Dead Mans Hand

9:00 P.M.

The tunnels were dark, deserted, and very quiet. Brennan had figured they would be. He knew that the police had staked out the Crystal Palace, but he'd hoped they didn't know about the secret underground entrance Chrysalis had built.

And they didn't. At least so far it seemed as if they didn't. Brennan had left Father Squid's rectory with the priest still watching over a sleeping Jennifer and had gone underground two blocks from the Palace. He left the main line at Henry Street and went down the tunnel he'd used to gain access to the Palace the night he'd surprised the Oddity in Chrysalis's bedroom.

There was, he remembered, a short spur off the tunnel that he'd never investigated before. He stopped before it, debating his course of action, the only light a dim beam from the flashlight he held in one hand. In the other was his bow, already assembled.

As he stood there debating with himself he heard a noise coming from the tunnel before him. It was a small, skittering noise, as of many tiny feet trying to be silent. He shone his light into the darkness with little effect.

He didn't want to keep the flashlight illuminating himself as the perfect target in the otherwise dark tunnel, but he couldn't stand the thought of turning it off and standing there in utter blackness.

He put it down at his feet and backed away, taking an arrow out of his quiver and placing it on his bowstring.

As he stepped out of the feeble circle of light cast by his flashlight, he heard a voice. Her voice.

"Daniel, my dear archer. You don't have to be afraid of me."'

It was Chrysalis's voice -or her ghost's. There was no denying it.

The double doors to the waiting room opened with a bang. "Are you the family?" a tired voice asked.

Jay got to his feet. "I'm a friend," he said. He jerked a thumb toward Blaise. "He's the grandson."

"Grandson?" The doctor sounded momentarily nonplussed.

"Oh, that's right," he finally said. " I keep forgetting the patient is older than he looks, isn't that right?"

"The question is not how old he is," Jay said. "The question is, is he going to get any older?"

"He's suffered massive blood loss, not to mention major systemic shock," the doctor told them. "And it appears he was in a terribly weakened condition to begin with. Fortunately, first aid was applied at the scene; that made all the difference. Any more blood loss and he might have been DOA. We started him on plasma as soon as he arrived. The hand… I'm afraid we had to lose it. It wasn't a clean cut, you have to realize, the paramedics brought us two of the fingers, but with the way the flesh was… well, chewed up… ah, there just wasn't a hand to reattach them to. Amputation seemed the only viable op-"

"Okay," Jay snapped impatiently, "so from now on, if he loses one mitten, it's no big deal. Is he going to live?"

The doctor blinked at him, then nodded. "Yes," he said. "Yes, I believe we've pulled him through. We're listing his condition as serious but stable."

" I want to see him," Blaise said, in his most imperious tone.

"I'm afraid we don't allow visitors in the intensive-care unit," the doctor said. "Perhaps tomorrow we can move-"

"Take us to him now," Blaise said. Those dark purpleblack eyes narrowed just a little. He grinned boyishly.

The doctor spun on his heels, straight-armed the double doors, and led them back to the ICU without another word. A bag of plasma hung over one side of the bed, an IV bottle over the other. Tachyon had tubes in his arms and more tubes up his nose, wires attached everywhere. His eyes were closed, but Jay could see his chest rise and fall beneath the thin cotton of his hospital gown.

"He's heavily sedated," the doctor said softly. Blaise must have let him go. "For the pain."

Jay nodded and glanced over at Blaise. The boy was staring down at his grandfather with a look of ferocious intensity on his face. His eyes glistened, and for a moment Jay thought he saw a tear there. Then he realized it was only the moving readout on the monitor, reflected in the iris of his eyes. "C'mon, Blaise," he said. "There's nothing we can do here."

They passed through the waiting room again on the way out of the hospital. Up on the television screen, the convention was going crazy. Jesse Jackson was standing at the podium. People were screaming, balloons were falling from the ceiling, signs were waving madly, and the band had struck up a rousing chorus of "Happy Days Are Here Again." Jay had a bad feeling. He stopped by the nurses' station. "What's happened?" he asked the nurse on call.

"Jesse just gave a speech. You should have heard him, it brought tears to my eyes. He's throwing his delegates to Hartmann. It's all over but the voting."

Over? Jay wanted to tell her. Lady, it's just beginning. But he chewed his lip and said nothing.

Blaise stood in front of the television, looking almost happy. When Jay came back over, he looked up eagerly. "They're going to nominate Hartmann, just like George said they would."

The network cut away from the convention floor to the streets of Atlanta. Thousands of jokers were dancing in the streets. Outside the Omni the "Hart-mann" cry went up, louder and louder. An impromptu parade was starting on Peachtree, a conga line that grew as it moved. Piedmont Park was one huge explosion of joy. The network cut from park to convention floor to street, letting the moment speak for itself. Jay put his hand on Blaise's shoulder and was just about to say that it was time they got back to the hotel when the boy said, "Hey, look, Sascha."

Jay looked. They were showing Piedmont Park, where a dozen jokers were dancing giddily around a bonfire while fifty others watched. He was standing just behind the dancers, the flames of the fire shining off slicked dark hair, pencil-thin mustache, and that pale eyeless face.

"Sonofabitch," Jay said. He'd almost forgotten about Sascha. He shouldn't have; the skinny fuck had some answers he needed. He was about to tell Blaise to head back to the Marriott on his own when he remembered what the kid could do with his mind control. All of a sudden Jay had a better idea. "Hey, kid," he said. "Want to play detective?"

Brennan didn't believe in ghosts, but whatever was approaching from down the dark tunnel and speaking in Chrysalis's voice couldn't be Chrysalis. Chrysalis was dead. He'd seen her in her coffin. The face in the window had only been a dream.

He backed away until he stood against the side of the tunnel and couldn't move anymore.

"Daniel," the voice said, "I want to help you," and the speaker stepped into the light.

Brennan lowered his bow, dumbfounded. He couldn't believe his eyes. It was Chrysalis. A miniature Chrysalis, perfect in every detail, but no more than eighteen inches tall.

Now he knew why the window had appeared so large in what he thought was his dream.

He squatted down to see her better as she approached fearlessly. The manikin mimicked her perfectly, down to the red painted fingernails, down to the tiny perfect heart beating in the cage of her ribs, down to the off-the-shoulder wrap that left one minute breast bare, invisible but for a tiny dark. nipple, smaller than an eraser on the tip of a pencil. "Who are you?" Brennan asked.

"Come with me and I shall tell you everything." She smiled at him, turned, and walked back down the dark tunnel.

He watched her for a moment, then, knowing he wasn't going to learn anything by remaining in the darkness, followed her, stopping only to pick up his flashlight.

The corridor was short, but it took several minutes to traverse because the miniature Chrysalis took very tiny steps. Brennan shuffled slowly behind her. He directed his light to the end of the tunnel, eventually discovering that it ended in what seemed to be a blank wall. When they reached it, the little Chrysalis called out and a hidden panel slipped open. Suspicious red eyes peered out.

"I have brought the archer," she said.

"He could hurt us," the watchman said in a deep, surly voice.

"She said to trust him when his word was given." The little Chrysalis turned and looked at Brennan. "Do you promise not to hurt us?"

Mystified and bewildered, Brennan said, "I promise." There was the sound of creaky bolts being thrown and protesting metal squeaked on rusty runners. Dim light spilled from the hidden door as it swung slowly open.

"Then enter," the watchman said.

Brennan and the little Chrysalis stood at the threshold of a corridor. There were twenty or so beings in it. None were over eighteen inches tall; some were a lot smaller. Some were perfectly formed manikins, other grotesque parodies of humanity, test models discarded by the Creator and never put into mass production. Some looked more like animals than people, but all stared at Brennan with intelligence in their eyes.

"She said to trust you. She said you would help," the watchman said from the small platform that had been bolted next to the hidden door's peephole. He was one of the human-looking ones, though his leathery skin hung in folds over his nearly naked body like an overcoat that was six sizes too big.

"Who are you?" Brennan asked in a small voice.

"We were Chrysalis's eyes and ears," the Chrysalis manikin said proudly. "We moved about the city, unseen and undreamed of by the big world, and brought her the news that she was so eager to hear. She gave us a place to live, warm and dry and out of sight." She wiped at a tear that dripped down a crystalline cheek. "But now she is dead."

"It's you," Brennan said in a soft voice, "who's been leaving me notes and calling me up."

"That's right," the tiny Chrysalis said. "We only tried to help. We stopped when we realized that we were confusing and hurting you. We were only trying to help you find out who murdered our lady. We tried to help the detective, too, but he only called us names and chased us."

"Then you don't know who killed her?" Brennan asked. The manikin shook her head. "We never spied on the Lady. It was a rule. She liked her loneness, even if at times she was sad in it."

Brennan nodded. "But you know where she kept her files."

"She would come and knock and we would let her in. Then we would tell stories of what we'd seen, what we'd learned in our hiding places in the world outside. She would bring food and drink and we would eat as she wrote things down. Once she never came for months. We wrote ourselves, but it was no fun without the lady."

"Where?" Brennan asked. "Where did you write?"

The tiny joker pointed a tiny finger to the chamber at the end of the corridor.

More of the tribe were in the hallway, watching Brennan with eyes that were frightened and distrustful, angry and sad. One of the jokers, who looked like a tiny monkey with too many legs, turned on a shaded lamp as Brennan approached. The more skittish of Chrysalis's tiny spies peered at them silently from the dark edges of the room.

The chamber was simply furnished with a comfortable chair, an antique desk, and a Tiffany lamp. Notebooks and binders and stacks of paper cluttered the desk. As Brennan glanced through them he saw snippets about the sex life of politicians and the drug habits of bankers, notes on alliances between cops and gang figures, and even a list of which Dodgers had trouble with high fastballs and which were suckers for curveballs in the dirt.

Brennan frowned. "Is this it?" he asked the homunculus. "How in the world did she keep track of everything? Didn't she have a computer?"

"She didn't need a computer," the Chrysalis manikin told Brennan. "She had Mother."

"Mother?"

The manikin nodded and pointed. Brennan turned to follow her. gesture and saw two homunculi dragging at a pullcord attached to a dark tapestry that covered the chamber's back wall. They pulled back the tapestry and Brennan stared at what was revealed.

There was a wall of flesh growing over a trestle against the back wall. It was gray and pink and purple and pulsated with a rippling rhythm, like a swimming manta ray. It was totally featureless. A dozen or so of the manikins hung from or clung to the flesh. Some were clearly attached to the thing, growing from cords attached to their heads, limbs, or stomachs. Others were just nestling against it as if for security or comfort.

"What is it?" Brennan asked in a whisper.

"Mother," the little Chrysalis said. "We are her children. She cannot see, nor talk aloud, but she speaks with her mind. She knows, she remembers everything we whisper to it while we rest in her bosom. Our lady gave her-and us-refuge. In return she remembered for the Lady."

"She can't talk?" Brennan asked.

The homuncula shook her head. "Only through her children."

Brennan, who thought he'd seen just about every kind of joker imaginable, shook his head. He wondered where Chrysalis had found it-her, actually-and how they had made their bargain. It was a story he would like to hear, but now there was no time. Later he and the little people could sit down and puzzle it out. Now he still had a murderer to uncover. "How can I talk to Mother?" Brennan asked.

"Through us. Or," she said, "you might find what you're looking for in the Lady's journal."

"Her journal?" Somehow that sounded easier than dealing with Mother. And she was there for questioning if the journal didn't pan out. "Where is it?"

"Right there," the homuncula said, pointing at a leatherbound volume sitting on top of the cluttered desk.

As Brennan reached for it he heard a soft scuttling step where there was no one to make it. He drew back barely in time as something invisible and metallic swung through the air, caught his cheek, and ripped it open, leaving a bloody gash. Between him and the diary a pair of brown eyes floated five and a half feet from the ground.

There was loud chittering and many of the homunculi ran for the dark corners of the room as Fadeout materialized, pointing a pistol at Brennan.

"Surprise, surprise!" he said, grinning. "Drop your damn bow."