Hold up your arms, Ma," Zoe said.

"Oh, for pity's sake," Anne said, but she lifted her arms, they hauled, and Anne made it over the parapet and onto the roof.

Zoe puffed her carpet back to life, settled Anne in the middle, and climbed into steering position. "Get on behind us, Angel," she yelled. "Pour when I say!"

Angel dripped water onto the carpet's tail, Zoe shouted, and they lifted off into the smoke.

"Shit, Zoelady!" Angel yelled "This is seriously righteous!"

"Can we pick up Jan and Needles?" Anne asked.

"I'm looking, Mama." Zoe aimed the carpet for the shortest route over the walls. The three of us barely fit on this thing; no, Ma, I can't get them.

Up, up, over street fires and screams. The red streaks of tracer bullets dotted the smoky air. Zoe cleared the wall and aimed for high, for south. She could see the Zion gate, the road to Bethlehem. On it, Israeli and Palestinian soldiers in gas masks and goggles stood back-to-back, ready to shoot anyone trying to come in or out of the tortured city.

Zoe pushed the carpet into a steep climb.

A cluster of bright blossoms flared up from the Allenby bridge. She stared at it in fascination. It was pretty, and so far away.

The carpet lurched.

"Zoe, I'm hit!" Angel yelled.

Anne twisted around and got hold of the boy, pulling him toward her with a mother's strength. The carpet bucked and Zoe fought for control. Back. Back into that hell.

She circled the carpet toward the walls and down into the city, aiming for any refuge, dodging bullets she couldn't see, looking for the thickest smoke, the greatest confusion. Among the buildings now, skimming the tops of the crowded, narrow streets.

Anne's voice screamed something she couldn't understand, a distraction Zoe didn't need; around this corner was a straight stretch of street where she could set this baby down.

Bruckner, Bjorn's voice said.

He isn't here, Daddy. Zoe skidded the carpet to a halt in the crowded street. The crowd was fleeing something she couldn't see.

"Nuke!" she heard. "They're going to blow us to hell!"

In wedge formation, a dozen black-robed jokers with rifles fought their way through the smoke-hazed crowd. Zoe got her arms beneath Angel's armpits and heaved him toward the scant shelter of a doorway, out of the line of traffic. Anne threw herself over Angel, shielding him with her body.

Open mouths, screams, chatter of automatic fire, the cracks of rifle stocks and fists, Zoe took an elbow in the ribs and stumbled against the wall, kicking out at the black robe in front of her.

The joker grabbed her and pulled her away from Anne and Angel.

"Mama!" Zoe screamed. "Let me go!" She struggled with the joker who held her and tried to fight her way back toward Anne. He slapped her, a blow that made her gasp. Above his mask, strange yellow eyes -

"Balthazar!"

"Hurry, Zoe!" the goat man yelled.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

Ray had never seen a city gone mad before. People were fighting with nothing to fight for, running with nowhere to run. They were looting and stealing even as they sweated blood.

He looked all over the city for Harvest. He saw her handiwork everywhere. Darkness had fallen by the time he reached the Wailing Wall. He heard the sound a block away; when he entered the square, a thousand candles were burning. A great mass of people knelt at the Wall, praying with all their hearts, men and women and jokers intermixed; in their fear and grief, no one was trying to enforce the age-old segregations.

They'd finally realized that God doesn't give a rat's ass whether you're man, woman, or joker, Ray thought, and it's too damn late for most of them.

He was about to continue his hopeless quest to track down Harvest when an apparition, an answer to the wailing prayers of the multitude, appeared suddenly in the darkness. Quasiman.

He still had the tank strapped to his back. A hose ran from the tank. He started spraying the crowd. Candles began to flicker out.

At first most of the faithful didn't realize he was there, but a soaking from a power nozzle gets your attention pretty quickly. Someone else remembered that the Black Trump had been brought to Jerusalem as liquid sprayed over a crowd. And they went crazy. They deserted the Wall with a single, outraged roar.

Ray didn't know what the hunchback was doing, but he remembered his cryptic warning. Don't drink the wine.... It seemed clear to him that Quasi would never hurt anyone.

Not that the maddened crowd would see it that way.

Ray raced to Quasiman's side, flinging jokers aside as he bulled through. He planted himself firmly in front of the hunchback. Quasi had materialized in front of a hummus stand; the crowd could only come from the front and sides. "Back off!" Ray roared.

The crowd came at them with fear-maddened features and clawed hands, screaming and cursing in half a dozen languages while Quasiman looked on, blank-eyed. "No," the hunchback said. "I remember ... it's to help ..." Ray had said that he was going to kick ass. Well, here were a shit-load of asses to kick. He launched into a series of lightning attacks. He didn't have time to be careful. He felt bones snap and crunch as half a dozen of the mob went down in the first second. Some were trampled under and hurt a lot worse than by Rays fists, feet, or elbows.

Ray's broken arm hadn't fully knit. It hurt like a son of a bitch when he connected with it. The pain was turning to a deep nausea and he didn't know how long he'd be able to hold out; he was beginning to think that this hadn't been such a good idea.

Then the joker let fly with the sprayer he carried on his back.

The mob went schizo. Suddenly it no longer wanted to be near the carrier of death. The rioters in the front rank suddenly went into reverse. Those in the rear peeled off and the mob parted in front of them like the Red Sea in front of Moses.

Ray hunkered down and took a deep breath, letting his tingling arm dangle limply. "Jesus," he said aloud, "I need a vacation." He turned to Quasiman. "Well, now that I've saved your ass, tell me what the hell you've got there."

For once, Quasiman seemed to be relatively in one piece. "The Overtrump," he said. "Jay said to spray them all, all over the world ... To keep them safe ..."

Ray felt as if a crushing weight had been lifted from his shoulders. "Well, Christ, Quasi. Give me a squirt."

He took off his face mask and popped the filters out of his nose and Quasiman sprayed him in the face.

"Who made it?" Ray asked after Quasiman had hosed him down.

"Mark Meadows," Quasiman said.

"The hippie?" Ray asked. Jesus, who knows what was in something cooked up by Mark Meadows? Still, the guy was supposed to know his shit. "Well, how did he - never mind. Explanations later. Right now we have to get you to the authorities."

Quasiman nodded decisively. "I remember. Let's go."

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

Hannah turned to Gregg. Her face was lined, drawn. She brushed limp hair back from her face. "I ..." Hannah started to speak. She grimaced. Her hands fluttered up and fell again to her lap. "Gregg, this is it, isn't it? The Card Sharks got what they wanted, and more. Unless the Trump gets wiped out now, it's going to spread, and one hell of a lot of people are going to die. Everywhere. Everyone."

Gregg took a breath. He could smell the smoke, the death all around him, and he knew that if he could smell it, it could kill him. Fires lit the night sky. His body wanted to run, wanted to flee. Hannah had gone to the wounded Black Dog, helping the Fist leader. "Yeah. We lost - I thought we had a chance, but we lost."

"We can end it," Hannah said, "if we want to."

Puppetman howled, shaking the bars of his cage. "Hannah - "

"You know it's the only way, Gregg. There's no choice, not any more."

"Hannah, do you realize what you're saying? That means - "

"Yes," she said. She brushed hair back from her forehead, as if what she were saying was simple small talk. "It means all of us here die. One way or the other. What the hell. We can die sitting here until the virus kills us. Or we die when the bomb goes off."

"What are you saying?" the Black Dog asked. His breathing was labored, and he hung onto Hannah. The Fist had lost a great deal of blood, and Gregg could feel him fighting against shock and pain - a table laid out for the feast. Puppetman hungered.

"Your nuke," Hannah told him. She swept her free arm out, taking in the square and the city beyond. "Look at this. The virus is out there, killing. The panic's already spreading. People are going to get into cars, into boats, into airplanes. They'll flee - and some of them will be carrying the virus. Where they go - Damascus, Tel Aviv, Cairo, Athens, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Rome, London, New York - they'll bring the virus there. Unless we stop it. Now."

No! shouted Puppetman in reply. I won't let you! I'm BACK, damn it! I'm not going to die now, not again! The mind-creature hurled himself at the bars inside Gregg's head, and Gregg staggered with the impact. Fuck you! it shrieked. Goddamn it, let me OUT!

For a moment, the power was free, and Puppetman went tearing madly at the strings to Hannah. Gregg caught him, dragged the thing back while it tore and scraped at him with mental claws and fangs, spitting and hissing. You idiot! You fool! She wants to KILL us!

You can't touch her. I told you. I won't allow it.

She doesn't goddamn LOVE you, Greggie. You've seen the rotten shit inside her; you've seen the way she really feels.

You're wrong. Anyway, she's right - this is what we have to do.

And you're suddenly a moral paragon? You're a saint? I KNOW you, you shit. We always wanted the same things, down inside. You wanted it all the same way I did. And you know what? YOU brought me back. You brought me back. You brought me back because you missed it.

Liar! The rage allowed Gregg to grasp the power and hurl it back into darkness, slamming the bars in place once again. Liar! He breathed hard, raggedly, allowing himself to see the world around him again. While he'd been away, wrestling with Puppetman, the Black Dog had come to his own decision.

"I thought we were on opposite sides," the Black Dog said to Hannah.

"Are we still?"

"I guess sides don't much matter anymore," the Black Dog told her. "We need to hurry."

"Gregg?" Hannah had turned to him. He could feel the fire of her gaze.

Noooooo! "Yes," Gregg told her. "I'll help. It's the only way we can end this."

I'm not going to let it happen, Greggie. The voice snarled deep down in its cage. I tell you now: I'm not going to let you kill us.

Limping, hobbling, the three of them made their way down streets bright with fire through the maddened, terrified city.

"There," the Black Dog grunted at last. He pointed down a cul-de-sac. Centuries-old buildings hemmed in the narrow entrance. "Damn!"

Gregg looked. An ancient, slat-sided truck was rumbling as someone revved the engine, gunning it again and again. Twisted Fists were offloading something from the rear into a garage behind the truck. They looked up as Gregg, Hannah, and the Black Dog approached.

"What the hell are you doing?" the Black Dog snapped. "Who told you to unload the nuke, Bruckner?"

A florid-faced man in an Andy Capp hat leaned out from the drivers window. "My decision, mate," he said in a thick, lower-class British accent. His headlights speared out into the night. "I'm getting the hell out of here. Anybody that wants to go with me, they're welcome."

"You can't do that," Hannah shouted over the thunder of the truck. She looked at the jokers milling around the truck, clambering over the side into the back. Even with Gregg's near-sighted eyes, he could see the bruises on some of their arms; he could see jokers helping fevered, unconscious brethren onto the truck. "Some of them are infected. You'll just spread the virus."

"Get out of my way, lady," Bruckner snarled in return. "You're in my way."

"You can't!"

"I can. I will. And I'll run you the hell over if you try to stop me."

The Black Dog had thrown off Hannah's support. Now he reached for the Uzi still strapped around him, bringing the weapon to bear on Bruckner and the truck. "I give the orders here," the Black Dog said. "And I say - "

A single shot echoed, cutting off the statement. The Black Dog grunted and his body twisted around violently, the Uzi flying out of his weak grasp. As the Black Dog crumpled, Bruckner gunned the truck and jammed it into gear. Hannah and Gregg pressed against the walls as the truck went by in a wave of exhaust and sandy dust, the headlights blinding them as it passed. Hannah ran to the Black Dog as Bruckner and his load of jokers careened around the corner and out of sight. The Black Dog grimaced as she lifted him up, and Gregg saw the red wetness spreading across his abdomen. "Goddamn!" the Fist said. "Goddamn! My own people ..."

"The nuke," Hannah said.

"In there." The Black Dog pointed to the open doors of the garage. The Black Dog tried to rise, couldn't. Hannah bent down, facing away from him. "Arms around my neck," she said. "Hold on." With the Black Dog on her back, she managed to stagger into the garage and shut the doors, while Gregg examined the machinery inside.

The nuke had been partially disassembled, the metal shell removed to show wiring and the packs of conventional explosives arranged carefully around the inner core. "It looks complicated," Gregg said.

"It's actually three bombs," the Black Dog answered. "A nuclear device is two atomic weapons of sub-critical mass, surrounded by another conventional bomb. That one's really the key; it's a carefully shaped explosion which will force the two sections together into one supercritical mass. A nuke is a dance of death. The conventional explosive - attached to the timer - must go off at the exact moment the two radioactive sections are released. Otherwise ..." The Black Dog grimaced and slumped down to a sitting position, his back to the wall near the doors. "So tired," he said. "It hurts."

"What do we do?" Hannah asked.

Behind the mask, the Black Dog's eyes had closed. Now they opened again. "Balthazar did some re-wiring" the Black Dog said. His breath rattled, liquid. "The timer's there, on top. All you have to do is press a damn button, and the sequence starts: ten minutes, and boom!" The Black Dog started a laugh that turned into a bloody cough. He wiped at his mouth and smeared blood over the mask. "Just one thing" he said when he'd recovered. "Once you start it, you can't stop it."

"What do you mean?" Gregg asked. "That's the stupidest - "

"We were going to drop it off for the Nur, remember?" the Black Dog said. "Balthazar rigged it so that if you tamper with it, or pull the wires, you set off the conventional explosive."

The timing device hung on a tangle of wires over the front of the mess, incomprehensible Cyrillic characters inscribed on the black steel. Hannah crouched alongside Gregg, and the closeness of her caused Puppetman to slam against the walls of Gregg's brain. The device had been simplified: a large red button, protected by a plastic shield, had been set in the center. The Black Dog had wanted to make it simple for Bruckner to set the timer and make his escape.

That would make it easy for them now.

No! Puppetman shrilled insistently inside Gregg, You can't!

This time, as Gregg tried to push the power back down, Puppetman slithered desperately from his grasp. For a moment, the tints around Hannah deepened. He could feel the desperation that drove Hannah, and within it the sliver of doubt that he knew must be there.

Take her! he heard Puppetman whispering. The woman's mad, and she's about to kill thousands upon thousands of innocent people. You think the guilt of a few deaths is going to compare to that? How stained will your soul be if you allow this to happen?

Leave me alone! Gregg screamed, and he pulled back at the power, trying to drag it back into himself. This is what I want. This way I pay back all my sins!

This isn't about you, Greggie. It's me.

You ARE me! Gregg cried. We're the same!

Puppetman laughed, and for a moment, it ignored the strings, forgot about Hannah. You finally admit that? it asked. After all these years ...

Gregg placed mental arms around the power, using its momentary lapse to take it off balance and pull it back inside. For long seconds they struggled, wrestling inside Gregg. When he finally managed to throw Puppetman down, to place the cage around it once more, Gregg was exhausted. He came back to reality slowly, as if he'd been gone hours.

It had been only a moment. Hannah shook her head as if ridding herself of the shreds of a bad dream and pulled aside the shield on the timer.

"Any last reservations?" she asked, her forefinger poised above the button.

The Black Dog coughed and didn't answer. "Gregg?" Hannah asked.

"Do it," he told her, ignoring the shrill denial inside him.

Hannah pressed down. There was a soft click, then the timer on the bomb hummed, the numbers flickering on the LED display:

10:00

9:59

9:58

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

As Ray had wandered through the Old City looking for Harvest he'd noticed medical stations flying the UN flag. He took Quasiman to the nearest one. They had to be careful not to step on any of the dead or dying patients lying on stretchers or the pavement, stacked up around the building that had once been a church.

Ray pushed through to a man in a once-white coat wearing a UN arm-band and carrying a clipboard. "He's got a vaccine for the Trump!" Ray announced, pushing Quasiman forward. "Some kind of counter-virus or something ..."

"Really." The doctor looked unspeakably weary. "And who are you?"

Ray drew himself up straight. "My name is Billy Ray. I'm a Special Agent for the U.S. government."

"Go away," the doctor said, "we're very busy here."

Ray grabbed the doctor's arm. He put steel in the grip and in his voice. "Listen, moron, Quasiman here came from halfway around the world to save our asses. Give him a chance! Tell him what you've got. Quasi."

The hunchback turned blank eyes on Ray. "What do I have?"

"Oh, Jesus, don't space out on me now!"

The doctor would have looked panicky if he'd had the strength. He tried without much energy and no success to pull away from Ray. "Young man - "

A woman approached, interrupting them. "What's going on here?" She, too, looked tired and feverish.

"This man is insane, Sheila. He's babbling about a cure for the Black Trump."

She peered at him blearily. And suddenly Ray knew her ...

"I'm a government agent," Ray said desperately. "I met you in Atlanta, at the Democratic convention in '88. Some reception for Hartmann delegates ... asked you out. You turned me down. Remember?"

"Ray ... Billy Ray." The name seemed to suddenly stick in her conscious. "Yes, I remember." She looked closely at him. "What happened to your face?"

Ray waved it aside. "I screwed it up so that I could go underground and join the Twisted Fists. Listen! Quasiman has a cure for the Black Trump. Well, not a cure, really, a vaccine or something. He brought it from Mark Meadows."

"Meadows? Mark Meadows?" She seemed to be having problems following Ray's story.

"Yes. Mark. Meadows. The biochemist. Got it?"

Davidson nodded. "Yes. Yes, I think I do."

"This is nonsense," the doctor said. "Even if this man is who he says he is, why, we don't know what that, that other fellow has. We have to test it, double-blind - "

"Test my ass!" Ray roared. "What the fuck difference does it make? Everyone here is dead, anyway! What could it hurt?"

Davidson seemed to shake off her lethargy. "Yes, he's right. Meadows is a brilliant biochemist. If he's succeeded we'll soon know. If he hasn't ... well ..." her voice trailed off, hopelessly. "We'll administer the serum."

"I won't allow this ... this travesty!" the doctor said. "I'll - "

"You'll what?" Ray said, picking him up one handed and slamming him against a wall. The doctor fell silent. Ray dropped him.

Quasiman seemed to rouse himself as Ray unstrapped the canister from his back. "Hannah," he said distinctly. "Don't!" And he vanished.

Ray was left holding the canister of the Overtrump.

"Don't what?" Sheila Davidson asked.

Ray turned to her. He noticed for the first time that her perspiration was tinged with blood. "Uh ... don't waste time. Spray everyone. Listen, why don't you take some of this stuff yourself? It couldn't hurt."

She smiled at him, but it was a pained, wan smile. "No. I don't suppose it could ..."

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

Hannah sank down, sitting with her back to the ugly device. She seemed empty. There were no colors around her at all.

"We've got company," the Black Dog said from alongside the door. They could all hear it: muffled shouts, and hammering on the warehouse doors. The doors bowed, and they could glimpse torchlight between them, and the front rank of a crowd. There were angry faces there, joker and nat alike, and their fury swelled like a red wave, threatening to tear down the doors all by itself. Gregg shivered with the power of the crowd-emotions. "The locks aren't going to hold."

"Stay back!" Hannah shouted at them, her voice small against the growing roar outside. Something hard rammed the doors, bending them. "There's a bomb in here! Get away!" Hannah glanced at Gregg. She's mine! Mine! "They could still stop us," she said. "I wish the damn thing would hurry up!" Then she laughed, almost hysterically. "Listen to me," she said. "Rooting for a damn nuclear explosion."

Gregg looked around the room; the curved steel plates that had once covered the nuke were leaning against the walls of the room. Gregg went to one of them and sniffed its delightful sheen. "Hannah," he said. "Grab these. Put them in front of the door. That's it - jam them in tight. Here, take this bar and stick it on like a brace ..." Gregg directed the building of a loose barrier of metal around the door. In a few minutes, they had an impressive heap in front of the door.

"That's not going to keep anyone out," Hannah said. "None of it's attached to anything."

"Give me a second...."

Gregg scrambled up until he stood on top of the heap. He looked at the metal, let its delicious tang fill him.

And he vomited, carefully, again and again, as he moved around the mess. In a few moments, the metal began to sag and fuse, the plates melting into each other, the bars and braces fusing into the adjoining pieces. The biological welds created a massive unit of steel: plates, bars, hinges and locks, all lumped around the wood and effectively sealing them in.

"There," Gregg told Hannah and Puppetman. "Now it's over. Forever. No way out, no way in." And there's nothing you can do about it, he told Puppetman. Nothing.

Inside, Puppetman fumed. Gregg huddled by Hannah and wondered what death would feel like. He snuck a glance at the LEDs.

6:00

5:59

For four minutes now, they'd had time to contemplate their lives, and their deaths. There was nothing to say. None of them spoke. Gregg wondered if there was silence in Hannah or the Black Dog's minds. There certainly was none inside his.

There's still time to stop it! Still time!

All of Gregg's strength went to keeping Puppetman down. He had nothing left for anything else.

"Hannah?"

The voice startled all of them. Hannah scrambled to her feet, trying to bring the Black Dog's Uzi to bear, Gregg skittered reflexively back several feet until he bumped into the wheel of the bomb trailer. Hannah fumbled with the safety, then laughed. "Quasi!" she shouted, dropping the Uzi and hugging the joker. Then the laughter died. "Oh, Quasi, you have to leave here. Now."

"Hell, yes," Gregg said excitedly. Optimism suddenly flooded through him. We're going to get out of this! We're going to LIVE! "And he can tale us with him." Inside, Puppetman suddenly yammered in hope.

"One at a time. That's all I can do."

"Hey," Gregg told the hunchback, and a voice echoed him from inside. He's got to take you first. Chances are he'll take Hannah somewhere else and then totally forget what he's doing. He'll never make it back in time. You first ... US first.... "No problem. One at a time, then."

"Gregg," Hannah said. She waved a hand at the bomb, at the timing mechanism. "Remember this?"

"So what?" Gregg told her. "It's all set. We're not infected Hannah. There's no reason we have to die here. Not now. The bomb will go off on its own. Let it do it while we're somewhere else."

"No," Quasi said.

I'll goddamn MAKE you ... Puppetman seethed. Let me have him, Greegie. Almost, Gregg let the power loose, but he held it back another moment. "Quasi, we don't exactly have a lot of time for discussion here."

"Someone has to stay. I've seen it."

"Why, Quasi?" Hannah asked far more gently than Gregg would have. "Why does someone have to stay?"

"The Overtrump," Quasiman answered. "I brought the ..." He seemed to forget the word, then his face brightened. "... stuff. From Mark." Quasiman stopped. His left hand disappeared and his gaze went vacant. A thin line of drool trickled from one side of his mouth.

Hannah took Quasimans head in her hands, forcing him to look at her and causing a surge of irrational jealousy in Gregg. "Quasi, please. What are you trying to say?"

For long seconds, there was no answer. "Quasi..." Hannah said again, and the joker shook himself. He smiled at her, and Gregg could feel again the outwelling colors of his love for Hannah. "A cold," he told her. "Complete sentences. The Overtrump is the cure ... like a cold ... only then you don't get the Black Trump ..."

"Oh, God." Hannah let her hands drop. She looked at Quasiman as if he were an accusation. "You're not joking? It works?"

"Works," Quasi nodded. "Working already. You need to stop ..." For a second, Quasiman's entire upper body winked out of existence, returning eerily a moment later. "I ..." he said. "I need to take Hannah with me. I ... can't hold it together any longer. It's getting too hard. I'll ... forget." The agony in his voice was exquisite. Puppetman howled.

"Going now," Quasiman said. "Hannah ..." He opened his arms. Hannah looked back at Gregg.

"Quasi, I ..." Gregg could see the hesitation in her, the guilt. Puppetman screamed to be released. She doesn't want to be the one to go. Look at the fear, the guilt, the uncertainty. This is EASY, I tell you. Let me loose and I can make her refuse Quasiman. I can make her say "Take him. Take Gregg." She loves you. She thinks life's dealt you an unfair hand and just a push will make her willing to exchange her life for yours. Just a push ...

"I can't leave Gregg," Hannah finished. "Don't you see?" Hannah cried. "We can't stop the nuke. It's already too late for Jerusalem." Her face had gone pale, and the colors of guilt and shame surged around her like a wild surf. "God, I've killed all those innocent people ..."

"It's not too late," the Black Dog husked out. "Remember what I said about the dance, how everything has to go off at just the right time? Set off the conventionals too early, and you'll get a dandy explosion and scatter bits of radioactive material around, but you won't get a nuclear explosion."

"How do we do that?"

"Yank the wires. That's the simplest way."

Let me out! I can save US now. To hell with Hannah, let her deal with this.

Quasi won't take me, Gregg told the voice.

Quasi'll do whatever Hannah asks him to do. You know that. Let me OUT!

She'll die if we do that.

So fucking what? WE'LL live.

Puppetman shook the bars. They bent under the pressure, creaking. Gregg's head felt as if it was about to crack, and all the poison inside would come pouring out, all the pain and death he'd accumulated over the years, pouring out like a vile river, pulsing and hot as lava. OUT! Puppetman screamed, and the power burst from Gregg's hold. He could see it, a physical presence, a smoky, wraith-like creature that rode the strings connecting Gregg to the others. Fuck you, Greggie! You never controlled me. Never! Puppetman flew toward Hannah, already pulling the strings to her mind, and Gregg leapt after it. His stubby arms reached out, and the puppet's mittens of hands clenched at the power's body. He caught hold, and Puppetman wrenched in his grasp, turning and twisting as it tried to escape.

Goddamn you! You can't do this to her. You can't.

You can't stop me, Greggie!

"Gregg, what's the matter with you? What the hell's going on?" Hannah cried out as Gregg, his body contorted from the effort of holding Puppetman, went caroming around the room. "Gregg!" He caught a glimpse of Quasi's face, mouth gaping wide in surprise.

"He's gone crazy," the Black Dog said, levering himself onto his feet. Blood soaked his fingers and his clothes. "He's fighting himself."

Puppetman scrabbled for Hannah, its ebon fingers clutching her strings desperately. Gregg pulled it back, slamming Puppetman against the bomb's truckbed. With each blow, its face changed, an endless parade of faces, each of them someone he'd taken as a puppet: Peanut, Kahina, Hiram Worchester ... Stop! You're hurting me! each of them screamed, but Gregg continued. "Quasi!" Gregg shouted over his shoulder. "Take her! Go!"

Quasi shook his head as if lost, then reached out with powerful hands and pulled Hannah to him. "Go on!" Gregg shouted again.

"Gregg, we can't - " Hannah began.

If the initial explosion isn't shaped exactly the right way, or if it goes off early or late, then ... Puppetman heard Gregg's thought also, and the power redoubled its efforts to get free. You can't do that! I won't let you toss away my life like that. You want to do something a little good here, fine. You want to kill as few people as possible, great. Let HER do it - we can make her, we can twist her around until she fucking BEGS you to go ...

"Damn it, don't you understand? We can do something right. We can finally, really, do something right," Gregg answered, without realizing that he spoke aloud. Puppetman struck at him with ghostly fists. The power writhed, changing shape: now it was Ellen's tormented shape before him, hading in her hands their dead child, and Gregg wailed. "No!"

"Gregg - "

"Get out of here!"

Gregg found the strings that led from Puppetman to Hannah He began to tear them loose of the power, bloodily, his hands digging into the creature's death-cold entrails. Puppetman wailed as they tore loose. You can't do this!

In Quasiman's arms, Hannah looked back at Gregg, her eyes wide with uncertainty and guilt, and both he and Puppetman felt her decision crystallize in the midst of the shades even as he pulled free the last of the strings. "Gregg, I lo - " Hannah stopped.

"I know," he told her, panting, holding the power back even as it twisted and clawed, as it attempted to stuff the strings back into itself. He could hear the screaming: in the voice of Mackie Messer, of Andrea, of Succubus, of Chrysalis and Gimli and Sarah Morgenstern. It screamed in Gregg's voice, the voice Gregg had once had. "I've always known. Now please go. Quickly."

And then she and Quasiman were gone. The only sound was the Black Dog's labored breathing and the silent screaming of Puppetman, inside.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

Ray headed for the nearest manhole cover, pulled it up, and climbed down. Inside the tunnel it was dark and cool, almost restful. He was tempted to close his eyes for a moment, but he knew that if he closed them now he never would open them again.

Don't. Quasiman had said ... and somehow Ray had known.

He plunged into the tunnel, cursing the Fists and their crazy leader. The bastard must be planning to use the nuke to sterilize the city, to bomb the Black Trump out of existence. Him and Hartmann and that Bimbo Hannah Davis. Who the hell had appointed them God?

As he ran he passed others in the tunnels. Some were running, too. Others' running days were over. He stopped some, demanding to be led to the bomb, demanding to see the Black Dog, but they either didn't know or were too far gone in disease or panic to help him.

He was past desperation - desperation would have been peace of mind compared to the state he was in - when he finally ran into the familiar face he was praying for.

"Owl! Owl! It's me, Mumbles. Billy Ray!"

The teenager looked up from where he was slumped in a niche in the corridor. At first Ray thought the kid was sick or delirious, but when he grabbed him and looked close he saw that Owl had just been crying.

"Owl, snap out of it! I need help!"

"I ... I can't find anyone," he sobbed. "I can't find Needles or Zoe. Jellyhead is gone and Jan and Angel. I don't want to die alone!"

"It's all right, kid." For a second he crushed Owl to him, holding him in a fierce hug that surprised even himself. "It's okay to be scared. Jesus, you're just a kid. But listen, you're not going to die. Okay?"

He held Owl at arm's length. Owl sniffled. "Really?"

"We've got a shot at it, kid. There's an Overtrump. It's being distributed now. But tell me, is the Dog going to blow the nuke?"

Owl nodded, wiping the snot that was running out of his nose. "He said he had to blow the city to save the world."

"Well, he doesn't know shit. The world's been saved," I hope, Ray said quietly to himself. "Do you know where the bomb is?"

Owl nodded.

"Take me there. Fast!"

Owl sniffed again and wiped his nose on his sleeve. They moved off together under the Old City.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

Balthazar held Zoe with an iron grip and forced his way into the crowd. Nats, jokers, their differences seemed small in the pervading terror. Zoe twisted, fighting to get back to Anne, to Angel. Zoe managed to get a quick look behind her; Angel was on his feet, and Jan! Jan supported him on one side, Anne on the other, the three of them in the center of the phalanx of Fists behind Balthazar.

Ahead of them, a battered truck labored toward the Zion gate, a truck that threatened to collapse under the weight of what seemed to be a thousand people who fought each other in an effort to cling to the battered boards on its sides. Balthazar struggled toward it.

"Bruckner!" Balthazar yelled.

Shortcut. My God, we can get out of here -

The Fists clubbed people out of their way to make a path toward the tailgate of the truck. Someone reached a three-fingered hand down to Zoe and pulled her aboard.

Angel, Jan and Anne tumbled in beside her. The truck stank of chickenshit. An occasional white feather floated free and out into the street.

Zoe tried to get farther forward, tried to make space for Balthazar, who clung to one of the slats on the truck's side and aimed his rifle at the crowd that followed the truck. The truck's gears ground against each other in agony.

"Only chance," Balthazar panted. "Countdown's running!"

The nuke! The Black Dog was setting off the nuke?

Anne held Angelfish on her lap and sheltered him as best she could with her shoulders, Michaelangelo's Pieta - Jan pressed a wad of her skirt against the wound on Angel's side; bright blood seeped around the girl's fingers. The truck sideswiped a Mercedes and slewed the other way, its tires screeching. Bruckner was getting up some speed, but they were still within the city walls.

Balthazar slammed the butt of his rifle, once, twice, on a pair of hands that clung to the tailgate. He was crying, and he kicked at another joker who tried to climb aboard.

Zoe understood his pain, the necessity of what he was doing; Bruckner had to get the truck out the gate and up to speed or they couldn't get gone, couldn't save even the few who had managed to fight their way onto this ark. Jan, Mama, Angelfish, if he lived, the three-fingered joker who had helped pull Zoe aboard, the others who whimpered and clung to each other in the crowded truck. All of them might survive, if Bruckner could do his trick with distance.

"Zoe!" Balthazar yelled. "Can you help Bruckner?"

He motioned toward the cab.

Zoe nodded. "I can try!" she yelled.

Hands pushed her to her feet. Jan looked up from where she huddled by Angelfish; Jan's eyes glowing bright with terror and hope in the smoky, sand-filled air.

Get Jan out! Save her!

Bjorn's voice bellowed louder than the roar of the truck's laboring engine.

Save these few, not the whole world, but they are dear and precious; yes, Daddy, I'll try.

Jokers shifted out of Zoe's way, pushed her, lifted her over their bodies and forward toward the cab.

Help Bruckner? If she could, she would animate the whole damned truck, give it wings, fly it over the Zion gate.

The three-fingered joker smiled at Zoe as she was handed over him. He smiled, and coughed, and covered his face with his hand. He stared puzzled, at the bloody mucus in his palm.

Zoe tumbled through the window of the cab and over the lap of a rifle-wielding Fist before the realization struck her.

The joker was dying. We carry the Black Trump. Can't leave. Can't take the Black Trump out of the City. Can't.

"You, is it?" Bruckner's massive arms fought the rust-stained wheel of the rickety truck.

"Yeah. Zoe." She sat wedged between Bruckner and a Fist with a rifle who peppered the crowd with bullets to try to clear a way for the roaring truck.

The truck crashed through a barrier of seller's carts, old chairs, scrap wood. They flew aside; revealing a more substantial barricade made of parked cars. Bruckner geared the truck down and bulldozed his way through, while metal screeched and glass shattered. The gate was not a hundred yards away. Beyond it, Zoe caught a glimpse of the UN flag, whipping in the vellow gusts of the simoom.

We carry the Black Trump in a rusty truck and all of them will die, nats, babies, murderers and innocents. She stared at the rusty steering wheel.

Rust. Aluminum. Thermite!

I'm sorry, Bruckner, but we can't leave. We die here. I'm sorry, Anne.

Zoe leaned forward and blew, gently, at the rust on the steering column, at the set of aluminum keys that dangled from the dashboard. Ferrous oxide, aluminum oxide. She turned her head and kissed the rifle barrel beside her, magnesium for a catalyst -

"Bloody hell!" Bruckner screamed. He lifted his scorched hands away from the red heat of the steering wheel as the reaction catalyzed every bit of steel in the truck into glowing heat, as the engine froze, as the wheels fused into solid masses of angry, reactive metal.

The truck stopped dead with its front bumper crumpled into the ramparts of the Zion gate.

Smoke, wails of terror, blasts of rifle fire, Zoe could see only Bruckner's fist, as large as a country ham. The fist seemed to expand as it drove toward her jaw.

She heard the smack as it connected.

The world turned red and then went black.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

"Up there," Owl said, "at the end of the cul-de-sac. They've stashed the bomb in the garage."

"All right." Ray took Owl by the shoulders. "They're distributing the Overtrump at a UN medical station in the old church on Chabad Street. Know where that is?"

Owl nodded. "What about the bomb?"

"Don't worry about that. I'll take care of it."

Owl nodded again. "I - "

"Owl, it was great working with you, but if you don't get going neither of us are ever going to pull another caper again."

Owl flashed a smile that made him look like a real kid. "Okay. Thanks, Mumbles. Good luck."

"Good luck," Ray said, already climbing up the rungs of the ladder to the street above.

This part of the Old City looked like a ghost town. Ray went up to the garage doors and shoved. They were locked. He thought about knocking for a second, then figured, screw it. He put his good shoulder to the door and pushed. It gave a little, but was locked from the inside. He looked at the door. The wood was thick, but old. He backed up, gave a running start, and smashed into it, shoulder first. There was groaning and complaining and some wood even splintered off the door, Ray backed up again, charged it, smashed into it, and it started to sag inward.

Cursing his aching shoulder, he got his hands around one of the door panels and yanked. The lock pad yielded, pulling out of the wooden door, and the panel collapsed.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

With Hannah gone, Gregg let go of Puppetman. Near him, the LED glowed, the numbers of its face changing inexorably.

1:00

0:59

Puppetman lay still, beaten. Strings trailed from his fingers, the ends frayed. Why did you do that? it asked him. Why? We could have lived.

"I've lived that way before," Gregg told it. "And I ended up living your life, not mine."

Someone was hammering on the doors, and Gregg could sense a familiar presence close by. "There's no way to disable the nuke other than setting off the explosives early?" he asked the Black Dog again. "You're sure?" The Black Dog just nodded, his mask hardly moving. The leader of the Fists was fighting to remain conscious, the blood loss from his wounds terrible. For a moment, he thought of using Puppetman, of forcing the Black Dog to yank the wires while Gregg fled, but the Black Dog was too weak. There was no strength left in him.

I don't have a choice.

As Puppetman watched, sullen, defeated, Gregg went to the timing mechanism. Yellow hands, his joker hands, grasped the knot of wires trailing from it to the bomb. "It's time for me to do something for myself," he said. As he spoke, the doors to the garage screeched as they were forced open by superhuman strength. Billy Ray stood in the doorway.

"Hey!" Billy Ray yelled. He paused, seeing Gregg with his hands on the timer.

"I never said thanks, Billy, and I'm sorry," Gregg called out to Ray. "And I'm sorry for this, too."

Gregg yanked the wires free of the timer.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

Damnation roared around Ray and he closed his eyes. Something wet and squishy slapped him in the face and chest and he opened his eyes, blinking.

He wasn't dead. He wasn't atomized or blown into green glowing bits. He was, however, bleeding. He put his hand to his face and brought it away covered with some kind of green goo. He suddenly realized that it wasn't blood, even, but stuff from the inside of the caterpillar that had been blasted all over the inside of the garage.

Caterpillar parts were everywhere. An abdominal segment with three pairs of attached legs was running in circles around the floor. As Ray watched, it keeled over, kicked a few times, and was still.

"Jesus, Hartmann ..." The garage groaned and began to collapse. One of the walls looked as if it could come down any second.

Ray walked to where the Black Dog lay in the puddle. The Fist leader was unconscious. He'd caught some shrapnel. For once Ray had been lucky. He'd only been hit by caterpillar parts. He wondered what had happened, then realized that Hartmann must have pulled the plug on the nuclear explosion, but couldn't stop the conventional triggering mechanism from going off. He looked at the bits of caterpillar scattered all over the room. "Jesus, Hartmann, I guess you were a hero after all."

The Dog moaned. Ray pulled him out from under the rubble and checked him over quickly.

"Goddamn," Ray said aloud. He'd accomplished his mission. He'd prevented the nuke from going off and he'd captured the Black Dog himself. "Goddamn," he repeated.

There was only one more thing he had to do.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

EPILOGUE

April Harvest sat behind her desk, reading the Washington Times and shaking her head. She couldn't understand how it had happened, but the Sharks had failed again. Obviously, there was some kind of cover-up going on; what she read in the paper just didn't make sense. There was, for example, this nonsense about the Trump also proving fatal to nats. Obvious blather, designed to make the Sharks look bad in the eyes of the world.

She closed the paper with a sigh.

At least she'd avoided detection. Perhaps Pan Rudo was still alive. There'd been no mention of him in the paper, but that was to be expected. He'd get in touch, probably, as soon as he could.

It was too bad she'd had to kill Johnson, but she couldn't risk him spilling everything to Ray. Ray ... He was a fool, but ...

Someone knocked sharply on her office door and she looked up.

"Come in."

"Hello, lover."

The blood washed out of her face like it'd been sucked away by a vacuum cleaner. She opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out as Ray sauntered into her office and perched jauntily on the edge of her desk. "Surprised to see me?"

"I - I - I - "

"I bet you are." He grinned his usual boyish grin. His normal face was back, looking, in fact, even better than when she'd first met him. He held himself a little stiffly, as if he still hurt somewhere, but then, as long as she'd known him, Billy Ray had hurt somewhere.

"How - "

Ray held up his hand, shaking his head. "We don't have much time and I've got some stuff I have to say." He sighed. "You are beautiful, you know, and I love you. I do. It's too bad you're such a murderous bitch."

Harvest didn't know what was more stunning, Ray's sudden appearance or his incredible confession. "Billy, I - "

"Stow it," Ray said. "I can forgive you for trying to kill me. What the hell, I'll bet a lot of people would like to have the guts to try it themselves. Maybe I can even forgive you for being a Shark and doing what you did to all those innocent people. I don't know. But my forgiveness is sort of beside the point. There's a lot of people you have to answer to, April. And you're going to."

She stood up. "What do you mean, Billy?"

"I stopped by Nephi's office before coming here. He was really surprised to see me, seeing as how you'd said I'd been killed at Rudo's lab and all. But he caught on quick when I told him the real story. He should be here any second to arrest you. I asked him for a minute or two with you so we could talk over some things."

Harvest's mind was in a whirl. She collapsed again in her desk chair. "If you love me - "

"What? I'd let you walk?" Ray shook his head. "I may not be very bright, but I'm not a chump. Not your chump, not anyone's."

They locked eyes for what seemed like a long time. Ray had left the door to her office open and both heard hurried footsteps coming down the hall.

"There's a gun in the desk drawer," Ray said. "You could go for it."

Harvest smiled. It was a cold, brittle smile that almost cracked but didn't. "As it turns out," she said, "you're too fast for me."

"Yeah. I guess I am."

Nephi Callendar stood at the door. He announced in a florid, dramatic voice, "Agent Harvest, I'm here to arrest you for murder, attempted murder, assault, conspiracy to commit murder - "

"She knows, Nehi," Ray said, without taking his eyes off her.

She stood. "I know," she said and held her hands up, wrists exposed and ready for the cuffs Ray had taken out of his pocket.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

He walked along the beach with the sunset sea breeze ruffling his tawny hair. He looked like any other surfer dude in Southern California, with his bare, muscular golden-tanned chest and faded dungarees, except perhaps for the combat boots crunching the wet sand.

He was Radical, and he was a free man. There were still federal warrants outstanding for Mark Meadows and his known aliases, which was to say, his "friends." But while the authorities might well have had certain questions as to why and how the notorious revolutionary ace, Radical had suddenly turned up, a quarter century after his sole known appearance at People's Park and looking not a day older, they had no grounds for asking them. Nor had they any way of linking him to the furtive Mark, not any inkling of such a connection.

So Radical could walk the SoCal beach as he pleased, without looking over his shoulder for the Feds. However interested in him they might have been, the authorities had to tread warily. Because, after all, he had saved the world.

He laughed aloud, startling some seagulls standing shin-deep in surf into complaining flight. "This old world is gonna see some changes made," he promised the birds, glowing pale orange in the sunset.

Approaching through the mauve gloom he saw two tail figures, one slim and female, one male and almost gaunt, with a brush of hair white as the gulls' wings. As they grew closer it was apparent that the man held himself rigidly upright against years whose weight was evident in the way he walked.

They stopped, facing each other a few feet apart: Radical on one side, Mark's father and daughter on the other. Sprout clung to her grandfather, who wore shorts and a Hawaiian shirt that would have been colorful in daylight. It seemed inappropriate to the military spareness of his frame. He was like some antique weapon, a Government Colt pistol or Mustang fighter, worn but still functional, possessed of nothing nonessential.

"Where's Mark?" General Meadows asked. His voice grated. Throat cancer, recently diagnosed, would likely kill him in a few months, though he was scheduled for surgery.

Looking into the old man's eyes, blue as the sky where he had spent his adult life, Radical touched fingertips to his sternum. "In here," he said.

The old man shook his head. "I don't understand any of this," he said. "Mark never talked to me about any of this ace business. I saw on the news that he could turn into other people, somehow. But I still don't understand." He looked down at the sand, looked up again. "The others went away in an hour," he said, more huskily than before. "Why are you still here instead of my son?"

Because I was the one who was always meant to be, I am strongest. I am Destiny. But somehow he could not say these things to this proud, erect, doomed old man.

"I don't know," he said, and that was truth too. "I don't know how to get Mark back. For now - " He spread his hands, "I'm the one who's here."

He turned to the girl, who had her arms around the old general and looked at Radical with huge eyes.

"Sprout," he said, holding out his arms, "Come give me a hug, honey."

She detached herself from her grandfather reluctantly, so that contact between them was broken like something physical, a twig or the surface of a bubble. She stared at Radical with huge uncertain eyes. The lights of a distant pier reflected in them in strange constellations.

"You're one of Daddy's friends?" she asked in a hesitant, little girl voice. Without waiting she flew to him, threw her arms around his neck, hugged him fiercely.

He took her in arms twice as strong as the strongest man's. "I'm your Daddy," he said, stroking her hair.

She burst into tears.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

On a cool, pleasant autumn day, the site of the mass grave that held the victims of the Black Trump was a pleasant place, high and quiet. Vineyards and bright green fields marched down the valleys. In the distance, the quiet purple hills of the Holy Land looked serene and peaceful.

Jan clung to Needles' hand. Jan was quieter these days, and she'd always been a sort of quiet kid. She wasn't always in tears anymore; she hadn't cried for almost a week.

It was mean of Zoe to bring her here, Needles thought, but he hadn't tried to argue with Zoe about it, and Jan had wanted to come.

Zoe hadn't said a single word for weeks after the UN had brought the Overtrump into the Quarter. Then she'd pulled a chair up to her workstation in the tiny apartment and asked Jan how school was going, just like nothing had happened. Zoe stayed in the net most of the time, the light from the computer screen reflecting on her thin face in the dark hours of the night, a haunted, driven woman researching some project she wouldn't talk about.

Personally, Needles figured she was seriously tweaked in the head. Seriously gone.

Zoe walked around the perimeter of the square of raw earth, her attention on the plantings of rose of Sharon. Jan brought out the jug she'd carried and watered one of the shrubs - it was a new tradition in Jerusalem, to carry water here and tend the flowers.

Jan got up, brushed dust from the knees of her skirt, and walked to a trench cut deep and square in the dry yellow rock of the hills.

"Next week they'll set up the marble helix," Jan said.

Zoe had finished her lonely tour. Dressed in black, as she always was now, she came up to the pit in the earth and stared into it.

"It won't be like the Vietnam memorial. The names won't be carved in it. Anne Harris. Balthazar Delacourt. James Kilburn, James Russo. The thousand others, bits of bone that came out of the crematoriums after they burned the infected bodies, skulls that no one could identify. Nobody will remember them. Nobody cares. It's last week's news."

Jimmy and Jimmy were Owl and Angelfish, Needles thought, no matter what Zoe calls them now, and I care. I'll always care.

We'll never know exactly how they died - most of them.

I remember too much, Zoe. I remember running for home when Hannah and Hartmann sent me away, and how it felt when there was nobody there. I looked for you, for Anne, for Angel.

I saw Balthazar die. People boiled out of that rickety stalled truck. The UN started yelling through a loudspeaker when we tried to rush the gates, and Balthazar heard what they said, that there was a cure. Some joker shot him because they thought he was trying to keep us inside to die.

Angel didn't die of Trump. Angel bled to death. The medics got us to line up and sniff Overtrump, but Anne was coughing by then. Owl - the Trump killed him.

"There's a lot to be learned from last week's news. From history. I have names, places, actions that people recorded on film, in writing. Addresses."

Zoe stood at the edge of the empty pit, her fists clenched so tight at her sides that her arms shook.

"Jack Braun. Thomas Tudbury. Nephi Callendar. A lot of names. The ones who weren't here. The ones who didn't help us, and some of the ones who thought they knew what was best for us."

"Like Tachyon?" Jan asked.

"Tachyon!" Zoe spit the word. "He's in a category all of his own!"

"What do you plan to do?" Needles asked.

"Kill them."

Zoe turned her back on the memorial and started downhill toward Jerusalem, her long black skirts lashing at her ankles.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

"Why did they give you the key to the city?" Jerry Strauss complained as the hostess led them to the big booth in back where Peter Pann was waiting. "I did just as much as you."

"They gave the key to the city to the agency," Jay said. "I just accepted it, that's all. What are you complaining about? You got to meet John Woo, didn't you?" He slid into the booth.

Peter looked up from the menu. "Look at these fucking prices. This better be a business lunch." A tink was buzzing around his head, as usual. He swatted at it with the menu, missed, swore.

Jay sighed. "It's great to be home."

Bradley Finn looked over the seating and sighed. "They don't design restaurant booths to accomodate people like me."

"So stand in the aisle the way you usually do," Jay said. "It always makes the waiters so happy." He opened his menu. His face was still mostly black and green and purple, and the bandages made him look like the Mummy's abused child, but he was bound and determined to get some solid food. He'd been living on fruit juice and painkillers all the way from China.

Jerry was still grousing. "I was the one who took out Eric Fleming. That should have been worth the key to the city. And Sascha and I found Mark Meadows before you did. I was the one who rescued Sprout."

"You were the one who got caught and wound up with your tits in a wringer," Jay reminded him. "Actually, they were Sprout's tits, but never mind."

The menu was black and glossy and speckled with stars, like the ceiling overhead. Starfields, it said, and under that, food that's out of this world. Jay looked down at the lunch selections, and wondered why he bothered. He couldn't pronounce the Takisian words and he knew the cuisine by heart. He'd been forced to sample every dish when Hastet was fine-tuning her menu.

Finn was looking over the selections curiously. "What do you recommend? I've never had Takisian food before."

"Better get used to it," Jay said.

"Pardon?" Finn said with a puzzled look.

Jerry leaned over and pointed out some items. "Here, these are all very good. Little pastries full of spiced meats and nuts and these crunchy little sprouts, very delicate."

Peter said, "You missed it, Finn. On Thursday they serve bales of hay in this divine hot oat sauce." He took out a long black cigar, lit up, grinned.

Finn lowered his menu. "This is the smokefree section. And I warned you about the horse jokes, Pan."

"Pahn," Peter said. "It's Dutch." He blew a smoke ring across the table at Finn, and smiled.

Finn raised his hands slowly and began to clap.

Peter sat up, frowning. "Cut that out," he said. A second tink winked into existence and began to flit around his head. Finn kept on clapping. "I mean it," Peter said. A third tink appeared, then a fourth. "You mangy son of a fucking mare," Peter swore, "here, fuck you, you win, Seabiscuit." He ground out his cigar, but Finn just clapped faster, smiling.

"Oh, applause, applause, did someone do something wonderful?" their waiter asked as he came over to the table. He was a tall, slender young man with a gorgeous tumble of blond hair spilling out from beneath his plumed white cavalier's hat.

"Clap if you want a big tip," Finn told him.

The waiter began to applaud enthusiastically, chanting, "Oh, I do believe in fairies, I do, I do."

"Stop it, you shits," Peter yelled, swatting at tinks with his menu. He bopped Jerry on the head.

Finn looked around at the lunch crowd. "Clap if you want a free meal," he shouted out. The whole restaurant burst into thunderous applause. In seconds there were so many tinks buzzing around that Jay could hardly see Peter's face. "I'll get you for this," Peter promised Finn as he leapt out of his seat, "you're Alpo, I swear." He fled the restaurant at a dead run, cursing a blue streak, a cloud of tinks trailing after him.

"Well, wasn't that refreshing," the waiter said when the clapping had died down. He wore purple pantaloons, a gold lame waistcoat over a red silk shirt, a long white scarf, and matching boots in a suede soft as butter. All the waiters at Starfields dressed like Dr. Tachyon. It was part of the Takisian ambiance.

"Very refreshing," Jay agreed. He nodded over at Finn. "All the free meals go on his tab."

"It was worth it," Finn said.

"I'm Rex, and I'll be your waiter today," the waiter said.

"Real good," Jay returned. "I'm Jay and this is Bradley and this other guy is nobody. We'll be your customers."

"What happened to your face?" Rex asked cheerfully.

"If you were really a psi lord, you'd know," Jay pointed out. "I'll have a patty melt. Double onions."

Rex looked hurt. "Oooh, I'm afraid we don't have a patty melt, Jay," he said, with sincere distress.

"You're new here, aren't you?" Jay said. "Tell Hastet to fry the onions until they turn black and scream for mercy."

"I'll have the Ilkazam pie," Jerry said. "No anchovies."

Finn pointed at something on the menu. "This."

Rex collected their drink orders and left. "It doesn't feel right, sitting here ordering lunch when so many people are dead," Finn said after he had gone.

"We saved the world," Jay said. "We deserve lunch. Some day I'm going to die, and millions of people are going to eat patty melts anyway. I'm just returning the favor. In advance."

"Be serious for once," Finn said. "How are we going to get Clara and all the others out of prison?"

"I've got three cunning plans, depending on what powers we want to use," Jay said. He ticked them off. "One, we stage a raid on Governor's Island and I pop everybody out."

"You tried that," Finn protested.

"I knew it seemed familiar," Jay agreed. "Two, Jerry here turns into Clara and takes her place."

Finn looked puzzled. "What about Dutton and Father Squid and the rest? And your agent, what's her name, Topper? And if Jerry takes Clara's place, how do we get him out?"

"Hey, did I say these plans were perfect?" Jay shrugged. "Three, we fly to Washington, take that White House tour, and Jerry turns into President Barnett and pardons everybody."

To Jay's horror, Jerry rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "Barnett," he mused. "Well, I ..."

Jay cut him off quickly. "Or we could use lawyers. The arrests were illegal, and Dutton is even richer than you are. So we hire Alan Dershowitz or Dr. Praetorius and turn them loose." Jay toyed with his fork, tapping it gently against his water glass. The crystal rang softly. "No one committed any crimes except Topper, and she's cute, and we did save the world. The feds will deal."

"What if they don't?" Jerry wanted to know.

"Then we bake Melissa a cake with a top hat inside."

The unmistakable scent of burnt onions filled the air. Hastet dropped a patty melt on the table in front of him. "Here, I hope we kept it under the flamethrower long enough."

"My little wanei," Jay said, chucking her under the chin.

"Do I know you?" She smiled for Jerry and Finn. "Gentles, your meals will be served momentarily. Real food requires more than scorching." Even in her soiled whites, with her soft, brown hair pinned up under a chefs hat, Hastet looked really good to him.

So did the patty melt. Jay took a big bite, licked grease off his fingers, and nodded. "Not bad." He made the introductions while he chewed. "Dr. Finn, my wife, Hastet benasari Julali Ackroyd, the best Takisian cook on Earth. Honey, this is Bradley Finn, from the Jokertown Clinic. He used to work with Dr. Tachyon."

"I'll try not to hold that against him," Hastet said, looking Finn over carefully. "Are you always that splotchy green color, or are you sick?" She turned on Jay before the startled centaur could reply. "I thought you were dead."

"Us?" Jay said. "No way. We're trained professional detectives. We hardly ever die. You got a bottle of ketchup?"

"You're very close to death right at this moment," Hastet warned him. "Your hunchback was here last week. He sprayed half my customers and the food critic from Manhattan magazine. Would you care to explain that?"

"Not especially," Jay admitted. "Jerry, how about you?"

Jerry Strauss cleared his throat. "Well, ah, actually," he began. Then something that looked like a ferret in drag popped up from behind Hastet's shoulder and hissed at him, all feathers and fangs. Jerry jumped a foot. "Get it away!" he screeched. The only thing that unnerved Jay's junior partner more than Jay's Takisian wife was Jay's Takisian wife's pet.

"Sorry," Hastet said. She crooned at the creature, soothing its bloodred feathers.

Finn was fascinated. "What is it?" he asked.

"A wanei," Jay said. "You like it? I'll bet Tacky can get you one of your own. You and Tachyon were really close, weren't you?"

"Not really. I admired him as a doctor. He taught me a lot. I can't say we ever socialized very much." Finn wrinkled up his face. "What's all this about Tachyon?"

"A little wrinkle on the case that I forgot to mention," Jay said. "You know, doc, you strike me as the kind of guy who's always wanted to travel."

"I'm sick of traveling," Finn said. "I've been to Burma, Red China, Hong Kong, Australia, and jail. Right now, I just want to give Clara a kiss and get back to work at the Clinic."

"You're not making this easy," Jay complained.

Finn stared at Jay as if he thought he was deranged. "Are you all right? Head injuries can be funny things. Maybe you should let me take some more X rays."

"You don't have the time," Jay assured him. "Hastet, sweet, eighty-six that lunch order, will you? Dr. Finn won't be eating."

"I won't?"

"Course not," Jay said, shaping his right hand into a gun. "It's not even lunch time on Takis."

Finn's eyes grew huge. "Wait!" he began, popping.

Jerry was looking at him accusingly. "You really did it."

"I had to," Jay said. "The shamus code. I gave my word. There's honor among dicks, too."

"There is?"

"It's in all the movies," Jay assured him. "Don't look at me that way. It's not like they don't have spaceships. I sent him to Tachyon's bedroom, he'll be back before you can say ... well, he'll be back, anyway."

Hastet looked very annoyed. "Jay, I cannot believe you did that. You sent him to Takis! And without consulting me. You know how many spices I need." She stalked away angrily.

Jerry was chuckling. Jay glared at him. "What's so funny?"

"All those free meals," Jerry reminded him. "Finn stuck you with the check."

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

"Hannah? You're crying - did I forget something? I don't remember...."

Hannah straightened and sniffed. "Quasi," she said. "No, you didn't forget anything."

"Are you sure?" the hunchback asked desperately. "There was so much ... Chemicals ..."

"No," Hannah repeated. "No, darling. You did everything. Everything that could be done."

"You're crying for him, aren't you?" Quasiman said.

Hannah didn't answer. Her eyes filled again with tears and she wiped them away with her sleeve.

She sat on a hillside looking across to Jerusalem and Temple Mount. The dawn splashed light across the white buildings of the city. The Dome of the Rock gave back a glittering, mocking answer, as if in defiance of the dark rubble set in the midst of the quarters sprawled below the Mount. Jerusalem's New Temple: that's what some were already calling it - a monument to stupidity and hatred, a memorial to the several thousand who had died to the Black Trump before the Overtrump could be delivered to them.

"You loved him?"

Hannah nodded silently. "I think ..." she said, and had to stop. "I don't know," she admitted after a moment. "I really don't know."

"It's my fault," Quasiman said. "If I could have remembered ..." The hunchback stood with fisted hands tapping an uneven rhythm on his thighs.

Hannah took the hunchback's hands in her own, holding him. She stared into the Joker's anguished eyes. "Stop it, she said. "You are not to blame. You did all you could do, and that was more than any of the rest of us could manage, except for Gregg ..." She took him in her arms, pulling him to her and hugging him fiercely. She was crying again, helplessly, her tears falling on the hunchback's head as she stroked his hair, as she held onto him desperately. Slowly, his arms came around her, his embrace strangely gentle and tentative.

"Damn it!" she said, sobbing into his muscular shoulder. "Goddamn it!" Through the tears, through her grief, she could feel the joker go still and silent. Sniffing, she pulled back. When Hannah glanced at Quasiman, she saw that he'd slipped into a fugue. She put her arms around him again, watching as the sun rose over Jerusalem, as the last call to morning prayer echoed from the towers of the city's mosques, as the city awakened from night.

She wished she could wake herself. She should have left the city days ago. She wanted to. But something held her, made her stop each time she'd started to make the arrangements.

The sun slid over the shoulder of Temple Mount, casting fingered shadows of Jerusalem's churches and temples that cupped the dark wound in the ancient city's heart. The emptiness there mocked her. "I wanted to love you," she whispered into its accusing silence. "It was my failure, not yours. All the rhetoric, all the talk and denial, but I couldn't love you the way I did, once. I couldn't even say it."

"Who?" Quasiman stirred. "Hannah? Have I forgotten again?"

"Just someone I knew once," she answered, still watching the city, watching the slow light touch the lip of the crater.

"If you loved him, then he was a good person," Quasiman said. His hand touched her cheek. "And at least ..."

"At least?" she asked.

"At least you can always remember," Quasiman told her. "If you can do that, you can always keep him alive." He tapped his temple with a forefinger. "Up here."

Hannah took his hand, cradled it against her face and kissed the palm without answering. In the city, the ruined, tumbled stones were in full daylight now, and Hannah turned away from the reminder. She sighed holding Quasiman's hand.

"Let's go home," she said.

CLOSING CREDITS

STARRING

CREATED AND WRITTEN BY

Gregg HartMann

Stephen Leigh

Jay (Popinjay) Ackroyd

George R.R. Martin

Mark (Cap'n Trips) Meadows

Victor Milan

Billy (Carnifex) Ray

John J. Miller

Zoe Harris

Sage Walker

CO-STARRING

CREATED BY

Quasiman

Arthur Byron Cover

Jerry (Mr. Nobody) Strauss

Walton Simons

Dr. Bradley Finn

Melinda M. Snodgrass

Hannah Davis

Stephen Leigh

April Harvest

John J. Miller

Croyd (the Sleeper) Crenson

Roger Zelazny

J. Robert (the Mechanic) Belew

Victor Milan

Needles, Jan, and Owl

Sage Walker

FEATURING

CREATED BY

Pan Rudo

Roger Zelazny

General MacArthur Johnson

Bob Wayne

O. K. Casaday

Victor Milan

Peter Pann

George R.R. Martin

Sascha Starfin

John J. Miller

Melissa (Topper) Blackwood

George R. R. Martin

Brigadier Sir Kenneth Foxworthy,

aka Captain Flint

Kevin Andrew Murphy

The Black Dog

George R.R. Martin

Bobby Joe (Crypt Kicker) Puckett

Royce Wideman

John (the Highwayman) Bruckner

George R.R. Martin

Brandon van Renssaeler

Laura J. Mixon

Dr. Carter Jarnavon

Victor Milan

Balthazar Delacourt

Sage Walker

WITH

CREATED BY

Ditmar and Layton

Victor Milan

The Reflector (Snotman)

Walter Jon Williams

Charles Dutton

Walton Simons

Nur al-Allah

Stephen Leigh

President Leo Barnett

Arthur Byron Cover

Gary Bushorn

Stephen Leigh

Mick and Rick

John J. Miller

The Oddity

Stephen Leigh

Nephi (Straight Arrow) Callendar

Walter Jon Williams

Charon

Stephen Leigh

Lord Tung

George R.R. Martin

Eric Fleming

Laura J. Mixon

Lou (Osprey) Inmon

Victor Milan

Table of Contents

WILD CARDS

EIGHT

SEVEN

SIX

FIVE

FOUR

THREE

TWO

ONE

ZERO

EPILOGUE

CLOSING CREDITS