Marked Cards

Ganesha sat on the stone bench with Sprout arranged beside him, pointing into the water of the pool. "See the fish, with his veil fins, so colorful and lovely," he said in a singsong murmur. "So does atman swim in Nirvana, in perfect freedom and release."

Sprout clapped her hands together. "Pretty!"

"Now look, my child," Ganesha said. "Hold out your hands."

Sprout obeyed. A large plush stuffed fish like a rainbow-hued fancy goldfish materialized in air, dropped softly into them. She gaped, astonished, then hugged it to her cheek.

"Oh, thank you, Unca Neesha! Thank you, thank you!"

"Does it find favor, O jewel child?"

She set the toy down between them to gather him into a fervent hug. "Oh yes! I love it! I love you, Unca Neesha!"

A shudder ran visibly through the guru's plump body then. Watching around the corner, Belew marked the way Ganesha's eyes caressed the very grown-up breasts, swelling the girl's white T-shirt under pressure from his own chest. The line of Belew's jaw grew harder.

With obvious reluctance Ganesha pushed Sprout away. "Now, my child, observe once again the fish in his pond, serene. See how he changes color - "

Obedient, she leaned well out over the pond, then exclaimed delightedly again as the fish, apparently, performed as advertised. What she did not see was Ganesha twitch aside the hem of the white robe he wore today, pluck a stuffed fish identical to the one he had materialized from beneath the bench, and slam it into the place of the materialization, which duly vanished just as Sprout straightened.

A strange sensation came over Belew then - the sense of being observed, which he had learned long ago to honor. He ducked back.

From the far end of the garden, where the corridor moved indoors again, a figure in a yellow robe was watching Belew watch the guru. Belew straightened. He nodded to the sannyas, turned, and walked away, not too fast.

Inside, he seethed.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

In his Spartan bedchamber, Mark sat lotus on his big colonial brass bed, rocking forward and back, pounding his thighs with knotted fists, tears pouring down his baby-red face.

"Oh, Guru, Guru," he moaned. "I've looked inside myself and seen what's there. It's evil. Ultimate darkness." He pounded his skinny chest. "In me."

He raised his head and looked at Ganesha through a cataract of tears. "Do you know what it's like, Guru? Do you?"

Ganesha's huge head nodded. "Yes, my son. I do."

Mark blinked, eyes as innocent as Sprout's. "And you overcame the darkness? You cleansed yourself of evil."

"I did." the Guru said. But his head turned away from Mark, ever so slightly, so that the pupil could not see what passed behind the master's eyes.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

Belew had his own office near Mark's. It was modest in size, the walls hung with high-quality reproductions of paintings by Dutch masters: Rembrandt, macabre Brueghel, the vans Eyck and Dyck - but never Rubens, whom he considered too much of a good thing. His only presumption upon his status was a grand recliner chair, in which he could listen to music: Vivaldi, Verdi, or Van Halen, for his tastes were as diverse as his talents.

His fax machine was busy disgorging a stack of papers. He knocked the dottle from his pipe, filled, tamped, relit. Then he squared a sheaf on the table beside him, held it up before his face, and carefully settled a pair of reading-glasses on his occasionally broken nose. It was a pity, but the regenerative gift which was already budding out a new pink tip to the thumb he'd truncated as a parlor trick yesterday, could only buffer him against so many of the ravages of that old devil, Time.

He read for an interval. Then he set his pipe aside and read the pages carefully through once more. Then he set them aside, tilted his head back, massaged the bridge of his nose with thumb and forefinger.

"Was I fearing to see something like this," he asked the ceiling, "or hoping?"

Because he would not lie to himself, he silently answered yes to both questions. Then he rose and looked for his shoes.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

The Vietnamese activist and the American joker spokesman stood in the audience hall and yelled at each other through interpreters. Moonchild stared from one to another in growing horror. She understood both languages well enough, yet she could not grasp what either was saying. It was as if she were trapped in a dream, one of those dreams when people look at you earnestly and mouth words, but all you hear are inchoate sounds, unintelligible as surf.

She glanced aside at guru, who stood beside her chair of state. He nodded slightly, smiled, and she felt warmth suffuse her.

He strengthens me with his darshan, his presence, she thought. He reassures me that there are answers, even if I have to grope for them myself....

Yet she still felt that desperate dislocation. Still the disputants' words held no meaning. She felt otherness ripple across her like a shockwave packet from a distant earthquake, as the other personalities all threatened to burst the seams of her consciousness and come tumbling in at once.

Guru says there is a cure for that, too. The cure for all my - our - problems. I can make that sacrifice. Can the others?

You better believe not, an internal voice was responding, male and angry, when she looked up and saw J. Bob standing in the door.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

"You seemed to be in something of a hurry to get out of there, Madam President," J. Bob said, standing in the corridor outside. "Not deriving the same serenity from the Presence as you used to?"

"I believe you wished to talk to me," Moonchild said coolly.

Belew nodded crisply. "This just came in. You and Mark might be interested in it Mark especially."

Eyeing him sidelong, which was not her usual style at all, Moonchild accepted a sheaf of printout from Belew, began to flip the pages up.

"There's still not much concrete in there," Belew said. "No surprise; the money that flows into your pal's coffers from the faithful will buy a supertanker load of Third World justice of the blind variety, if you catch my drift. What's significant is that as much shows up as does.

"Especially since in India, frankly, they're pretty casual about sex with children. Holy men have near carte blanche. And at least Hosenose generally goes for early teens, not eight-year-olds. Have to give him that."

Moonchild glared at him. She tore the document in two with a petulant flip of her wrists.

"With a little practice," Belew said, watching the torn sheets flutter to the marble floor, "you'll work your way up to the Manhattan phonebook."

When his eyes found hers again Moonchild's anger was gone, replaced by sadness deep as arthritis. "I would not have believed it of you, Major Belew," she said softly. "But perhaps I should have expected it. Your fascist tendencies have finally gotten the better of you."

"Fascist?"

"To resort to such slander, simply because you feel threatened by Guru's antimaterialism." She shook her head. "There is much good in you, I still know that. Yet, as Mark might say, once a fascist, always a fascist."

She turned and vanished back into her audience chamber. Belew stood staring at the door for perhaps a minute. Then he laughed at himself for standing there like an adolescent left on the stoop without so much as a good-night kiss, and went up to bed.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

Morning in the garden. Sprout stood on an inch of air. Her golden hair was caught in a ponytail. Her cheeks glowed like dawn.

"What I do, little miss," Ganesha was saying, "is create a layer of air beneath the soles of your lotus feet. Only it is not quite air, but something more substantial. And this do I add to, layer upon layer, until you, my little pretty one, are levitating." He knelt beside her on the white sand of the little path.

She smiled and nodded. Also fidgeted. She didn't really see the point to this. But her Daddy had taught her always to be nice, and Unca Neesha was always nice to her. She would play along for now.

"Sometime, perhaps, you would care to play in the evening," Ganesha said. "We could go somewhere outside the Palace - "

"Oh, I always go to bed at - " She briefly consulted her fingers. " - at eight. Daddy doesn't make me. But it makes him happy."

Ganesha rose with a soft grunt of effort. "You are a dear child, to serve your father so well," he said. "Yet sometimes, well - what he does not know does not hurt him, don't they say, after all?"

"Learning to fly, Leaf?" a voice asked from behind them. The guru stiffened.

"Oh, Unca Bob," Sprout said. "You know my name's not Leaf. I told you."

J. Robert Belew slapped the side of his head with hand's heel. "Guess I forgot. Must be getting old." He grinned at her. "Feel like riding a horse, or would you rather hang there in midair?"

She clapped her hands together. "A horsie, really?" He nodded!

"'Bye, Unca Neesha!" Sprout jumped down from her invisible pedestal and ran toward the soldier, who took her by the hand and led her away.

Ganesha, Remover of Obstacles, looked darkly after. Tiny malformed things appeared in the air, and flew buzzing around his vast-eared head.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

For the next few days Belew stayed well out of Mark's way. He didn't stay out of Ganesha's. Whenever the guru contrived to get Sprout alone Belew appeared out of the woodwork with some new game or diversion.

J. Bob gave her a toy train and a six-foot panda. She enjoyed both gifts with a child's single-mindedness. But Belew, who was not as proud of the job he had done raising his own two children as he was of most things in his life, perceived that he could not bribe her.

On the other hand ... it was clear that, throughout her life, she had never had as much of a father as she might have wanted. That was not to say that Mark was a failure as a father or a man; far from it. For all his hippie ways and New Age outlook, for all the fact that the first obstacle course he ran would be his last by reason of gasping death, Mark was a real man to J. Bob, who had an unfashionably archaic view of such things.

More, he was a real father. Mark had given everything for his daughter's sake that a man could give and still be able to draw breath. It was more, candidly, than J. Robert Belew had ever done in the role.

But like many another parent who would give anything for his or her child's welfare, Mark had never entirely known how to give himself to her. He loved her, cherished her. But he had never really learned to spend time with her.

Belew had never known how to spend time with his own children. But he wasn't too old a dog to learn.

As often as he interrupted Ganesha, he found himself observed by the surly yellow robed sannyasi who haunted the Palace. Let them look, he told himself. Nothing they see will bring much comfort to old Hosenose.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

"Master."

The yellowrobes had been chased from the ballroom. The maya splendor was still intact, save for the Apsarases, who had been sent packing back into immateriality. This was a private occasion.

"Yes, my son."

"I - I would become your disciple. I would take dik-sha, and have my mantra from you."

"And do you understand what this initiation entails?"

"Renunciation, Master."

"And do you realize what you must renounce?"

"I must renounce the world, and my will."

"That is not all, my son. To become my disciple truly, you must become a sannyas. You must become celibate. You must give over choice and preference."

"I am prepared."

"You must give over the becoming what you call your 'friends.' You must put them all aside, and put them all from your mind."

Mark hesitated, hearing a defiant chorus in the back of his head. "And will I - will we all win freedom by my doing that, each of us to work out his or her own karma?"

"You shall."

"And I shall receive forgiveness? And ... forgetfulness?"

"All these things."

Mark bowed his head. "I am ready to receive my mantra, Master."

"Tomorrow."

Mark started to raise his head. The guru wagged a chubby finger. "No, no. You are surrendering your will entirely to God, through me. Remember?"

Mark nodded.

"Tomorrow it shall be."

"Tomorrow."

"And now, my son, there is something else I must speak with you about, something of the gravest concern."

The guru's high, musical voice seemed to catch. Mark looked up at him in wonder and dismay.

"It is with great sadness that I must speak to you of your friend J. Robert's unnatural and unholy interest in your virgin daughter, Sprout...."

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

"Sprout. Sprout, now, settle down." The girl in the garden writhed and wriggled and laughed aloud at Belew's efforts to disloge her from his knee. "Sprout, this isn't dignified. And anyway, you're heavy."

"Am not. Am not. Unca Neesha says I'm slender as a willow branch. Whatever that means."

It means he's a disgusting tentacle-faced old pervert, Belew thought

"Sprout," Belew said, trying not to be aware himself of the long, slim bare legs straddling his lap, or the full breasts bouncing around inside her sweater like puppies in a sack. "Sprout. You're a wonderful child. I - ouch - I understand that part of being a wonderful child is to be a brat sometimes, inasmuch as perfection is boring. But still, if you don't climb off Unca Bob's lap right now, Unca Bob is going to turn you over and tan your behind."

But Sprout was full of love and mischief this bright afternoon, and so she decided to act the way she'd seen grownups do, on TV and sometimes in person. She grabbed Belew by the head and planted a kiss full on his lips.

"Belew!"

Belew's hands froze to claws on the girl's biceps. He had never heard that rage-choked voice before. All the same, he knew it belonged to Mark Meadows.

Sprout was still giggling and trying to kiss him. For all her near-adult weight, he picked her up by the arms and set her to the side. She saw her father standing in the arcade with Ganesha, ran happily to them.

"Take her," Mark snapped to two of the armed jokers who accompanied him. "Take her someplace ... someplace safe."

"Daddy?" she called as she was hustled away. "Daddy, what's the matter? Daddy, I'm scared!"

"Don't worry, honey," Mark said darkly. "You'll be all right now."

He turned a look of perfect loathing on Belew. "I should have known," he said. "What they said about you right-wing military types - it was true all along."

Ganesha laid a hand on his arm. "Do not judge him too harshly, my son," he said. "Sometimes the lust of older men for innocence comes to overpower their judgment. So it can be, when one has not learned to live without desire."

The six remaining jokers leveled their Kalashnikovs at Belew. He raised his hands.

"Just shoot me now," he suggested.

"Maybe later," Mark said, and turned away.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

"Unca Neesha," Sprout asked, "where are we going?"

The elephant head swiveled left and right as the guru checked the hall. "Out to play, my child. Do not be afraid."

"But it's after dark. And Daddy told me to stay in my room."

He smiled at her. "He meditates. But he decided you could go with me. It's all right." The trunk tip chucked her beneath the chin. "You trust your Uncle Neesha, don't you?"

She nodded solemnly.

"Then let us go. It will be such a marvelous adventure."

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

"There is something damned well wrong with this picture," Mark's mouth said; and then his voice said, "Dammit, JJ, I resent you taking over control like that."

Somebody's got to get us back on track. We're all in this together, buddy. You can't just throw us aside, shave your head, and forget about us.

"I - JJ, I'm sorry. But this is driving me insane. I don't know who I am anymore."

We're always going to be here, came the waspish thought from the Traveler. You can't get rid of us so easily.

You already tried, back when you were trying to be clean and sober to get custody of Sprout, JJ Flash thought. One worked about as well as the other.

Mark sat on his bed, stork legs pulled up. He held his head in both hands.

"What happens if my mind just snaps?" he asked.

How would any of us tell the difference? Trav shot back.

Be honest with yourselves, JJ, Traveler, Moonchild said. Have you never resented your imprisonment? Have you never wished you could be free of the confines of another's skull?

You know it, baby, JJ Flash said.

Then why do you resist? Perhaps Guru can find a way to liberate us to pursue our own karma.

What if we don't have our own karma? JJ asked. Remember how you couldn't understand Korean? The language you supposedly grew up speaking? What happens if we're just fantasy figments, or symptoms of the world's best-realized multiple personality disorder? What happens to us then?

Perhaps we can be reintegrated into one whole again, Moonchild said. Perhaps we can know peace.

Yeah, JJ said with a sneer, Nirvana. Smells like personal extinction to me, babe. That's what the Big Goal is, after all - flipping off the wheel of birth and death and getting to be nothing. Me, I'd feel cheated. I'd at least like to give the wheel a spin or two in my own improper person.

"JJ," Mark said, "I'd switch places with you if I could. Really, I would. The stress, inside and out - I can't take it any more."

He beat his hands lightly on the bedclothes. "I'd accept nonbeing," he whispered, "in a minute."

What about the Radical? Flash asked.

"That was a long time ago. The human body replaces all its cells on a seven-year cycle; what was that, three bodies ago? And who knows how many lifetimes. Starshine's, for one. Maybe it's time to give up on that. I've never known if I even was the Radical, man. Maybe it's time to quit pretending."

Mark - Moonchild said.

"Yeah. I know. It's sad when dreams die." He stood up, paced around his small, bare room. "Or maybe I'll find the purity I've been lacking so long; maybe Guru can help me get the Radical back, and he'll be ... greater than the sum of his parts."

The sound of half a mind thinking, JJ said, is rationalization.

"Call it what you Will. Naming a thing doesn't change it." He shook his head. "I'm gonna check on my little girl. Then I'm going to get some sleep. And tomorrow - "

He paused with one bony hand on the door. "Tomorrow, my life begins anew."

He knew it sounded tacky. But he'd live with it.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

Because he wasn't sure exactly what extremities he might need this night, he bit off the tip of his left little finger to take control of the door lock of the room he'd been imprisoned in.

His cell was on the third floor, in front. The window could not be locked from the outside, obviously, but there was no ready way down to the ground but surrender to gravity. Belew was confident in his abilities to say the least, but he knew he wasn't a movie hero, to scramble down the rain gutters, or whatever, three stories to the front courtyard, without falling and busting his fool neck. Besides, one of the sentries out front would likely spot him - and they were jokers, which meant their loyalty was to Mark first.

Like all machines, though, the lock was his to take. From listening at the door he knew that there was a bored pair of guards on watch. Piece of cake.

He opened the door and walked out. The guards were slouched against the walls, weapons slung, smoking illicit cigarettes. They gaped at him.

While they waited for their synapses to snap, he busted the nose of the right-hand guard with a backfist, then grabbed his sling and spun him around in a semicircle in front of him to slam into the other guard, who had actually come to life sufficiently to begin fumbling with his own weapon. The second guard sat down hard, losing his rifle in the process.

By the simple expedient of clinging to the sling as the first guard crumpled in a moaning face-clutching heap, Belew availed himself of an assault rifle. He proceeded to aim it at the pair.

The room had curtains. The guards had bootlaces, belts, a handkerchief, and socks. Of such things are rapid and wonderfully efficient field-expedient bonds and gags made. Belew was occupied less than a minute in securing the pair.

Sprout's room was a flight down, next to Mark's. Neither was guarded. Belew felt a terrible suspicion that certain trunk-overhung lips had dropped in Mark's ear a suggestion that most of the Palace guards should be elsewhere that night, like out front, or guarding the audience room, or keeping watch on Belew the putative child molester.

Belew's still bleeding pinky opened Sprout's locked door. The room was empty but for the immense stuffed panda keeping blind and futile vigil over the bed. Just as he feared.

He crossed quickly to the window, looked out into the back garden. Two figures, one with blond hair in a pony-tail, one with an elephant's head, were riding a rising pillar of dirt to the top of the rear garden wall.

"Shit," Belew said, and ran.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

"Where are we, Unca Neesha?" Sprout asked, hanging slightly back.

It was another villa a few blocks away, less grand than the one the President and Chancellor occupied, and dark. The grounds were overgrown, the shrubberies looming black ominous shapes.

"I don't like it here," the girl protested. "I'm afraid."

"There is nothing to fear," the guru said. "Not with your Uncle Ganesha here. Have I not the power of maya? Have I not magic?"

She bit her lip, but nodded. She was going to be brave. She had learned how a long time ago, when the bad people took her from her daddy.

He pushed the door. It opened. Inside, the house echoed to their steps, and smelled of mildew and the dust that swirled up to greet them as they entered.

The place had belonged to a ranking member of one of the former Socialist Republic's many and varied secret police organizations. Showing that wisdom Marcos owned, but Ceaucescu and Honecker sadly lacked, he had blown town before People Power came and nailed his ass to a light standard. The villa had suffered a little token vandalism and looting in the immediate aftermath of Liberation, but Madam President had made it known she Strongly Disapproved of that sort of thing, and it had ceased. The house had been closed up, and remained fairly undisturbed until the guru's sannyasi cased it.

They walked through the foyer and parlor to the great room. Ganesha gestured, and it became paradise. In this case paradise was dominated by a bed, canopied in fine silk and cloth of gold, lit by myriad candles and golden oil lamps, swaying from carved-ivory chains.

"We're going to go to bed?" Sprout asked, trying to hide her disappointment. She wasn't tired yet, and anyway the excitement of escaping the Palace had got her all awake.

"Here, my child, kneel upon the bed." the guru said, urging her onto it.

"I never sleep without my pink bear," she said, and then remembered to add politely, "and Mr. Fish."

"Sleep, my child?" Ganesha tittered. "Sleeping is the furthest thing from my mind. Soon, you shall truly know paradise. I can make you feel things your young body never knew it could experience - "

As he spoke, the tip of his trunk slid softly down her cheek. She smiled. It felt good.

His hands were on her, caressing. She tried to pull away. There was something wrong here, something her daddy had warned her about....

The T-shirt vanished. Chimes began to play.

She gasped and hugged her arms over her white bra. "Stop it!" she wailed.

"Do not be afraid, my princess," Ganesha said. "I shall not hurt you, no. First I shall prepare you - "

He dropped a hand to her hip. The cut-off jeans vanished.

"And then will come the pleasure. Come now, my sweet, do not cringe away. Let me help you off with that."

He tried to reach her bra. She clasped her forearms in a tight inverted V before her and turned away. He tittered.

"No matter. That which I can touch, I can bring to nonbeing. As I can create, so can I destroy, though at not so long a range."

As he spoke, he got two plump fingers under the strap of Sprout's bra, pulled it away from her skin. She whimpered.

The bra disappeared.

"See? It is all so simple. Nothing to fear, nothing to worry about. I am your father's guru, but I would be more to you, precious child. Oh, so very much more."

"Please," she said, unable to hold in the tears. "Leave me alone."

"You will not wish that when you learn what I can offer." He ran his hand down her ribs. Her satiny skin was drawn up in goosebumps. He reached for the waistband of her panties.

A click from behind him, metallic and multiplex.

Deliberately Ganesha turned. J. Robert Belew stood in the door to the parlor, aiming his Para-Ordnance at the guru's broad stomach.

"Back off, Hosenose. Or I'll commence to let your atman leak out through your belly-button."

Ganesha sighed. "Truly, you are without wisdom."

His giant white rat materialized at Belew's right hand. Before he could pull the trigger it bit off his gun hand with a flash of orange incisors.

Belew gasped and fell to his knees as blood jetted across the room, spraying the magnificent canopy, Ganesha, and Sprout. Sprout crouched on the bed, looking wildly from Belew to Ganesha to the giant rat, which sat on its great haunches, demurely cleaning blood from its whiskers.

"Sprout, run!" Belew screamed. "Back to your father!"

The half-naked girl tried to obey. She started to jump off the bed, but the sheet rose up around her legs, tangling her and pulling her down.

The rat gave off cleaning its face to lunge again at Belew. Desperately he rolled aside, just avoiding its strike. The maneuver brought him into the corner, almost against the base of an old-fashioned floor lamp with a flexible neck. He pressed his spurting stump against its base.

The rat jumped for him. The top of the lamp slammed down right between its eyes, which showed maroon highlights in the candlelight.

The rat sat down on its haunches. The lamp struck like a cobra, cracking it on its snout. The rat chittered outrage and grabbed the lamp in its teeth. It bit down hard.

There was a blue flash, and a pop!, and a brief loud buzzing, accompanied by a stink of burning meat. The rat flopped over on its back, the broken lamp hanging from its convulsively working jaws, blue sparks flying like spittle from its mouth. It kicked around the room, tore the hangings from the bed and expired.

"My rat," Ganesha said in tones of desolation. He had trouble making himself heard over Sprout's screams. The sheet had completely entwined her long legs, turned her to a mummy lamia with an angel's face. "You have slain my sacred rat."

"You can build yourself another," J. Bob said, between pants, as he rolled to his knees and cast about for his sidearm. "Unless I miss my guess. What do you do, call virtual particles into being in the desired form? And if you need something really substantial, like a riding rat, it uses up a lot of your capacity, doesn't it? Thought I saw this LSD playboy pad of yours waver a few times there.

"And your little disintegration trick - you can suppress virtual particles, too, as well as call them into being, you rascal, you. Like the pions that carry the strong force - "

Ganesha shook his magnificent head. "You are lost in the maya of your machines - "

"Actually, I think it's the blood I've lost that makes me talk like this."

"- to concern yourself with how I do what I do, when all that matters is what I do."

And his mind caught the flames of the lamps and the candles, and drew them forth in bright strands into a roiling, roaring mass, and set them upon Belew. He fought, rolling on the floor to douse the flames, roaring as much in fury as in pain. But in the end, the flames had their way.

At last it was done, and he lay still.

For a moment Ganesha stood over his vanquished foe. The corpse was covered with a hard black charcoal crust, from which stinking smoke rose. The guru nodded and turned away.

"And now, my child," he said, going to the bed. The smell of incense filled the room, to banish less pleasant odors. "Let us continue where we left off."

Sprout stared at him with wide blue eyes. When he reached his trunk for her she struck at it with her fists.

"You hurt Unca Bob. I hate you!"

He reared, blinking back sudden tears of pain. He seized her wrists.

"I will not be denied any longer," he cried. Golden vines twined around Sprout's arms from the posts of the bed. They drew her down onto her back.

Behind Ganesha the smoking mummy stirred. Slowly, agonizingly, it stretched a foot toward the handgun lying near it on the floor. Handspan patches of blackened meat fell away like cheap plaster.

"Where were we, my child?" Ganesha asked when the girl was restrained. He dropped his hand to her belly, which was covered by the wound sheet. He patted it twice, and then the sheet disappeared. Before she could kick him, more vines seized her ankles.

The black crust over one big toe split open. Blood welled through the cracks. The mummy reached for the pistol with the toe. Clumsy in its coat of char, it nudged the weapon, which made a tiny scraping sound.

Ganesha spun, frowned thunderously. "So! You are hard to kill, Major."

He strode across the room with a speed belying his bulk, kicked the handgun away.

"And now," he said, "I fear that I must reach out and touch you." He held forth a hand as if to bestow a benediction, leaned forward.

The window exploded inward in a cascade of glass-shards and splintered wood. Ganesha looked up.

Moonchild drove a flying two-footed kick into his trunked face.

She touched down lightly. Ganesha flopped bonelessly to the hardwood floor at her feet. His great elephant head flickered once, twice, vanished.

In its place was the head of an ordinary Indian male, round, plump-cheeked shaven in the priestly style. It lolled at an unnatural angle on a normal human neck, which was unmistakably broken. Protruding eyes stared at Moonchild like brown marbles.

She fell to her knees and began to scream.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

J. Bob Belew's healing powers were not as those of ordinary men. By the time he was brought before Mark a few days later, he had enough skin, pink and new and fragile as a baby's, that he did not need to be kept pumped full of every antibiotic known to humankind to keep every known contagion from invading his body. He was still sadly deficient in the matter of hair and he preferred to wear bandages over his face and hands, to protect the sensibilities of others.

"Since I'm still not in possession of all my faculties," he told the Chancellor of Free Vietnam in his muffled voice, "I won't try to fight the impulse to say, 'I told you so.'"

Mark Meadows turned from the window to stare at him. His blue eyes were chill and pale as Arctic-circle sky. With the afternoon sun blasting in at his back his long features seemed skeleton-gaunt.

The audience chamber had been stripped to echoing bareness. Not only were Ganesha's tangible illusions gone, but the tie-dyed scrim as well. All that occupied the room was now the camp stool, the two men, a quartet of joker guards with their rifles trained on Belew.

"He was a fraud to the bone," Belew said. "You saw him, didn't you, at the end? He wasn't even a joker."

Even during their days of privation and comradeship, in the fight for Vietnam, Belew thought he had never seen the skin so dry or parchment-tight over Mark's prominent cheekbones. Now emotion drew it tighter still, until it seemed the skin must snap.

"You've cost me a lot," he said. "Moonchild - I - killed my guru. Now I don't know if I can ever get Moonchild back. The last time I tried calling her, I went into convulsions, and then an hour-long coma. She was sworn never to take life."

Belew squeezed his eyes shut. "Mark. I'm sorry. There was no way for her to know his neck wasn't as strong as it looked."

"I've allowed myself to be manipulated by that agile tongue of yours for years, Major." He spread his hands. "Look where it's got me."

There was a response which might be made. Belew didn't make it. He stood erect, matched Mark gaze for gaze, and said nothing.

Mark drew a deep breath, let it slowly out. "I have spoken to my daughter. She appreciates what you did for her. So do I."

"I appreciate what you've done for me, too," Belew said. "You've seen I had the finest of care, in a country where care of any kind's still at a premium."

Mark cut him off with a sharp nod. "I did what I had to do. You've done a lot for me, more than any man or woman I ever met. You saved my daughter. That by itself is more than anything I can repay."

His features writhed briefly, set. "But I - I saw you with her, man. I don't know what really happened. I guess I never will. But all that I can give you now, is your life.

"One hundred thousand dollars has been deposited to that Swiss bank account you didn't think I knew about. And yes, I know you weren't skimming. You can have the transport of your choice, to the destination of your choice. But counting from this instant, you must be beyond the borders of Free Vietnam within twelve hours. And don't come back. Or I'll have you killed."

He raised his head. Though he held his face stiff, he could not hide the tears in his eyes.

"Have you anything to say, Major Belew?"

Slowly, painfully, Belew turned and shuffled to the door. Then he turned back, and raised a gauze-swaddled hand.

"Ave atque vale, Mark, my friend."

And he was gone.

The Color of His Skin

Part 3

Reality was cold water thrown in the face of dreams.

Gregg realized that listening to news reports in the days following the Peregrine's Perch show. The Today Show the next morning treated the story like it was headline material for Aces or the National Enquirer - just another cheap tabloid headline. The major networks placed it first or second in their newscasts the following evening, but focused mostly on Gregg's past. CNN was more serious in its commentary, but buried the story in the middle of its sequence and featured rebuttals by several government sources. Marilyn Monroe, in a widely-televised press conference, emotionally denied that she had met with Hannah and denounced the Hedda Hopper material as "entirely manufactured." Sarah Morgenstern wrote a scathing, sarcastic article for Newsweek. Rush Limbaugh, never a fan of "Liberal Loonie" Hartmann, was especially brutal in his usual searing jocularity, deriding this "theory of ex-Senator Gregg Crackpotmann, Hannah Bananas, and Father Sushi - the ultimate Three Stooges."

Puppetman's influence had always required live interaction; his new Gift was identically limited. Gregg wasn't surprised that the viewing audience turned out to be more skeptical than the live audience. "Certainly the angry response of Peregrine's audience demonstrates that jokers experience far more prejudicial treatment than is either fair or just," Ed Bradley commented, then added, "but mistreatment hardly constitutes a conspiracy."

A Harris poll showed that only 12% of the general public (plus or minus 3%) bought into the existence of the Card Sharks, while another 17% thought that such a conspiracy was at least "possible." Among nats alone, the numbers dropped even further.

"This isn't what we'd hoped for, is it?" Father Squid said.

They were in the new parsonage, surrounded by boxes and clutter - gifts from the parishioners to replace what Father Squid had lost in the fire. The parsonage smelled of new paint and fresh-cut lumber; the small dining room through the archway was draped in plastic dropcloths. Through the windows, Gregg could see the rubble of the church, from which a new structure was slowly emerging.

Oddity - Evan - had made coffee. Gregg curled his finger around the pleasant warmth of the mug and sipped. "It's what I expected," he said.

"But after Peri's show, after that reaction ..." Hannah leaned in a corner beside the silent bulk of Quasiman, who was in one of his fugues. The young woman stroked Quasiman's shoulder with one hand, and Gregg could sense Hannah's strong friendship for the joker radiating from her.

He found that he was almost jealous. What does it matter? the inner voice chided him. After all, nat women aren't to your taste. Even attractive ones like her ... "Our audience there were the easy ones to convince, Hannah," he said. "The ones who live in Jokertown - they know already. But the nats, the whole rest of the country ..." Gregg shrugged.

He could feel their doubt beginning to overshadow the hope. He began walking around the room as he spoke, letting the Gift touch each of them, letting it push back the darkness. He patted Father Squid's shoulder, hugged Oddity, crouched down beside Quasiman and touched the hunchback's knee.

Stood again looking at Hannah. He sent the Gift deep into her, and she smiled back at him. There was inside her an implicit trust of him, clear and unalloyed now with lingering doubts. Gregg could sense that melding of admiration and faith, and he sent the power down to that crystalline certainty, adding another careful new layer to it. Stop it, Greggie! He ignored the voice and touched Hannah's hand; she gave his fingers a squeeze in return.

"Listen, all of you. We accomplished what we needed to accomplish," Gregg said, looking at Hannah, then back to the others. "We made it safe for Hannah and Father Squid to come out of hiding - at least as safe as anyone in New York can be right now. We have the media digging for the facts, and if my experience is any indication, they'll be much more effective and thorough than we could ever hope to be. We'll let them investigate for us. The Sharks are going to be busy trying to hide their tracks or deny their involvement. If the joker that Battle's turned into is found, we'll start asking about the old burglary charges again. Monroe, Herzenhagen, Rudo - they'll all have the press camped out on their doorsteps for the next week at least."

"Until the next juicy story knocks us off the front page," Oddity commented.

"Furs said it would take a few days for the press to really get going, Evan," Gregg answered. "Let's give it that chance. And we're not done yet ourselves, remember."

"If people come through."

"They'll come through. I'm sure of it."

The use of the power had made him feel tired and old, as if he'd been working physically. He yawned, stretching. His muscles ached, and he suddenly wanted to be alone. Gregg left the room as the discussion continued, going outside.

He put his arms on the railing of the front porch, looking up to where the incomplete framework of the new steeple was etched against the cityglow of the sky. He heard the door open behind him.

"Are you as confident as you sound?" Hannah's voice, soft and low. Gregg could feel the warmth as she came alongside him, and he glanced over to see that her gaze, like his, had gone to the steeple.

Yes, he started to say, but couldn't. He found that he didn't want to lie to her. He didn't need to lie to her. "No."

"I thought so." For an instant, she smiled, still looking up at the steeple.

"I don't see that very often," he said.

"What?"

"You smiling. So why'd it happen?"

"I don't know," she said. She looked at him. In the half-darkness, her hair seemed to glow, and her eyes were only faint lights in the shadow of her face. "Maybe I like hearing you tell me the truth. Maybe it makes me trust you."

"And that makes you smile?"

"Yeah," she said "Despite all the nastiness going on around me, it does. You're a good man, Gregg Hartmann. No matter what happens, I appreciate all you've done."

She smiled again, a flash of teeth, and went back inside. Gregg stayed out in the night for a long, long time.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

"The Free Vietnamese government exhumed the reputed body of Dr. Etienne Faneuil two days ago," Gregg said "We have here the documented report from the medical examiner, as well as a set of dental records from the corpse. As you can see, the dental records do not match those of Dr. Faneuil, and the skeletal remains show no evidence of the broken leg Dr. Faneuil is known to have suffered in 1972."

"Any dental records for Dr. Faneuil are extremely old. And, not to be prejudicial but Free Vietnam is not the United States. How can you be certain that the corpse they claim to have exhumed is indeed from Dr. Faneuil's grave, and can you be certain of the competency of the examiner?"

Mike Wallace managed to look smug. Gregg tried to smile into the camera lights. Gregg had been on 60 Minutes once before for a piece on terrorism, and they'd interviewed him regarding his kidnapping in Berlin. Wallace's staff had initially been uninterested when Gregg contacted them regarding the Sharks, but in the wake of Peregrine's show, and with the promise that they'd be the first to reveal the findings of the exhumation, they'd agreed. The cameras and Wallace had arrived at Gregg's apartment that evening.

Hannah leaned forward toward Wallace. "We asked Chancellor Meadows to be certain that every step in the process was documented, and we'll provide you that documentation, Mr. Wallace. The body was taken from the grave in which Dr. Faneuil was reputedly buried. The Vietnamese medical examiner has a degree from Columbia and did his residency in Los Angeles; I don't doubt his credentials."

"But the dental records ..."

"I've depended on dental records for identification many times in my work, Mr. Wallace," she said. "Fires don't leave much else. I'll admit that records for Dr. Faneuil are sketchy. Still, it's much, much easier to prove that records don't match than that they do. You have Dr. Faneuil's records in your hand. Look at the upper right incisor, here. As you can see, Dr. Faneuil had a crown put on that tooth in 1977." Hannah gave Wallace a set of X-ray negatives. "Compare those to this. The Vietnamese corpse doesn't have a crown on that incisor - in fact, the tooth was whole and healthy when the man died. No matter how sketchy the records, no one grows a new adult tooth where there was once a crown. I don't know who this man is. I do know that he is not Etienne Faneuil."

Wallace stared at the two sets of documents for a moment and then set them aside on Gregg's coffee table. "All right," he said. "Let's assume for the moment that you're correct. Dr. Faneuil faked his death and is conceivably still alive out there somewhere. What does that prove?"

"By itself, nothing," Gregg answered. "What's important is the reflection it casts on the rest of Hannah's evidence. Dr. Faneuil's death was the wall the Sharks threw up in Hannah's path when she began this. His death was supposed to end her uncovering of the Card Sharks just as it ended legal pursuit of the doctor in the first place. Hannah insisted that Faneuil was alive - and everyone ridiculed her. Largely because of that, the rest of her evidence was ignored or discounted. Well, Hannah Davis was right and everyone else was wrong."

"And thus she is right about the rest"

"Yes."

"And is Pan Rudo, Director of the World Health Organization, also the head of the Card Sharks?"

"We've not claimed that, Mr. Wallace," Gregg smiled He glanced at Hannah; she nodded back to him. "We're still gathering evidence before we name the person. The rest is speculation on the part of the media. I suggest you ask Dr. Rudo that question, not me."

"We'd like to, but he won't talk to us. Ms. Davis, Senator, let me be candid with the two of you for a moment. I don't want to believe you. I don't want to think that there has been an ugly conspiracy on the part of some very important and influential people to discredit and even kill jokers. I don't want to believe that kind of horror, prejudice, and genocide is possible."

"It's happened before," Hannah said "Not too long ago at all - when Adolf Hitler and the Nazis ruled Germany."

"Yes," Wallace admitted. "That doesn't mean it can happen again. Not here."

"I'd like to believe that, too, Mr. Wallace," Hannah said. "And if you in the media do your job, it won't"

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

"... And if you in the media do your job, it won't."

The image of Hannah cut to that of Wallace on the 60 Minutes studio set. "Well, we tried to do just that," he said to the camera. "We looked into several of the allegations made by Ms. Davis, and in each case, we found an alarming trend. Important records had been destroyed, crucial documents had vanished, people with vital pieces of knowledge had moved to parts unknown or had passed away due to accident or illness. Either Ms. Davis and ex-Senator Hartmann have managed to find the right combination of events to make things look suspicious, or there really is something or someone covering up their tracks. The Iranian hostage debacle is a case in point. We petitioned the State Department, the Justice Department, the CIA, the Pentagon, and the White House for documents relating to that incident."

Pictures of the request letters fell, one after another, on the screen. "Here's what we received back," Mike's voice said over them. New pages appeared, each pertinent section highlighted. "President Barnett's press secretary claims that the Carter administration documents relevant to that period are 'missing.' He promises to look into the matter. The Justice Department claims that it was 'not involved' and that any documents it might have regarding Cyclone's participation or non-participation in the operation are 'classified due to problems with his estate.' The Pentagon sent us reports which are, as you can see, mostly blacked-out and useless. The CIA has 'declined comment.'"

Cut back to Mike, looking seriously into the camera. "We would like to assure Ms. Davis that we will, indeed, 'do our job.' Our investigation will continue, and we will report back to you, our viewers, exactly what we find."

"Yes!"

The crowd of jokers and sympathizers gathered in Father Squid's new living room exulted as 60 Minutes went to a commercial, hugging Hannah and clapping Gregg on the back. He grinned in the midst of the spontaneous celebration. "You've done it!" Father Squid roared at him. "Tell them, Gregg!" he shouted. Others joined in, urging him to speak: Jube, Dutton, Oddity, a dozen more.

Gregg rose, holding up his left hand, and the group slowly quieted. Someone snapped off the television set.

"I'll make this short and sweet," he said. "Yes, this is exactly what we were after," Gregg told them, and just for the pleasure it gave him, he used the Gift with the words, imbuing them with power and enjoying the feel of their reaction. Already primed, already wanting to rejoice with them, it was easy to stroke their emotions. "We haven't won. Not yet. But we've made a beginning. The Sharks are already running for cover. If we keep the spotlight on them, they can't escape. I'm just a tool in your hands, someone with the right contacts. You did this, all of you. So applaud yourselves."

They did so, vigorously, as Gregg sat again, wrapped in their silver joy.

You see, he told the voice inside himself. If we can do this, we can do more - anything I want to do. God, it feels so GOOD!

From across the room, Hannah caught his eye. She was watching him. For a moment, their gazes locked, and her smile went wide. She nodded. For a moment, he felt confused, as if her acknowledgment overrode all the pleasure of the moment. Then he grinned again and nodded back.

Doing the right thing for all the wrong reasons, the voice chided inside him. Isn't that right, Greggie?

To that, he had no answer.

Paths of Silence and of Night

by Leanne C. Harper

"The magic secrets of your forefathers were revealed to them by voices which came by the path of silence and the night."

- Popol Vuh

Sacred Book of the Quiche Maya

The movement caught her. The hawk, head turning in a search for food, fixed on the two men coming down the trail. Not villagers, not on the trail down from the mountains. The men of Chotol were in the milpas below the village. Neither the army nor the guerrillas would have been so foolish as to send only two men. Evangelical missionaries would have been coming up from the valleys. When they stopped, the hawk lost them amid the tangled mass of foliage. Suzanne Menotti shoved her thick black hair behind her ears as if it would aid her sight. She shared her vision with the black jaguar who stood at her side. They had been playing with the village children, making a game of learning Spanish. It was one of the reasons she was allowed to stay here. Now she let them play by themselves, chasing the dogs.

Listening, she heard nothing more than the quiet sounds of village life: maize being ground for tortillas and the tortillas themselves being patted into existence between the fingers of the women, the children laughing in their play, and beyond that the shrill bird calls that came from the jungle. The breeze that made life in the tropical heat bearable up here on the mountainside swept through the upper branches of the tall pine, oak, and cedar trees surrounding Chotol and down into her unbound hair.

Switching from one point of view to the next among her sentries in the forest, she watched the strangers approach the tiny Quiche Mayan village of Chotol. The eyes she used could tell her little about them at this distance. The eyes of her watchers were not adapted to see what she needed to know. The lead man avoided each trap set into the trail as if he had seen a map of their defenses.

When a coatimundi looked up from his meal and saw them twenty minutes from the village, Suzanne told the children to warn their mothers and grandparents in the eighteen thatched-roof houses surrounding the open center of the village. They did not hesitate, running silently with prematurely serious faces to follow a drill they had known all their lives. While they scattered into the tiny whitewashed houses, she went back to her surveillance of the intruders. As best she could tell, neither man was armed, but that was no guarantee. She called Luis, the eldest Ek child, back and sent him to warn the men farming the corn in the milpas. An unnatural quiet fell over the entire village as the adults and the children gathered food and weapons in preparation for evacuation. In a war zone, everyone learns their roles early.

The Eks were the village leaders. When Rosa Ek came out of her house fully armed with machete and ancient rifle, carrying both her youngest child and a bag of supplies, Suzanne explained the danger to her in the Quiche dialect she had struggled to learn. After a quick consultation, Rosa left Suzanne there to decide the intruders' fate and shepherded her charges to their jungle hiding places. It was a measure of the trust the people of Chotol had in her, and it never failed to make her proud. The danger was ten minutes away. Suzanne retreated into her own house to await its arrival.

When they left the jungle for the clearing around the village, the man who followed staggered as if, without the necessity of struggling through the fecund growth, he did not possess the strength to walk. The leader moved as slowly and deliberately here as he had through the jungle. Coming into the center of the village, he stopped for a moment before turning to face her home. His companion hauled himself to the edge of the well and began pulling up the bucket.

Now she could see them with her own eyes. The leader was Maya, in his late forties and already beating the statistics, a Cakchiquel she guessed from his embroidered shirt, although she was still terrible at determining tribal affiliations. Rosa despaired of her sometimes. Rosa could have told her precisely the village from which he came. To her surprise, his thirtysomething companion was white, as norteamericano as herself by the look of his sunburn. And a journalist, according to his filthy, many-pocketed vest and dangling cameras. By travelling alone with an Indian, he proclaimed himself a liberal journalist. Still, appearances here were at least as deceiving as they had been in New York. She saw no weapons other than the Maya's machete. They were travelling light, with only the white man's camera pack and the Maya's one red woven cotton bag. There was something wrong with her view of the Maya through the eyes of the margay perched high in a fir tree. The nervous little cat was difficult to control without taking over his mind entirely. Suzanne hated to do that.

She stood and walked out into the sunlight. Neither she nor the Maya spoke. The other man was concentrating on drinking his water, not even noticing her arrival. Sated at last, he looked up to meet blue eyes staring at him.

"Shit!" He tripped in his haste to back away. The weight of the swinging cameras destroyed his balance and he sat down hard, hands splaying out behind him. But he did not reach inside his vest. No gun. "Uman, there's a fucking jaguar over here." His Spanish was poor, mixing in the English obscenity and rising in pitch. "Jose ..."

"Don't move and you'll be okay. Balam, watch him." The verbal order was for the reporter's benefit. Suzanne used the jaguar's eyes to keep track of the journalist. Her own eyes never left the Maya. Now she saw why the image she had taken from the margay was so confused. The right side of his body was human, but the left explained his slow pace. He appeared to be made of stone, a living stele from a dead Maya city, complete with inscriptions and carved images. A joker, beautiful and grotesque. But what took her most by surprise was that the carvings seemed to change every time she blinked her eyes.

She shook off her fascination to check the surrounding jungle for more trouble through the eyes of nearby birds. Everything was quiet. The men had gone directly from the fields to the forest. The people were located strategically outside the village in hiding places established years before her arrival. Even the children waited with the patience taught by generations of people living under the shadow of a would-be conqueror. It always impressed her, this implacable patience under the worst of circumstances.

The Maya before her gazed back with the same unwavering stare, not insolent or even hostile, never subservient ... just patient. The two sides of his face almost matched, contemporary man and ancient king, for just an instant before changing again. He spoke briefly in a language with which she was unfamiliar. After the years she had spent here, she could manage Quiche and her high school Spanish had become near-fluency, but that was all. She shrugged her lack of comprehension and he switched to Spanish.

"We need to rest." He maneuvered his body by swinging it on the pivot of his left leg and gestured to include his white fellow traveller. "We won't stay long."

"No, you won't." Suzanne stared pointedly at their bedraggled clothes. "Who's chasing you?"

The Maya's body shimmered as the hieroglyphs spun out their messages too quickly for the eye to follow. Almost idly, she wondered if he could read them and what the words held for him. His eyes moved to the journalist still seated in the dust before returning to Suzanne's.

"Are you an Evangelical or perhaps with one of the Catholic Action missions?" His question was asked with a lightness of tone that belied its importance.

"No, I'm not here to save any souls. Nor am I a misguided norteamericano liberal in Guatemala to help the rebels." Here, she deliberately looked over at the photojournalist. "I'm here because I love this land. It's my home now."

She thought but didn't say that, even in high summer, life in Guatemala beat the hell out of Central Park and steam grates in the Manhattan winter. Her eyes unfocused slightly as she flashed through the consciousness of innumerable creatures going about their lives throughout the forest, then came back hard to the intruders in her life.

"I'm here as a friend; the people are kind enough to let me stay. I avoid politics, all politics. I've found it's the best way to stay alive. Who's after you?"

"The Kaibiles." Before Uman could answer, the journalist spoke. "Josh McCoy, sometimes of New York."

"I can't say I'm pleased to meet someone leading the Guatemalan Army's finest counter-insurgency troops to my front door." Responding to the emotions coming through the two-way mental link with Suzanne, the jaguar growled softly as it continued to stare at McCoy's throat. Now the sweat streaming down his face was not due to the exertion or the humidity.

"Uman lost them. He says his blood told him which way they'd go. He was right." McCoy got up slowly, arms staying away from his sides, using his shoulders to readjust the position of his pack and cameras. "And I thought he was just another joker when I met him. I don't have any idea what you know about the Maya but he's a ckuchkajawib, an ajk'ij, umm, a priest-shaman type. Sometimes they're called Daykeepers. You'd think I'd know better by now. You guys tap into things I never believed existed."

"What?" Suzanne was startled by his assumption and fiercely angered by the knowledge of her it implied.

"Look, Animal Lady, it's not exactly SOP for somebody to have a pet jaguar or use a taltuza as a living stole, right? In fact, you probably fall on the side of the aces. I don't know you, so you've kept it real quiet, but you're from up north." He looked around the tiny village with contempt. "It's a long way to run, but I've got to admit it makes a great place to stick your head in the fuckin' sand."

The pitch of the jaguar's growl increased as the rage she felt grew. More than a little of her anger came from the fact that she had entirely forgotten the taltuza, a little raccoon-like beast she had taken in and nursed back to health last winter. It had taken a liking to lying across her shoulders all day. She no longer even noticed it, it was so much a part of her. Her subconscious took in the information the taltuza provided as if it came from her own senses. Only the intercession of the Maya priest broke the tension between them.

"I'm hungry, I'm tired and I must cast the tz'ite seeds to find our path. Your village is safe for now." Uman blinked slowly in his exhaustion. His flat tone implied that he was more than slightly annoyed by their antipathy. Suzanne hesitated, staring at McCoy with the same hungry intensity as the jaguar.

"I'm Suzanne Menotti. Inside, there's food." She stood aside and waved them into her home of plastered and white-washed cornstalk walls with an exaggerated half-curtsey for McCoy. "It may be a trifle humble for your tastes. And watch out for the pit trap just inside the door."

"Lady, after Australian grubs, anything's an improvement." Skirting the jaguar who had moved to stand at Suzanne's side, the reporter followed Uman inside. Left outside, she scanned the surrounding jungle and then swept her left hand down sharply in a gesture meant to be seen by the village sentries who watched nearby. As she bent to enter, the people began to return to their interrupted lives.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

The scent touching the nose of a peccary rooting for food brought Suzanne fully awake. As she rolled on the sleeping mat to her feet, she sent Balam, the black jaguar who had been her companion for two years, to warn the Eks, who would again oversee the evacuation of their village. They had agreed with Suzanne that the refugees could stay overnight but no more, and all traces of them had to be gone in the morning. The villagers were used to the disruption of the army patrols looking for rebels in their midst. She never would be. Years of living on the street had paradoxically made her as fiercely territorial as a jaguar.

Gunpowder and human sweat. Those were the smells she had caught through the peccary's sense. Soldiers. Or some guerrilla band. Scent could not tell her whether it was the government army or the Guatemalan Army of the Poor, or gods knew what other splinter group. Enemy or friend, it was best to hide first and determine the level of danger later. In either case, the strangers were likely to mean more trouble for the village.

"Up. Now." She nudged the Daykeeper Uman awake, then shoved the reporter hard. They slept under her roof because, since she had no family, she had the most room. And that way she could watch them. "We're leaving."

"We who, kemosabe?" McCoy helped Uman to gather his bag and clothing. She noted with some bemusement his patience with the elder Maya.

"I know the trails." She paused for a moment to use her other eyes, ears and nostrils throughout the nearby jungle. "I won't have you endanger these people. Uman doesn't know the area and he can't keep stopping to check the omens for every right turn. Come on."

Suzanne threw a pair of black jeans and a couple of dark T-shirts into her backpack, followed by her maps and a flashlight. Two canteens of water were joined by a package of leftover tortillas, some chilis, salt and beans, wrapped in leaves. She was figuring on giving the men a day's lead over the army, then coming back by some circuitous route. Her machete and down vest hung by the door and she grabbed them as they left. She never carried a gun of any kind.

The night was bright and cold at their elevation. It was only a few days before a full moon. McCoy followed her out first. The shaman paused in the doorway, hieroglyphs dancing across his body. His eyes were closed and his right hand touched his left shoulder as if to confirm the message he felt internally. Last night, he had performed rites that he claimed would tell him more about how they would escape the army's net. He had not, however, been forthcoming about the specifics. The moment ended quickly. If Suzanne had not turned at that precise instant, she would never have seen it. She looked down at the jaguar back at her side. Balam would stay with the people as added protection. The taltuza had climbed back to its accustomed perch and would go with her. This could be an interesting day.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

They had put kilometers between themselves and Chotol by the time she allowed them to rest with the coming of dawn. Uman amazed her with the steadiness of his progress. Despite his body, he had kept up with her. Even McCoy had managed to stay with the pace she set. She looked up from her wide-ranging reconnaissance of the forest to catch Uman's eyes on her.

"I think it's time I knew why an ajk'ij and a reporter are running through the Guatemalan Highlands in an attempt to escape from the army." Suzanne sat down with some gratitude herself, although she would never admit it to the others. She handed out one of the canteens of water. McCoy stopped cleaning the lens of his Minolta and glanced at Uman before continuing the operation with extreme concentration.

"A little trouble up in the Altiplano, further up in the mountains." He put the camera up to his eye and sighted. "Hard to stay out of trouble in the Highlands. Genocide brings out the worst in people, you know."

"I told you I wasn't political. If I wanted to play those games, I would have stayed in New York." Suzanne scowled out at the jungle. "I love this country, these people. I'd do anything for them, but I won't blindly follow anyone's party line. You norteamericanos always have some agenda - even if it is just assuaging your white liberal guilt."

"We norteamericanos." McCoy barked a laugh.

"It is not a political question for us." Uman entered the conversation, ending his revery. "It is our survival, the survival of our traditions. You must know this."

"This is not answering my question. Okay, I know about the struggle, the defeat and murder of the Hero Twins at Nebaj last year, the destruction of the town, the imprisonment of most of the Maya separatists who weren't killed. It's not fair and it's not right. But why you? And why the Kaibiles?"

"There's a village in the Altiplano, like Chotol, but maybe four or five times as large. Was a village, until a week ago." McCoy had switched to English. He lay back on the ground and stared up through the dark green canopy of treetops toward the now light-blue sky. It was still cool. The heat would not come until the sun was higher.

"It was a little place, but pretty. Good people. Ixil Maya. Jokers, some of them. But, you know, I never saw jokers who were so accepted by their community. Doesn't happen in New York. I'd heard about Uman through some contacts of mine possibly associated with the EGP."

"So you are involved with the Army of the Poor?"

"Jeez, I know some people. It's my job to develop contacts. I'm not a freakin' Marxist, all right?"

"So you found a nice photogenic joker. Just the thing for a little Newsweek human interest piece? Oooh, maybe a cover story. That must pay well." Suzanne used English as well. Uman had looked up when McCoy began, but had not reacted since. Not all that many Maya spoke Spanish, let alone English. It was why she spent so much time teaching the children. Communication of the situation in their country was the only way she saw that could protect them from their ordained future. She dug into her pack and passed out tortillas and beans.

"Uman, did I come to do any harm?" McCoy appealed to the shaman in Spanish.

"He wanted to study our ways of time, past and future." Uman added salt and chilis to his food, as did she. McCoy ate his plain. "He is no anthropologist."

Suzanne smiled despite herself. Few Maya enjoyed the company of the graduate students in anthropology who threatened to overwhelm them every summer. She held up a bite to the taltuza, who snatched it away.

"Uman was able to use the ancient knowledge with rare accuracy. I was curious as to whether that was related to his joker nature. I have a personal interest in that." Suzanne looked over at him, but he did not explain. He had not said it with any of the hatred or revulsion she expected. His tone had been sad. Someone in his life was a joker. Or had been. "Anyway, I wanted to know more, and in my experience, the more light that can be shown on something and the more people who become interested, the more pressure can be put on the government from outside the country."

Suzanne glared out into the jungle. Casting her mind out over the land around them, she perceived no danger. She wished she knew what was happening in Chotol.

"So what happened last week?"

"The town was surrounded by the Guatemalan Army. So what else is new, right? But this time they brought a few new friends along with them. And a little experiment. They used their helicopter gunships to fog the town with some chemical, a biological weapon. Have you ever heard of 'Card Sharks?'"

"No."

"Well, they're pretty simple people to understand. They want you dead. Because you're an ace or something like it. But they're equal opportunity. They want jokers like Uman dead too." McCoy followed her gaze into the trees. "Their calculations were a little off this time. They killed everyone. Jokers, nats, kids, adults. Very effective. Bastards."

"So how did you and Uman survive?"

"We were praying in a cave in the mountains, asking permission for me to study a little of Uman's knowledge. Uman felt something was wrong. We left the cavern and began hearing the howls of the people. But by the time we got back, it was all over. The bodies were covered in their own blood; it looked as though they had hemorrhaged through their skin. They were lying everywhere. Blood ran in streams in the street. The walls had the imprints of hands and bodies and even faces, where the dying had thrown themselves in their agonies. I've covered wars and natural disasters all over the world and I never before saw anything like this." McCoy shivered although the heat of the day had begun to penetrate their shelter.

"We hid on the hillside above the town. The army had already cleared it once. They controlled the roads, so they weren't looking for anyone else to get there. A few people actually survived the first onslaught. The Kaibiles shot each of them in the head. It must have been quick dispersal; they weren't even wearing gas masks when they came in. They thought there was no one left. But we were there and I had my cameras.

"I got the army officers, the Kaibiles, the bodies, the torching of the town and its final destruction by the gun-ships. And I got the most important shot of all. Etienne Faneuil. They used to call him the 'French Schweitzer,' you know - before the Kenya joker massacre. He's supposed to be dead. But I've got shots of him arguing with some Guatemalan general. The good doctor wasn't very happy. His trial had failed. This junk is just as deadly to nats as to wild card victims. All he wanted to do was get back to his lab."

Suzanne found herself staring at the man. Whatever she thought had made them fugitives, it wasn't this. None of the horrors she had seen or heard about since coming to Guatemala were anything like this. Chotol had mostly been ignored by both the government army and the EGP. Normal harassment but nothing worse. She had done her best to make sure of it.

"They have always wanted us to disappear. No more indigenas. No more inconvenience about who owns the land. No more trouble about the majority of the people getting representation in the government. No more awkwardness about evicting people from their homes and moving them into 'model villages' by force. No more interference by outsiders concerned about native people's life expectancy of only forty-five years. So nice, so tranquilo. Best of all, the tourists and their dollars would still come to see the ruins of the past."

Suzanne stared at Uman, not just because he had spoken in English but at the black bitterness in his words that ran deeper than she could imagine. The Daykeeper was no naive, untutored peasant who lived in a past he only dimly remembered. Only those who saw him and his people as expendable could see him like that.

"Now you know why we're running so fast and so hard. I hate to admit it, but we could use your help." McCoy looked back down the trail as if he could see their pursuers. "If we can get to Belize, I know I can get these pictures into the world press. This is just a touch dramatic, but the lives of thousands of jokers depend on getting this film out. Not to mention what the proof of the army's genocidal practices could do for the native cause. Come with us. We've got to cross the Peten. Neither of us knows anything about the Lowlands. We need a guide, and your talents would come in very useful."

"I already have a cause: Chotol. I'll get you out of the mountains but that's it. Once we hit the Peten, you're on your own." She slung her pack across her unencumbered shoulder and waited until the taltuza climbed on before shaking it into place.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

Two more days and nights of travel with little rest brought them down out of the mountains and into the lower hills. At least twice each day, the helicopters had been overhead searching for them. Suzanne had to keep them out of clearings in the thickest navigable brush she could. They had kept moving around the clock, with only a few hours of sleep when the terrain allowed it. She used the eyes of the nocturnal animals to guide them. The flashlight was a giveaway for any searchers. She never mentioned it. The two men followed as best they could, stumbling over rocks and drop-offs they couldn't see when the moon was hidden. Uman continued to surprise her. When she watched him, he appeared to move slowly and awkwardly, but he was always there, never lagging behind. His main complaint was that she never allowed him enough time to read their possible futures with his tz'ite seeds or his crystals. She kept telling him they would have much more of a future if they kept moving. He didn't argue long.

McCoy cursed softly and continuously when she took them off one path to cross the jungle to another. Still, he was careful not to break branches or leave other evidence of their passage if he could help it. In its way, it was frustrating. They gave her no excuses to abandon them. While they were in the Highlands, the days were warm, but the nights were bone-chillingly cold. Now, as they descended to the Lowlands, both days and nights were hot. The humidity made it difficult to draw a breath.

She wished for Balam more than once. The food from the village was long exhausted. She and Uman collected fruit when it was possible. They took water from streams as they passed. McCoy was popping Lomotil as if it was candy to ward off any bugs he was picking up, although she was using water purification tablets in the canteens. Suzanne made sure they stayed away from any habitations. Spies could be anywhere. And even if a village held no spies, their presence was too dangerous.

On the fourth day out, she got her wish. Balam suddenly appeared at the edge or her range. By the time she had made her way in to join Suzanne, the woman knew what had taken place in Chotol and how close the army was behind them, taking it from the jaguar's memories.

The first soldiers she had seen were only members of a routine patrol. But Uman and McCoy had been tracked to Chotol within a few hours of their departure. Both Balam and the human sentries of the village gave advance warning so that there was no one in Chotol when the Kaibiles arrived. They searched every house for traces of their prey, destroying their contents as they went. The English-language books in her house excited them. That was enough to proclaim the village a haven for subversivos.

When they found no one to take captive, they poisoned the well and burned all the houses. After that, they tried to find the villagers in the jungle but had no success - with one exception. Young Luis Ek had wanted to be a warrior, just as his ancestors had been. He had taken his ancient rifle and picked off two Kaibiles before they had taken him. He had been tortured to death. Balam's memories of his mangled body were so vivid that she had to shut Balam out of her mind. He was, had been, only twelve.

Balam had killed two Kaibiles as well, and the traps had taken three more. But the destruction of their homes and their corn and bean fields would cripple their efforts to avoid work on the coastal fincas, the coffee and cotton plantations they had finally managed to escape. For at least a while, they would have to move elsewhere. The Kaibiles would not soon forget the death of their fellows.

Suzanne was now a permanent exile. Her presence would mean the death of anyone with whom she was associated. With Balam at her side, she walked into the jungle. It was only there, with no humans near, that she allowed herself tears of grief at the loss of her home. She tried to blame it all on the two men she was helping, but she could not convince herself. The guilt was hers alone, despite her knowledge that the blame lay with the army, not with her.

She returned in silence and refused to speak for the hours of a forced march down into the Peten. Only when neither McCoy nor Uman could walk further did she stop. She considered the options she had left. The most attractive was entering into a personal guerrilla war against the Kaibiles. Joined by Balam and others, she could cause a respectable amount of damage. She was willing to bet her life that she could escape detection. The problem was that she knew Uman and McCoy would never make it across the Peten alone. She was not even convinced that she could get them across the Lowlands.

"Chotol?" Uman had the courage to ask the question after he caught his breath.

"Gone. Burned to the ground." Suzanne glared at them, still wanting to make it their fault. "But the people survived. Only one casualty - unless you count the Kaibiles."

When she gazed out into the forest after Balam, their eyes followed.

"She is quite territorial."

"So, what are you going to do now?" McCoy's hands were trembling as he eased the cameras off his shoulders. Suzanne tried to feel regret at how hard she had run them. She felt nothing. For the last few years, she had put the Bagabond persona behind her. Bagabond felt little emotion because it was not a survival characteristic. Bagabond could kill anyone she found a threat without hesitation. Not even Jack Robicheaux, the were-alligator who had joined her in the shelter under the streets of New York, knew what she had done before they met. Suzanne did not want to become that person, that feral creature, again. Guatemala had begun to heal her, but the damage was too deep for her old personality to have been entirely erased. Bagabond had just been buried. And the Kaibiles had dug up the body.

"I thought I might undertake a rearguard action. Balam and I could do a lot of good." Her head twitched as Balam took down her kill, a deer. After feeding herself, Balam would bring what was left back to them. A small fire was safe here under the thick leaves of the trees. The smoke would not show if they put it out quickly. She picked up the driest wood she could find.

"You could do more by getting us to Belize." Uman helped her gather fuel for the fire.

"This is my home. Shouldn't I defend it?"

"If this is your home, then your people are my people." Uman spoke patiently. "I think that the saints have chosen this way to ask for your help in saving our people."

"Which 'our people'? Jokers and aces, or Indians?"

"Why do you think it matters?"

Suzanne was furious. She was being guilt-tripped by an Indian shaman. She hated being wrong. Nothing more was said until after the deer had been cooked over the open flames. The fire brought up images from her past, from New York and from the sanitarium. Few of them were good memories. To clear her mind, she sent it out around the jungle among the monkeys and the birds. They had no past to haunt them. At the very edge of the area she could read, she caught indications of the army. They were setting up camp for the night.

"I got involved before. People got killed; some of them were 'my' people. Are you sure you want my help?" She leaned back against Balam's warm fur, trying to look bestial. She suspected it worked from the look in McCoy's eyes.

"We all have our nahuals, the animal spirits who accompany us in life. You just seem to have more of them, and the power to speak to them directly. A great gift." Uman was not at all discomfited by her display.

"Okay." Suzanne sighed. Maybe she had become too human. Leaving the two men to their own devices was something she could not accept. "McCoy, they used to call me Bagabond, a particularly horrible nickname I always thought. If you use it, I'll hurt you."

"Nooo problem." He dug into his camera bag. "You should have a couple of these, too."

She snatched the two plastic film canisters from the air.

"If only one of us makes it, something will get through." McCoy looked back at her without drama.

"Four hours of sleep, then we move on." McCoy was already out. When she looked at Uman, she saw that he also knew how close their pursuers were. In the flat Peten, with the trees alternating with broad savannahs, it would be much easier for the helicopter gunships to spot them. Up until now, they had had a relatively easy time, moving east through terrain that could shelter them. Now they would be moving through country where the smoke from a fire could be seen for kilometers. Before, they could use trails that had existed for centuries, sometimes millennia, and avoid leaving signs of their passage. The land they were entering was sparsely inhabited. They would be cutting their own paths through thick undergrowth. The border with Belize seemed even farther away.

Before Uman slept, she asked him why he had not gone to earth in the Highlands, where it would have been safer for him. He took his time in answering. As the fire died, the hieroglyphics that marked his body seemed to brighten and dim as they shifted. The priest brought his right hand down his left arm, fingers moving rapidly across the words as if he were a blind man reading braille, but without showing any sign of knowing what they meant.

"That one had become my friend," he said, nodding at the sleeping McCoy. "He would have been killed if I had left him. And I, alone of my town, survived. I do not believe that this could have happened by some chance. The saints are protecting me. I must honor their desires. I could not honor them by hiding for the rest of my life."

Saints had become a Maya codeword for the old gods, fit one way or another into the Catholic pantheon. As a lapsed Catholic, she was fascinated by the way it had been done over the centuries, with the gift of Mayan gods' attributes to the various saints. In her part of the country the fundamentalist protestants had made little progress in converting the people to their new Christianity.

"But, if you don't reach Belize, your knowledge as a Chuchkajawib, a mother-father of the people, could be lost forever."

"No. Those I have taught who then returned to their own villages will continue the rituals and follow the old calendar." Uman smiled across the tiny clearing, lit now only by the waxing moon high overhead. It was a sad smile, Suzanne thought, but not hopeless, only resigned. "I am told by my blood and my readings of the seeds that I am destined for a long journey. Perhaps it is the longest one, perhaps not. I can only hope that the ending of that journey will benefit my people. I will have no other memorial. My family and friends have vanished as surely as our ancestors a thousand years ago, according to the archaeologists. Myself, I think they are still here in each of us. I will not see our people vanish. Our stories of creation tell us of world upon world coming into being and then destroyed. It may be that it is time for ours to return."

"I heard about the Hero Twins. They fought back to regain the ancient Maya lands and rights. Do you believe they could do everything it was said they could?" Suzanne had heard word-of-mouth, third- and fourth-hand tales of magic abilities and blood sacrifices. She had found it hard to credit.

"Yeah." McCoy coughed and sat up groaning. "I never saw them personally, but I saw some very impressive footage of what they could do. I know the people who covered the Maya uprising. They believe. Me, I think maybe they were aces. Or maybe they really were the reincarnation of the heroes of the Popol Vuh. They came close. A lot of U.S. money went into defeating them. Some of that money was probably from the Card Sharks, but most of it was because Washington and a number of other countries in and out of this hemisphere couldn't let them win. Their success would have meant revolutions by native populations from the Arctic to Tierra del Fuego. Nobody wanted the American Indian Movement getting any ideas. Is there any venison left? I'm still starving."

Suzanne cut some meat from the haunch she had wrapped and put beside her pack.

"Thanks, babe." McCoy waved the meat at her before biting off a chunk. The taltuza hissed and the jaguar growled. Suzanne confined herself to a baleful glare. McCoy smiled broadly back at her.

"Time for all good revolutionaries to shut up and get some sleep."

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

Twenty kilometers behind them, in an army camp of thirty Kaibiles, three helicopters landed. Two were gun-ships to be used in aerial reconnaisance. The other, larger, chopper brought two passengers. Even the fearless Kaibiles turned aside as they got off and made their way to the commanders tent. The stench was overwhelming, that of a long-dead animal left in the sun to rot. Forewarned by a downwind breeze, the colonel, sliding on his reflective Raybans, stepped out to meet his new allies. The smaller man introduced himself as Dr. Peter Marcus Alvarado, a New York associate of Dr. Faneuil. The effect of his perfectly tailored jungle fatigues was marred slightly by the two white smears of menthol beneath his nostrils. The second thing he did was proffer the colonel a small blue jar of Vicks VapoRub.

The other man was the source of the vile smell. Crypt Kicker. Despite the heat, he was dressed entirely in black, including a mask and cowl. The mask was designed to cover one side of his face. At six feet, two inches, he towered over the others in the camp, but his body was misshapen. One shoulder rose above the other, and he dragged his left foot when he pulled himself across the ground of the encampment. What most caught the eyes of the Kaibiles was the flaming red cross on his chest. Speculation ran the range between an agreement between militant Protestants and the government, the return of General Efrain Rios Montt's regime to power, or perhaps a radical right Catholic movement, as to who had supplied him. Answers were not forthcoming.

"Our troubles can be contained as soon as they start across the Peten Lowlands." The Kaibile colonel spoke with great confidence. "The helicopters will spot them. We know they aren't far ahead anyway. The Indian and that gringa he picked up will be slowing him down. Our only real threat would come from any subversivos he might contact in the area. Of course, they are as likely to kill them as not, anyway. Animals."

The short norteamericano nodded without as much enthusiasm.

"What do we know about the gringa?"

"Ah, another aging hippie out to save the world. We get them all the time. They like the climate, I think. Disgusting. This one hasn't tried to convert anyone or make any 'improvements.' She has not even endeavored to turn anyone to communism. That's why she was allowed to stay. Harmless, but potentially useful as an information source - under the proper stimulus - or a hostage." He ran thumb and forefinger over a perfectly-groomed mustache, now striped with the white VapoRub. Behind his sunglasses, his eyes moved to the gangling walking corpse who stood before him silently. The grass turned brown beneath his feet, and marked his trail through the camp. "I'm sure my Kaibiles, my tigers, will be able to eliminate this problem, but perhaps you will find it educational."

"Ah heah one a those fugitives is a devil-worshipper." Crypt Kicker spoke, although it was difficult to understand more than every other word with the Texas accent and what sounded like a cleft palate birth defect. "Witches can't be suffahed to live. Bible says so."

The other two men were silent. Neither could think of a reply.

"Get a few hours of sleep. We'll be after them at dawn. My aide will show you to your tent. Tents. Food is available in the mess."

"That would be for me. The gentleman accompanying me requires neither rest nor food. But thank you, Colonel. Your hospitality is appreciated."

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

Suzanne took a break from cutting a path through the underbrush to wipe away the sweat pouring down her face. It was beginning to occur to her that a woman who would be forty on her next birthday had no business in the middle of a rain forest. Avoiding a fer-de-lance was not normally recommended as an aerobic exercise. Her hair was pulled up into a knot on the top of her head. She and Uman were taking turns at the machete. McCoy had given it a try once, but he could not manage the rhythm that put enough strength behind the swings to make any real headway. Despite Uman's "handicap," once more he turned out to be as able as she. With one hand braced against the bark of the ceiba, she used the other to wave away flies.

"Trouble will overtake us soon." Uman came up behind her and grasped the handle of the machete to pull it from its resting place in the trunk of a lightning-felled mahogany. "From the sky, I think."

As fatigue took its toll on everyone, language skills seemed to evaporate. No one used more words than he or she had to, regardless of the language being spoken. Last night's four hours of sleep had done little to refresh any of them.

"Helicopter gunships." McCoy came up to join them. He was drenched with sweat.

"One, maybe two. Lots of ground to cover." The taltuza waddled over and she extended an arm for it to climb.

"North." From Uman, it was both statement and question.

"We're about to hit a logging road." She rolled her shoulders as she looked back at the trail they had hacked through the jungle. It might as well have been outlined in neon. It was probably safe from the air because of the jungle canopy, but if anyone spotted it from the ground they were dead. "We've got to stop making it easy. It's a trade-off. We'll make more time and they may well lose our trail if we can hide where we turn south and east again. But we'll be much easier to spot from the air. My ears will protect us there."

"Great. Well, we'll have the advantage of being able to hide quickly." McCoy was trying to convince himself. "What do the tz'ite seeds say, Uman?"

"Danger lies ahead of us as well as behind." Uman looked to the east.

"No offense, but I could have guessed that one."

"Closer. There's a rebel encampment southwest of here. EGP, maybe, or I've heard there are some offshoots of the Shining Path operating up here now. That could be bad. They don't care for non-Maoists much. Small, though, just five or ten men." Suzanne closed her eyes for an instant, and the image of the camp as seen by a band of howler monkeys flashed into her mind. "Lots of guns. In fact, they could be drug dealers or running guns to the guerrillas."

"And just how do you know that? Been reading Uman's crystals? Or are they friends of yours?" McCoy's voice held sudden suspicion. Suzanne realized that she had been keeping most of her knowledge of their surroundings to herself, and most particularly how she was getting it. Having both herself and Uman as oracles must have been irritating the hell out of McCoy. McCoy had been thinking of her as simply the Doctor Doolittle of Guatemala.

"I'm no guerrilla. We'd have guns and protection if that were true. Sorry." Suzanne and Bagabond warred for a moment inside her head. This time, Suzanne won. "I, uhh, see through their eyes and use their ears to listen. The other senses as well."

"Say what?" McCoy was obviously wondering if he was following a madwoman around Guatemala.

"Now, remember what you said about learning to believe in wild card powers. I have a ... connection to wild creatures. I can share their perceptions." Bagabond made her stop short of discussing now much influence she could wield over their behavior.

"What the hell. My girlfriend has wings." He sighed with feeling. "But I'm not sure I'll ever get used to all this."

"How far is this logging road?" Uman was impatient. Suzanne suspected that he had figured this out many kilometers back.

"Another half hour of hacking." Suzanne reached for the machete, but Uman had already turned and begun swinging. Instead, she and McCoy followed the older man, pulling out the vegetation as he cut a path through it and arranging it behind them as naturally as possible. McCoy began humming "Talk to the Animals," and she threw a nice, thorny branch at him. He went back to cursing.

Stepping onto the lumber road was like stepping into heaven. They were re-energized by the instantaneous ease of passage, compared to what they had just endured. Balam had kept pace with them in the undergrowth, but now she bounded ahead and out of sight. Suzanne knelt and the taltuza marched down her arm and onto the soft earth.

"Walk on the crown. You'll leave less noticeable tracks in the gravel and rocks there." Suzanne put them in a single file.

Moving east toward Belize once more, the three fugitives walked as quickly as possible down the rough road. It was obvious it had not been used in some time, so there was little worry about drivers seeing them. Every hundred yards or so they skirted or clambered over a fallen tree blocking the track. But after the claustrophobic jungle, Suzanne felt terribly exposed. Seeing the deep blue sky overhead only made her more nervous. Now Uman was at a disadvantage. The speed at which he could struggle along set their pace. More than once, Suzanne and McCoy traded glances at the set of his face and agreed not to help him unless asked or the situation became critical.

After three hours and a good six kilometers, Suzanne - listening with sharper ears than her own - heard the heart-stopping rhythm of helicopter blades. They took immediate shelter in the dense growth beside the track. Uman was most appreciative of the forced rest stop. The helicopter prowled low, following the lumber road's turns only a few feet above the treetops. They froze as it passed directly overhead, pressing themselves into the shadow of a fallen mahogany ignored by the loggers. When not even Bagabond's borrowed ears heard the gunship's rotors, they got up and brushed themselves off.

"They'll be back." McCoy shook his cameras back into place. "This country's too damn small"

"Be happy. If it were any larger, we'd have no chance of walking across it, would we? Maybe they're just looking for that rebel encampment back a few kilometers." She pushed stray hair back off her face with both hands and wiped the sweat off her forehead with the back of her arm. She opened her eyes to return the dubious gaze of the journalist. "Just a thought ..."

Uman had propped himself against the trunk of a ceiba. He was gray and could barely hold himself up, even after their nerve-wracking rest. McCoy offered him a hand, which he shook away.

"We've got to stop for rest. We haven't eaten in hours or gotten any sleep. Nobody can keep up this pace. Even you have to get tired sometime, don't you?" McCoy never looked at Uman, but Suzanne saw and felt the problem. She was surprised that the front she was trying to keep up was still working, but she felt like Uman looked right now. She was not happy about it. This part of the Peten was about to turn into savannah. Crossing that grassland of little or no cover would be the most dangerous part of their trek. After that, it was only a few more kilometers of rain forest to the border. Just a little matter of ten or twenty.

"Okay, but let's move back from the road." She frowned as she examined their immediate options. Viewed through the animals' eyes, the terrain held no completely sheltered spots. It was a measure of her exhaustion that she almost forgot to call Balam back in.

"There is a place nearby. It should be safe." Uman pushed himself fully upright while trying to hide the pain he was suffering.

McCoy followed the shaman across the road and into the bush on the north side. Suzanne hesitated, switching her vision among the animals without seeing their possible destination. She shook her head, but after a pause to gather up the taltuza, she made her way into the wall of jungle after them.

After half an hour of climbing over and picking their way around the huge trees and the tangled underbrush, Uman led them into a partially cleared area that opened up one side of the ruins of a pair of Mayan temples. They were small, as befitted their location in an outlying town under Tikal's influence. Their platforms rose about fifteen feet above the floor of the forest. Other mounds could be discerned as dark shadows in the rain forest behind them. The temple on the right was a pile of tumbled stones, torn apart by the roots of the chicle trees growing on top of it. But the left temple was partially intact, its entry framed by a combination of hieroglyphs and plaster god-masks. From what little research she had done, Suzanne believed that she recognized the face of the mythological character known as God K by his forehead mirror. The ridiculous nature of the name given him by archaeologists had stuck with her. A trench a meter or more deep ran up to and under the temple. Thieves had been here, but the ditch was old and crumbling in on itself. She was amazed the masks had survived. Maybe they had forgotten their chainsaws.

Uman was transfixed by the inscriptions carved into the stones of the ancient building. Suzanne compared them with his own scarifications. The words carved into his flesh were different, although it was more a feeling of style rather than direct comparison that made her believe it. Another dialect or perhaps just the hand of the artist. She was still curious to know if he could read any of them, but was loathe to interrupt him.

McCoy was hauling himself up the side of the platform before she made the connection that her weariness had almost hidden.

"Stop! McCoy." Still mindful of their surrounding, she kept her voice imperative but low. He halted one hand poised to grab the next upturned step.

"Now what's the problem? I'm getting out of this heat." McCoy glared down at her.

"Don't move." Suzanne glared right back, but still refused to raise her voice.

The first contact was always the most difficult, especially with animals of higher intelligence. After frequent contact, such as hers with Balam, it seemed that neural pathways formed that led her into the areas she needed to access. Her mind penetrated that of the temple-dweller, twining around his fight or flight instinct that had begun to trigger when he heard them blunder into his home ground. Balam had scented their invasion of another's territory and stayed at a respectful distance, but Suzanne had missed it. Probing gently, she pushed gently at flight, not making his choice but influencing it.

When the puma burst out of the temple and onto the overgrown platform, McCoy did not have to be reminded to remain still. He froze, staring at what should have been the agent of his death. The puma's head swung toward him, but Suzanne again redirected his attention, this time to herself. She walked to the base of the platform as the puma delicately picked his way to the ground. Their eyes met and held, recognition of a kinship beyond that of fur and skin or claws and nails in both. Suzanne withdrew part of her influence and the cat, with a strange mixture of a whine and a growl, leapt across the clearing to disappear into the forest.

Suzanne looked up at McCoy, who had turned and was sitting on a displaced block from the staircase. He stared down at her as if he had never seen her before.

"You really do talk to them, don't you?" McCoy watched Balam enter the clearing and pace to Suzanne's side before turning her gaze after the puma. She dropped the body of a peccary on the ground.

"In my way." Suzanne turned to look for Uman. In the time it had taken her to ask the puma to leave, he had opened his cotton sack and begun removing what she took to be religious objects. He looked up when he felt her eyes on him.

"We should ask permission and blessings before we encroach on the place of gods." He was using the lowest intact step as his altar, carefully placing the copal incense on the ancient stones.

"It's clear." Suzanne smiled maliciously at McCoy, who was coming backward down the side of the platform. "Not so much as a fer-de-lance."

He hesitated for just an instant before taking his next handhold.

"We can use all the help we can get. Let him go for it." Once down on solid ground, McCoy bared his teeth back at her. She shrugged.

"Just make sure there's no smoke." She rocked her head back and looked up through the small break in the trees above them. Fighting back exhaustion, she skipped through the senses of the arboreal creatures in a search for another helicopter. She heard nothing through the ears of the howler monkeys, but she caught herself swaying when she came back. She knew her range was not nearly as wide as it should have been. Suzanne put her hand to her forehead as if that could stop the pounding and collapsed slowly to the ground. "No smoke."

Bracing her head on her hand, Suzanne sat in the dirt and watched Uman light the incense and begin a soft chant. Suzanne tried to concentrate on Uman's ritual. In her village - former village - the people practiced traditions that were obviously pre-Columbian, rituals for childbirth, planting, harvesting and the other major events of life. But they had not had an ajk'ij or any kind of religious leader. Whatever couple served as the village leaders took on that role as well. Despite the mix of traditions, they all thought of themselves as good Catholics.

Uman continued his prayer as he offered tobacco leaf and a splash of aquardiente to his gods or saints. How much difference was there between Uman's words and gifts and those presented here thirteen hundred years ago? Of course, this time there was no human blood. Uman bowed before the ruined temple, apparently asking permission for them to enter.

Despite herself, she found herself disarmed by McCoy's respect for the ceremony. The reporter crouched to Uman's left. His ever-present cameras sat on the ground out of reach. Looking intently into Uman's face, he occasionally held out objects from the priest's bag to the Daykeeper as the ceremony progressed. Finally, the Maya placed his seeds on the altar and waved some of the incense over them in what she took to be a last blessing. He bowed once more and began disassembling his altar, removing the traces of worship.

When Uman turned to look at her, a calm had come into his face that she hadn't seen in days of travel with the quiet man. It impressed her, but she was envious of his peace. Hers was disintegrating with every passing minute.

Balam was up the temple's tumbled steps in four leaps. Suzanne took rather more time and effort to gain the top. She surveyed their surroundings once more before turning and entering the small chamber, with her flashlight in hand. McCoy swore at her again when he saw it.

The chamber was in remarkably good shape. It looked safe in the small circle of light that she shone around the roof. The center arch high above them was intact. As she played the light across the walls, all three were startled by the murals. Incomplete, but still holding much of their original bright color, scenes of battles and the courts of the gods were divided by bands of inscriptions. The musky scent of puma only added to the alien feel of the site. Alien to McCoy and herself. Uman could have been one of the men pictured here. What she noticed most were the recreations of the royal courts presided over by gods, but containing rabbit scribes and other animal advisors. That part was familiar to her.

"You know, Menotti, when you smile, you actually look part human." McCoy dumped his belongings on the bench running across the back wall of the room. He was careful to avoid scuffing the art.

"Being around you, McCoy, doesn't give anyone much reason to smile." It was a half-hearted slam. Suzanne sat cross-legged in the middle of the floor. "Jose, can you read any of the hieroglyphs?

"Some are familiar. Others are too different." He rubbed his left arm unconsciously. "A different time, another world."

His words, shaded by a millennium and a half of pain and loss, echoed in the room. Suzanne clicked off the flashlight.

"Let's get some rest."

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

Balam's cry woke her, shattering her sleep from inside and outside her skull. It had to be about four AM. Dark outside. The moon was setting. Moving as little as possible, she prodded Uman awake with her foot and hissed at McCoy, sleeping on the ledge. Suzanne watched the guerrillas approach the temple from all sides. They were surrounded. Balam had scaled a tree to escape. The soldiers were ignoring her. It was the only positive aspect of the situation. The guerrillas had come from upwind, alerting few of the animals. Suzanne had simply missed the other warnings.

In her mind, she retraced their steps, searching for any trail they might have left. If the guerrillas were on routine patrol - and no one thought to check the temple - they might come out of this alive. Then she remembered Uman's ceremony. The odds got much longer. He had cleared away the main debris, but the burn marks were left on the stones to be washed off in the morning. Another stupid mistake. She put her head down and hoped Uman's gods had paid attention the night before.

Now that she was fully awake, she used the eyes of some howler monkeys to watch the rebels. To her disgust, the point man surveyed the temple steps and immediately spotted the remnants of the tiny sacrifice. He motioned to his captain. The captain looked up at the temple and waved five of the dozen men up the broken stones to the top of the platform. Their guns, a mix of Uzis and M-16's, were aimed squarely at the doorway. Before they could rush in, Suzanne stood up and walked out into their midst. The weapons snapped up to point at her.

"I am alone," she told them in her worst Spanish. "An archaeology student."

"Buenos noches." The captain was female, much to Suzanne's amazement. She had not known the guerrillas were quite so gender-blind. Suzanne winced as the captain ordered four of the men to search the temple. Without an altercation, Uman and McCoy were escorted out of the temple. The remaining moonlight was reflected from the limestone of the ruins as the captain looked back at Suzanne, who shrugged, the barrel of an Uzi four inches from her head.

The rebel who acted as the point man drew the captain aside. She thought that they had to be discussing Uman, given the looks in his direction. When they came closer to inspect the hieroglyphs on his body, they were more respectful than she would have expected. She and McCoy were well-guarded but otherwise ignored. Suzanne took the opportunity to examine the guerrilla team. The mix of uniforms included traditional clothing. Usually, she understood, the Marxists and Maoists tried to break down tribal identity as being counter-revolutionary. But there were two ladinos among the other ten indigenas. The captain herself was four feet, eight inches of solidly-built Maya, a woman she could have imagined seeing in Chotol. Without the Uzi. She was dressed in standard military fatigues that were a couple of sizes too big for her. But the turban and a thin band of embroidery across her shirt seemed to indicate she still followed some traditional ways. Suzanne couldn't see the embroidery sufficiently well to even guess at a people, but she guessed Kekchi from her face.

Her attention moved on to the point man. At first, she thought he had painted his face with spots like an ancient Jaguar warrior. When he came over to search her, she saw instead that he was a joker. His body was covered in short fur, marked like the jungle cat's. When she moved too abruptly during his pat-down body search, retractable claws sprang from between his fingers to stop her. She was jealous.

While Suzanne and McCoy had been body-searched Uman was simply asked if he carried weapons. When he indicated his machete, the captain removed it from his belt, but did not search him further. Nor did she check the bag he carried. Her pack, and McCoy's bag and cameras had been confiscated. What kind of rebels were these?

Balam tracked them as they were led away to the north down the hidden trail the guerrillas had used to enter the small temple compound. Not fifteen words had been exchanged during their capture. Even McCoy kept his mouth shut. Suzanne and McCoy had their arms bound in front of them. Uman was unrestrained. The captain deferred to him in setting the pace. Watching them, Suzanne felt sure that the two guerrillas who walked beside him were more bodyguards than captors. Curiouser and curiouser.

What was the affiliation of these rebels? They shouldn't have been in the Peten. With so few people down here, there were neither potential converts nor army patrols to fight. It was too far from the war zones of the Highlands to be a staging area. On the other hand, it was much safer than being guerrillas in the mountains. But these people were not playing at it. They were serious, well-trained and well-disciplined. If they were involved with smuggling, they would have killed them immediately. Thinking about the Kaibile unit following them, she wondered if they were about to get all the trouble they could ever have imagined.

After four hours of jungle trekking, the prisoners marched into a broad clearing in the midst of the forest. The trees here were huge, fifty feet high. Their crowns nearly joined overhead. Where gaps might have revealed the camp below, camouflage netting had been stretched. Half a dozen shafts of sunlight still penetrated the foliage to add an almost unnatural golden glow to the scene stretched out before them. Fifty or more tents stood below the giant trees. A more traditional thatched roof, supported by six columns, stood at the far end in front or what looked like a temple mound. That was their destination.

Children walked between the tents, carrying water and firewood. They were as serious as their elders, but they looked well-fed and happy, making games of their work until they saw the strangers. Older people left their tents to watch them. Uman occasioned many comments, but she caught only a few dissociated words in Quiche as they walked past. Women cooked tortillas on their comales throughout the camp, and the pat-pat of their hands against the dough made Suzanne think of Chotol. A crowd fell in behind them as they passed among the tents.

One of the two men beneath the shelter stood up as they approached. Although Maya, his fatigues bore no indication of the people from which he came. The other man sat cross-legged with his back to one of the center posts. There was no mistaking the fact he was Lacandon Maya. No one else would have worn a pure white cotton shift like that. He smoked a huge cigar, staring at the rising smoke as if it was revealing the future to him. She recognized them with a sense of disorientation. Hunapu, the Lacandon, and Xbalanque, his "brother," the Hero Twins. They were dead, murdered a year ago. Perhaps they had all been killed as they slept and this was some kind of Maya purgatory. But why was she still so tired if she was dead? She shook off the unreality of it. Although no one believed much of what the government said, no one had seen these two since Nebaj. But who looked in the Peten? Glancing sidelong at McCoy, she could tell he felt the same shock of recognition as she. She could not tell if Uman knew who he faced. There had been a lot of talk of human sacrifice around these guys. She had dismissed it at the time as the government's attempt to scare people away, but the rumors sprang into her head anyway. Suzanne forced her attention back to their present problems. Xbalanque had interpreted her stare correctly and spoke in English.

"We're hard to kill. The gods failed." He laughed easily. "Why did you think the Guatemalan Army would succeed?"

Hunapu gestured for Uman to join him on the reed mats covering the dirt floor. The Lacandon was obviously as fascinated by the Cakchiquel's joker manifestation as the others had been. Whatever it took to keep them alive. The two traditional men spoke in Quiche, but it was far too fast and too soft for Suzanne to follow. Hunapu offered him the cigar. Uman turned his back to the onlookers and opened his shirt to show Hunapu the hieroglyphs covering his body. Xbalanque had begun searching her pack and McCoy's camera bag.

She began mentally searching the surrounding jungle for any possible allies. Balam was out there at the perimeter, but she was always aware of her presence. A margay, the small arboreal cat, had nasty claws if it came down to that. There was a tribe of spider monkeys that could wreak havoc within the camp. Otherwise, there were no creatures to come to their aid beyond the brilliant tropical birds like the toucans, who were primarily good for confusion. She felt sure that she could escape, but the chances of getting Uman and McCoy out were not good. Suzanne began considering whether getting those two canisters of film out outweighed all else. Bagabond had returned. When she drew her mind back and began to look for escape routes, she turned her head to meet the jaguar warrior's eyes. His stare was fixed on her.

Hunapu conferred with Xbalanque, drawing Uman into the conversation at times, apparently to emphasize some point he was making. Xbalanque kept shaking his head, but Hunapu's persistence wore him down. Suzanne fervently hoped they were not discussing the finer points of blood sacrifice. More old rumors ran through her head.

Xbalanque helped Uman up as his brother rose. Hunapu gave commands to their guards, but not in the Quiche she might have understood. When the jaguar warrior drew his machete, she was ready to bring all her potential allies into play. But when the machete dropped, her hands were free. It was only when everyone looked up to hear all the normal sounds of the jungle resume at once, that she realized that she must have taken over almost every non-human creature within half a kilometer without conscious thought. Behind the impassive mask of his face, the jaguar warrior had made the connection to her. He tilted his head to one side as she had often seen Balam do in listening to the forest. To her amazement, she caught sudden laughter in his eyes. He turned away to free McCoy. Xbalanque was speaking to them.

"My brother believes that you are innocent travelers, fleeing the army, our mutual enemies." Xbalanque was not as sure. "This film you're carrying could be important to our cause as well. It will be returned to you."

There was another exchange between the two resistance leaders. Xbalanque protested Hunapu demanded. During their discussion, members of the patrol handed back their confiscated belongings. McCoy knelt and began checking his cameras and equipment bags to make certain that the contents were intact. Suzanne had decided that his cameras were his links back to a normal life, rather than one being spent on the run in the Guatemalan jungle. She just hefted hers. The weight was right. She slid into it, strapping her machete back around her waist.

Things were suddenly looking good, but she wanted out before they changed again. By now they had lost ten or twelve hours, counting the walk back to their camp at the ruins. She had no idea where the Twins' camp was, but she knew it couldn't be far from Flores. The only passage through the Maya Mountains was either to the south or beyond Tikal to the north. The south was less populated and therefore they had fewer chances of meeting an army border-patrol. It was their best chance. The only good part of this was that the Kaibiles had to be almost due south of them, wondering where the hell they were. But the border patrols must have been alerted by now. It would surely no longer be a Kaibile-only operation.

Xbalanque had evidently lost again. She had a sneaking sympathy for him. She knew exactly what he was going through. This time Hunapu spoke to them directly and the captain of the patrol that had captured them translated.

"Tecun Uman has told me of your plight. He assures me that the gods have protected you on your journey. I believe that the prophecies written on his body tell of the importance of his mission. I am honored to aid Tecun Uman in escaping the Spanish this time." He spoke to the captain directly while Suzanne tried to sort out what he meant. Tecun Uman was a Quiche hero who died fighting the conquistador Pedro de Alvarado. He had become a symbol of the five hundred years of Maya resistance. She was captivated by the thought that Hunapu could actually read Uman's hieroglyphs. Could he teach Uman? She had come to the conclusion that they could well be meaningless gibberish, a joker manifestation.

The captain began to outline the plan to get them across the southern Peten to Belize. One of the ladinos would drive a truck from one of the rare Peten fincas with a load of Maya "farm workers." They would be hidden in the back. New papers would be provided to get them across the border without a battle.

Bagabond considered leaving Umgn and McCoy in the hands of the resistance. Let militants take care of militants. But as she looked out over the quiet camp, she remembered once more that she had nowhere else to go. Chotol was gone and her presence was deadly to anyone she met. Exile seemed to be the only choice.

While the others slept, she sat up and sent part of mind wandering the jungle, touching the minds of the animals she had come to know. These creatures had given her peace and a home as much as the people of Chotol. Balam's mind and hers had become so intertwined that sometimes she could not find their division or know who the huntress in the jungle was. When she had said goodbye, she lay down for her last night in Guatemala.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

This time the helicopter buzzed them, coming in low and staying directly overhead. Without changing speed or acknowledging its presence, the forty-year-old International truck lumbered along the rutted road. This chopper, or one that sounded just like it, had followed them for a few minutes earlier in the morning. In the tarp-covered back of the truck, Suzanne felt both slightly nauseated and claustrophobic. Lying across her feet, Balam panted trying to draw a clean breath. She, McCoy and Uman sat all the way inside, just behind the cab. The rest of the rear compartment held Maya resistance fighters masquerading as workers heading for Guatemala's major ports. They were armed. Guns had been offered to the three of them as well, but each had refused.

They had been on the road since six that morning. Now, seven hours later, they were only five kilometers from the border. It had occurred to her, each time the truck tilted its way over some obstruction and smashed her head back against the roof support, that walking might not have been such a horrible prospect. Within the passenger compartment, the air stank of too many people in too small a space. Since the sun had moved directly overhead, the temperature must have risen to well over a hundred extremely humid degrees. But anything less would not have looked realistic.

Uman was off in his own world, praying, she hoped, for their deliverance. Last night, Uman had vanished with the Hero Twins to perform rituals to protect both the Maya resistance and themselves. She had no idea what they had done, but in the morning they looked as if they had wrestled the gods personally. McCoy was asleep again, although she could not imagine how he managed it. They crashed into and up out of another pothole and she leaned forward and back in rhythm; she had finally learned to protect her head. Looking to the far end of the truck, she caught the eyes of Maria K'anil, the woman who had led the patrol that had captured them, and looked up. Maria nodded. She had already passed the word through her people to get ready for trouble.

The helicopter didn't move away after another two kilometers. The southern crossing into Belize was the least-used entrance since it was the farthest from Belmopan. While it was the least heavily guarded, this fact also meant that any travelers on this road stood out. The Kaibiles would not give up until they were dead. She had ignored these Card Sharks of McCoy's until last night, preferring to worry about a danger she knew. Now she wondered what allies the Kaibiles might have. It was time to marshal her own allies.

This close to the Maya Mountains she had good choices. But choosing who might live or die was not something she could do dispassionately. The Bagabond who was could have called in any and all creatures to defend herself and those she wished to protect. Suzanne had to find a middle ground, create a new Bagabond with the old strength and a new compassion. She sent her mind spinning out to identify all the possibilities, drawing them to her.

She saw the roadblock coming through the eyes of a brilliant orange and black toucan. She warned Maria before the coded banging on the back of the cab began. Guatemalan Army. The Kaibiles. She reached over and shook McCoy awake. Uman drew himself up. Their truck gathered speed and swayed with enough force to throw McCoy onto the truck bed. Abruptly, the driver hit the brakes, skidding the aged International sideways toward the army trucks blocking their way.

The Maya guerrillas were leaping from the back of the truck before it had come to rest, firing as they landed. Bagabond had drawn her machete to slice through the tarp and cut a path for them to get out on the far side from the battle. She jumped out first, followed by Balam. McCoy helped hand Uman down to the ground and then joined them.

A flock of neon-bright green parrots shot across the road from the jungle, camouflaging their dash to cover. McCoy's bootheel slid down the side of the road's crown. He barely caught himself before falling. Bagabond grabbed him by a flailing arm and hauled him into the brush. Balam had been joined by two spotted jaguars. She sent them ahead to clear out any hidden Kaibiles. Her plan was to get around the roadblock by end-running it through the jungle while the guerrillas kept the Kaibiles busy. The border was four hundred yards ahead. Bagabond sent more avian waves at the soldiers. More effective than pigeons, they were larger and their bright plumage was far more distracting. But she could do little more to help. Her attention had to be focused on her own problems.

To their right, an ocelot and a soldier cried out simultaneously and fell from the tree where the soldier had perched. He landed first, in a heap; the ocelot leaped away. They slid forward, avoiding the body. Bagabond was only half present on their dash for freedom. Most of her conscious mind was dedicated to throwing the unexpected at the army and watching ahead for danger.

The guerrillas pinned the soldiers down from the front. The predations of jaguars, pumas and ocelots both demoralized and eliminated the enemy. There was a pleasant irony in their destruction by the very animals they had chosen as their namesakes. They had been trained to fight rebels; no one told them they would be slaughtered by demonically-driven beasts. Still, they held ranks. But their shots became wild. Trying to hit a puma, two of the soldiers shot each other. Half a dozen men were down, writhing in pain from being mauled. Maria's sharpshooters had killed another four.

Bagabond shepherded Uman and McCoy back out to the lighter vegetation by the side of the road. More parrots swirled around them in a red, green and orange tornado. They were halfway to the border station, which had been left with only four regular army men to defend it. The Belize contingent was long gone. She organized a troop of howler monkeys to drive them off by throwing stones and branches. Faced with the jaguars coming at them and the monkeys' terrorism behind, they grabbed their guns and ran for Belize themselves, even leaving their Jeep.

She felt a quick, savage joy at their success, which lasted only until she spotted the helicopter gunship landing between her charges and the border. A limping cadaver dressed in black with a red cross emblazoned across his chest dropped to the ground followed by a man dressed in GQ fatigues. The chopper pulled up and its wash sent a stench like nothing she had ever smelled before, even in the sewers of New York City. It was enough to stop them on its own.

"Just give us the film, McCoy." The dapper commando smiled at them benevolently.

"Fuck off." McCoy stood his ground as the wild jaguars stalked the two newcomers. "You're Faneuil's pets."

"Bobby Joe, take care of the kittycats, will you, please?"

Bagabond watched the plants wither and die where the cowled man stood. She tried to stop the cats, but they were already in mid-spring. The ... thing in front of her spread its arms and gave off a fine spray she could barely see. It gathered the cats to its chest. Their screams of pain echoed in her brain as well as her ears. The feedback of anguish was nearly unbearable.

"Heathens. Idolaters. The Bible says you have to die." It spoke, but the words were barely intelligible. It dragged itself toward them slowly and inexorably. She pulled Balam away and sent her running into the jungle as far as she could. Behind them, the Kaibile colonel was forcing what was left of his men into a rear guard. The man McCoy had called Faneuil's pet slid a clip into his Uzi and took his time in aiming it at them, smiling all the while.

"Get behind me and get ready to run like hell." Bagabond's urgency came out in tones as hard as steel. "I can slow them down. Get over that border."

Every creature within her reach was readied to throw themselves alongside her at the automaton marching toward them.

"No. That is mine."

Uman evaded her and walked out to meet it. Bagabond shoved McCoy hard into the forest, herding him with the howlers. When she turned back, the fundamentalist zombie struck at Umin. The Daykeeper spun and took the blow on his left side. The killer's arm melted into the stone of his flesh, but Uman's body reformed behind its passage. It was trapped, if only tor the few moments it would take to understand what had happened.

The Maya raised his left arm and plunged his hand through the center of the cross, down into the thing's chest, withdrawing his fist holding its acid-dripping heart. The zombie stared at its own heart with disbelieving eyes before crumpling to the ground with the release of an even more noxious stench. As it fell, its own arm was pulled out of the Daykeeper's side. Finally, Uman acknowledged his agony with a wail.

The zombie's companion was stopped by what he had just seen. He let his sights dip, but not long enough for Bagabond to act. He backed up and waved the gunship back down as he brought up the Uzi.

"Kill anyone left standing," Bagabond heard him shout into his radio headset. She was looking down the barrel of his gun even as she was flying with hundreds of birds that simultaneously attacked the helicopter. It exploded, raining burning debris down onto the border guards' office and setting it ablaze. She was the puma that appeared from the forest and sliced away the assassin's abdomen, spilling his intestines onto the Guatemalan dirt. Then she was none of those creatures. She was helping Uman limp toward the flames marking the border. McCoy appeared, to take his other arm.

The Kaibile colonel, knowing he had been betrayed by his allies and defeated by the people he considered beneath contempt, raised his own Uzi to kill them. Suzanne saw it, but she had used all the strength she had in the last two minutes. She tried to concentrate, but there was nothing there. No contacts.

Balam left the jungle in midair and crossed the dirt in two bounds. Before he could react, she knocked aside the gun and, with a single swipe of her claws, she tore out his throat. Standing over him she threw back her head and howled.

Suzanne was crying, uncontrollable tears of pain and exhaustion running down her face, cutting paths through the dirt.

"She remembered Chotol."

The Color of His Skin

Part 4

"You were wonderful again on Peri's show last night," Jo Ann told Gregg as he entered the office. Her skin was more emerald than usual, as if flushed. "My God the pictures Mr. McCoy took, that awful Faneuil ..." She shook her head, and a warty finger impaled the morning paper. "The response has been good - if you ignore the minor riot near J-Town afterward."

"I heard about it on the way in. How bad was it?"

"Mostly just taunting and some bottle and rock-throwing back and forth between jokers and nats. No one killed, anyway."

"That's good." Gregg said. "So what are they saying?"

"Well, let's see ..." Jo Ann fluffed out the pages, scanning. "'The Davis-Hartmann revelations, coupled with the 60 Minutes expose and other reports, and now Josh McCoy's startling photographs from Guatemala, make a compelling portrait of ugliness in action,'" she quoted "I like that one. But Pan probably doesn't like this: '... The knot of reporters around Rudo and Herzenhagen abruptly doubled in size late last night....' Ummm ... a little further down: '... Sources within WHO say that the board is pressuring Rudo to either answer the increasing accusations or to resign....' Pretty interesting. How about this, from the editorial page: '... President Barnett's request that the Senate reconsider a mandatory virus testing bill has set off a vitrolic exchange of words between the opposing conservative and liberal camps. This observer wonders whether we are not seeing a reflection of the increasingly violent polarity of the public....'"

Jo Ann dropped the paper back down. "You get the drift, boss. Every magazine from Time to the Sun has had an article about the Sharks, pro or con. Some are blaming the conspiracy for everything from the Dodgers' loss in the World Series to the last recession, at least those who aren't saying that it's all hogwash and the only way to eradicate the disease is to sterilize the carriers. I'll give you one thing - no one is sitting on the fence with this. You sure have an impact when you try."

See, Greggie? I told you. Use the Gift wisely and you'll he rewarded....

Gregg chuckled. "I guess. And you're still smiling. What else is up?"

"Good news," Jo Ann said. "Got a FedEx letter from Marilyn Monroe's lawyers this morning. They're dropping the defamation of character suit they filed. And Hannah's in your office."

"You have a really idiotic smile, Jo Ann. Did you know that?"

"Hey, I'm not the Cheshire Cat around here." Jo Ann turned dramatically away and flicked on her computer. "I'll be busy writing letters. I won't hear a thing."

"Jo Ann - "

"Your visitor's waiting. Get in there."

Shaking his head, Gregg went into his office as Jo Ann began rattling the Macintosh's keys. He shut the door behind him. "I have to get a new secretary," he said. "This one treats me like a younger brother - when she's not bugging my office at a client's request. I should have fired her when I had the excuse."

Hannah smiled. "Jo Ann believes in you," she replied.

"Uh-huh," Gregg said, going around his desk and sitting. Hannah's blue-green eyes followed him. He found that disconcerting, and pretended to study his appointment book. "And how about you?"

"I'm beginning to get there."

Gregg looked up. Neither of them said anything. Gregg felt inside himself for the Gift, the power, and he reached out with that newfound sense to see within her a surprising multi-hued swell. He let the Gift touch her, wonderingly.

Greggie! Stop it! The voice came suddenly, wrenching his gaze away from Hannah's. He fell out of the Gift with a grimace.

"Gregg?"

This isn't what it's for. Leave her alone.

I haven't DONE anything.

You can't. You mustn't.

It's MY Gift. MY power. I can use it as I choose.

No, you can't. Don't you see? You can't even THINK that....

"Gregg?"

"Sorry. Just a twinge - I ... I pulled a muscle yesterday."

You can't ...

Gregg glanced at his watch. "We're supposed to meet the WABC people this afternoon, right? Why don't we hit lunch and decide what we're going to say? McCoy's pictures are going to stir the pot even more, and we should be ready for that."

... can't ...

Gregg rose and went to the door. He opened it, watching her as she nodded to Jo Ann and took her jacket from the rack.

He smiled.

But I can. Once again, I can....

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

In the time since the War for the Rox, and especially in the last few months, Jokertown and the district surrounding it had increasingly become polarized, armed enclaves. During the daytime, there was little trouble as long as you kept to main streets and avoided alleys and other lonely places. During the day, jokers and nats mingled on the sidewalks, and if they avoided one another or if there were stares, words, or an occasional more intense incident, well, that was the chance you took.

But at night ...

Walking in or out of Jokertown was like passing through a border. A nat violating the unmarked boundaries risked being harassed by vigilante bands of jokers. A nat in J-Town was well-advised to wear a mask. Nor was it any less dangerous for a joker walking out of the district, for a block or so away, youthful nat gangs bullied hapless jokers.

At night, there was violence. There were fists, knives, clubs, and guns. There was blood and even the occasional death. At night, if you wanted to move in or out of J-Town, you drove. Even then you stayed to well-lit streets, you kept the doors locked and the windows up, and unless there were other cars, you didn't stop for lights or signs.

In the erratic, block-wide no-man's-land girdling Jokertown, the order of society had broken down entirely. In that space, a joker moved: a limping, assymetrical travesty like two different bodies bisected down the middle and glued together. In the shadows of the boarded-up buildings, other shapes moved with it.

"Hold up a second John!" Gregg tapped the minivan driver on the shoulder. "Can you pull over?"

The driver, a bearded nat, glanced over at the woman sitting in the passenger seat. "Debra?" The woman shrugged back at John, and he looked at Gregg in the rearview mirror. "Here? You two call the shots, but you're out of your minds if you want to take a stroll in this place." John turned the wheel of the minivan over until they bumped the curb.

"Gregg?" Hannah said. She was sitting next to Gregg in the rear seat. Behind them, a videocamera sat on top of boxes of equipment and coils of cable: John's equipment. "What's going on?"

"Just give me a moment." Gregg was already opening the side door to the van and getting out.

The four of them were on their way to Jokertown. Debra Rashid was a reporter for WABC; John was her videographer. Gregg and Hannah had just taped the interview in the station when Gregg suggested that they continue the interview while walking the streets of Jokertown. Debra had agreed quickly: added color would enhance her chances of getting feature play with the story.

Gregg hadn't quite known what he'd planned to do, but it seemed that fate had handed him a plum. The emotions here nearly knocked him down with their intensity.

Across the street, the pathetic joker glanced at them once and then continued his hobbling progress toward Jokertown. This block was one that had seen far more than its share of trouble in the last few years. Most of the buildings - three story tenements, for the most part - were vacant, blinking down at them with windows of broken glass. Only a few lights betrayed the presence of those too poor or too stubborn to move away. Trash littered the gutters, the streetlamp poles were rooted in the broken glass of their shattered lights. At eight o'clock, the street traffic was already zero.

Greggie, this is grandstanding. You don't need this.

Just shut up. I know what I'm doing.

Behind him, Gregg could hear John grunt as he lifted his videocam to his shoulder. Hannah was a warm presence at his shoulder, and he could feel Debra's unease, like a taint of blood in water. And there were other emotions out there, ones that only Gregg could sense. "Hey!" Gregg called to the joker. "Let us give you a ride."

The joker looked at them. Gregg caught a glimpse of the face: half-feminine, half-male, and totally mismatched. Two entirely different faces. S/he didn't speak, but stared at them for a moment before shaking the head. The joker lurched forward, almost falling before the much shorter left leg touched the pavement. "Look, my friend, get in so we can all get the hell out of here. It's not safe," Gregg called after him.

"You got that right, mister."

The voice was an adolescent snarl. Four teenagers strolled confidently out from between two buildings; another trio appeared at the mouth of an alley across the street. They were street punks - all leather and chains, their hair spiked and multi-colored, and they were nats. The leader, a kid with electric-blue hair and a dragon tattoo snarling down his left arm, smiled at them evilly, flipping a long knife in one hand. The blade sparkled in the minivan's headlights. "Newspeople," he said. "Hey, Debra Rashid - I recognize you. Great tits, even on the tube. You out to catch some nasty footage?"

The rest of the gang had casually blocked the joker's path, spreading themselves out in a wide circle around him/her. They were laughing, taunting the joker and joking between themselves.

"Hey, maybe we cut it down the middle and get two jokers, y'know."

"Hey, Skunk, you like boys - you take the right half."

"Fuck you, asshole."

The joker still hadn't spoken. S/he whirled around frantically, clumsily, its eyes wide in terror. Knives and chains had appeared in the kids' hands; the intensity of the emotions upped a notch in Gregg's head. Two of them had handguns, and Gregg felt a quick fear. There were more of them than he'd thought, and the guns scared him. His confidence did a nosedive.

He heard the whir as John thumbed on his camera. Dragon-tattoo's gaze went to John, saw the camera, and he took three quick steps, placing his hand over the lens. "You turn that fucker off, man," he snarled.

At the same time, Gregg felt a change in the emotions of the kid. Where before there had been only scarlet rage, there was now a faint tracing of cool blue coming from him. He's not entirely sure about this, Gregg realized. He hates the camera. That decided Gregg.

"Get the hell out of here," the kid was saying. His knife was pointing at John's abdomen, and another kid - with a semiautomatic pistol leering from his fist - came over to back up Dragon-tattoo. "This ain't none of your business. Give me the damn tape and then get the hell out, or you get the same treatment as freak meat over there. Your choice, tourists. We don't gotta be nice."

John was glaring at the kid, but Gregg could sense that it was only bravado. Debra touched Gregg on the prosthetic. "I think we'd better go," she said, her voice shaky. "Please. Hannah, get back in the van. John, give him the tape. Mr. Hartmann - "

It won't work, Greggie. The power's not strong enough.

Fuck you. It's MY Gift. I know what I can do with it.

Gregg stepped forward, interposing himself between the kid and John. John's lens followed him, still taping.

"Don't do this," Gregg told Dragon-tattoo, and let the Gift loose. With the words, the trace of azure uncertainty in the young man shivered as if struck.

The kid snorted, then wiped at his nose with the back of a leather-clad hand. "Wassa matter, you don't like seeing violence, dude? You must not watch much TV." The youth looked at Gregg with suddenly narrowed eyes. "Hey, I know you, too," he said. "You're goddamn Gregg Hartmann, ain't you? And the blond chick's the Davis woman. Shit, guys, we got a fucking celebrity audience tonight. Genuine joker lovers."

The rest of the gang laughed. "Don't let him give you no shit, Blades," one of them called out, and at the same time suddenly swung his chain; the steel links slashed air and caught the joker on the side of the head. S/he screamed and went down, blood gushing as the side of the face opened with a jagged cut. The joker fell, and they kicked the helpless body as they stepped over it, coming across the street to Gregg and the others. The joker moaned, unconscious.

"See, the meat'll keep for a few minutes," Blades said. He smiled toward Hannah. "You want a swing at freak meat, lady? Feels good. It really does. Almost as good as sex."

"You're sick," Hannah scowled. She started toward the injured joker, and Blades reached out for her with his free hand at the same time. Gregg intercepted the hand. For a second, the tableau held: Gregg staring at Blades, his good left hand clenched around the teenager's wrist while the emotional matrix swirled around them, strong and vivid. He could sense the muzzles of their weapons trained on him.

Careful, Greggie ...

"Hey," Gregg said. The word flared with the Gift. "Let's call this a draw. You guys go your way, we'll go ours. Violence isn't going to solve anything. It isn't going to make the virus go away."

"It is if we kill every one of the fuckers." Blades wrenched his hand out of Gregg's grasp. "And right now you ain't in much position to bargain, are you, old man? I look around and I see we got all the big cards. High caliber ones. Sharp ones." He grinned, twirling the knife edge in front of Gregg's eyes. He still grinned but underneath Gregg could still sense that unease. He let the Gift wrap around it, slowly, carefully coaxing it forward. So slow, so clumsy, this power ...

But it's all you got, Greggie. I told you, but you wouldn't listen. Now you'd better be right.

"That's what they want you to believe," Gregg told him. The Gift made his voice powerful, but only Blades was responding to it. The others were lost in a bloodlust, their emotions too powerful and opposed to alter. The realization made his strategy at once simple and difficult: unless he turned the leader, he could not control what might happen. Fear lent desperation to his words. "That's the lie they want you to buy into, but it isn't true. And guns and knives aren't power. Not really." Each word chipped away some of the confining anger and isolated the young man's underlying unease at what he was doing.

He's the key. Turn him and the others follow....

Gregg continued, hurrying the words. "You don't want to make a mistake here. Think about it. We're not some poor lone joker who wandered onto the wrong block. Touch us, and there's going to be a big response. People know who we are and where we are. They know when to expect us, and they're probably already looking. You're going to have cops all over this place. Your place. Call tonight a draw, my man, and no one loses face. C'mon." Gregg gestured toward the fallen joker. "You've made your point. There's no reason to hurt him anymore, or us."

"You're scared, Hartmann."

"You're damned right I'm scared. No one wants to die. No one wants to be hurt. Not jokers, not nats. Not you." The kid's uneasiness flared into more saturated fright. The Gift strengthened inside Gregg, arcing outward like an acetelyne flame.

The kid scoffed. "I ain't scared, Mister Suit. Ain't none of us scared of protecting our turf." The rest of the gang scowled and muttered behind Blades, and there was nothing in them but hate. Nothing Gregg could use. Their emotions threatened to shatter the uncertainty contained in their leader's own rage, and Gregg hurried to shield Blades with the Gift.

"But you are scared," he said. "Just like me. You wouldn't be out here if you weren't scared - scared of the wild card, scared because you know that there's always a chance for the virus to infect you, and you might turn out to be just like that." Gregg pointed to the fallen joker across the street. Inside Blades, there was a surge of pale white against the red, dampening it. "Think about it, Blades. He isn't any different than you. Not really. It's a goddamn virus. You don't choose to become a joker."

"Man, you talk too much. You know that?"

"You're right, I do. So why don't you use that? You want the jokers to stay out of your territory, right?"

"You got it, old man."

"Then let me tell them for you. You know who I am; you know the jokers listen to me. I'll tell them for you; I'll tell them all to stay away. That's what you want, right?" Repeating. Reinforcing. Shoring up the emotions.

Blades sniffed. He shrugged. Gregg said nothing, watching instead the intricate play of emotions within the boy. Suddenly, the kid shoved his knife into the scabbard stuck in his boot. "You better tell 'em good, old man. You tell 'em good, 'cause the next ones we find we kill. You got that?"

"I got it, Blades ... thanks."

The kid turned without another word, stalking off. One by one, the others followed. In a few seconds, the four of them were alone in the street once more.

"Fucking great footage," John whispered behind Gregg.

Hannah and Gregg went to the joker as John continued to film, as Debra began to lay a commentary in the background. Together, they helped the bleeding person to his feet. Hannah smiled once at Gregg as they walked slowly across the street toward the van.

"You were incredible," she said. "God, I was petrified, but you ..." She shook her head. "You got us out without any more violence."

He had no answer for that He shrugged, suddenly almost shy, and he marveled at the azure admiration for him that he sensed inside Hannah.

I did it! Gregg exulted as he and Hannah placed the joker on the floor of the van. You see? It's more powerful than I thought. I can make them do ANYTHING!

Greggie ... Softly. Sadly.

Hannah began to clean the joker's head wound with sterile bandages from a medical kit Debra handed her. She paused a moment, looking up at Gregg as she brushed her hair back from her face.

She smiled again.

Her smile was far, far more compelling than the voice in his head.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

The following night Gregg took Hannah to dinner at Aces High, with Oddity along for protection. Aces High was a shadow of its old self - nearly deserted, the service mediocre, the food good but not exceptional. Hiram wasn't in, and Gregg recognized only one or two of the few patrons. Despite that, the three of them enjoyed themselves. Hannah especially seemed to shed the shadows the last year had wrapped around her, laughing and talking in an animated voice. She touched Gregg's hand often, sitting very near, and there were times when he imagined he could feel the heat of her leg close to his under the table. They stayed for two hours, lingering through appetizers, dinner, and dessert.

Oddity left them after they returned safely to Jokertown. As they walked up to the door of Father Squid's parsonage, Gregg could feel Hannah's admiration for him. The woman genuinely liked Gregg. She considered him a friend and an ally. Like the glow from a banked fire, her feelings promised heat beneath.

As he had all evening, Gregg blew again on the embers with the breath of his Gift.

Stop it, the voice cautioned him. I tell you - this isn't why the Gift was given to you. You abuse the power and you betray yourself!

Gregg just smiled as he held the door open for Hannah and they went inside. It's mine. I'll abuse it any damn way I want, he answered. "Here," he said to Hannah, "let me take your jacket. Where's Father Squid?"

As he slipped it from her shoulders, he let his fingers graze the skin of her arms. So soft ...

"He's staying overnight with a sick parishioner." Hannah flicked on the lights, moving around the small living room before going to the chair where Quasiman sat staring into the night with unseeing eyes, lost in his own world. Hannah looked out to where the stark framework of the new steeple rose in the yellow glow of security lamps, then tenderly hugged Quasiman.

"Quasi, we're back, okay? We're here if you want us."

There was no answer. Hannah smiled at him and kissed the top of the joker's head. "Poor man," she said. "I owe him so much ..." Tears suddenly brimmed in Hannah's eyes and she stopped. She sniffed and shrugged to Gregg, smiling sadly. "Sorry," she said.

"Don't you dare apologize," Gregg said, his voice low and deep, letting the power course through them. "Never ever apologize for compassion and love, Hannah."

The words flashed inside her, igniting against the flame of her friendship. She smiled again at him, brushing her long hair back from her face with what was almost a shy gesture, looking at him sidewise. "I was so paranoid about you at first, Gregg," she said to him. "I was so afraid that I was making a mistake going to you. Now ..." She stopped. Smiled once more. "You're a very good man, Gregg," she told him.

"You flatter me, Hannah. I'm just an old man trying to do the best I can. I'm not a saint. I'm as flawed as anyone else. More." His voice was laden with the power inside him, stroking her emotions, slowly brightening their colors, deepening their hues. So much slower than Puppetman, so clumsy in comparison, but ... And the other voice yammered its constant warning: Stop it! You taint all that you have!

"I don't believe you," Hannah answered. "You have courage." She smiled up at him, taking a step closer to him. "You have compassion and you have - " She paused a heartbeat. " - love."

Her hand stroked his shoulder and remained. Gregg could feel her touch, as if her finger were molten. She felt it too, for she suddenly looked down, breaking the eye contact with him as she gasped. Gregg reached out with his left hand and cupped the side of her face, her hair silken through his fingers. She glanced up into his eyes once more, her face questioning. Almost in defiance, she moved her head quickly to the side and kissed his palm. When she looked back, her gaze dared him.

He found that he truly did not know what to say. In that moment, the linkage between them was no longer in his control. He felt dizzy and disoriented. The emotional matrix sparked and throbbed, wrapping about them both, impossible to hold or guide. The feedback screamed in his head, and he knew he must either let it go or surrender to it.

But to let go meant that he would lose her, lose the sudden promise in her eyes. Gregg held on.

The interior voice howled at him: Stop this! This isn't right, and this isn't real. It's a middle-aged man's fantasy with no substance. Greggie, this is rape. You're forcing her reactions. Stop before you ruin this like you ruined all the rest of your relationships....

"I ..." he began. Stopped. The power crackled in his head; the voice screamed. For a moment, guilt threatened to make him let go. "Hannah, I should be leaving. It's late."

She held his gaze. "You don't need to."

"I was in my twenties when you were born."

"And now I'm in my thirties and all grown up, Gregg. I'm a big girl. I can make my own decisions. Unless its not what you want - "

"No!" he said quickly. The power was blinding. It pounded, it surged, it filled him with heat and light and burned away the guilt. So you've learned nothing from all the pain you've inflicted, Greggie. It's still Greggie and his power and fuck everyone else. You've been given your chance and a Gift and you're proving only that you're no different now than you were. What happened to all the shame, the nightmares, the prayers for release?

"Gregg, you look so sad. If I've embarrassed you or if I'm presuming too much ..."

"No," he said again, and shut his mind to the voice, the nagging voice, the lecturing voice. "Oh God, no."

Hannah reached up with both hands and pulled Gregg's head slowly down to her, her gaze always on his until the last moment. As her eyes closed, their lips touched, hers impossibly warm and soft and yielding. The power was a storm around them, its thunder drowning out everything else. He opened his mouth, tasting her sweetness; his hand cupped her breast, feeling the nipple rise and harden beneath the cloth of her thin blouse and bra. He could feel her body pressing against his, her arms around him, and he responded, growling under his breath. You see! And she's not a joker ... He started to bear her down to the floor, but her mouth came away from his, gasping.

"Not here," she said huskily, glancing back at the silent form of Quasiman. "I can't ..." She pulled away from Gregg and took his hand. "My room," she said.

Hannah led him away into darkness as the voice yammered at him: No! This is the old pattern, don't you see! You're sick and you'll be punished, Greggie. I guarantee it.

He didn't listen.

As he moved on top of Hannah, as he entered her, Gregg thought of Sarah Morgenstern, of Ellen, of Succubus, of Andrea, of all his lovers' ruined lives.

He groaned in delight.

Feeding Frenzy

by Walter Jon Williams

1

Puppetman.

The word sang through Shad's mind as he paced his cell, a rhythmic accompaniment to the old Dexter Gordon tune that floated somewhere in his backbrain. In George Divivier's thudding bass he heard the refrain:

Puppetman.

Gregg Hartmann's secret ace, the one that had driven Shad into a frenzy, made him kill. That had led him, eventually, to this place, to this cold concrete cavern carved out of Governor's Island.

Puppetman.

Shad was planning to meet Puppetman some day. And then, after him, some other people. George Battle, for one - who lied to him about the promise of a pardon, then let him get slammed away on Governor's Island.

He didn't feel anything any more. No compassion, no fear, no love. His own personality seemed very far away, buried somewhere, latent. None of that could help him survive.

Thoughts of Puppetman filled his mind. They were the kind of thoughts that would keep him alive.

It was good, in a place like this, to have a reason to live. Because someday he'd figure a way out of here, past the concrete-and-rebar walls, past the titanium bars and bulletproof glass, past the armed sentries of the Governor's Island Maximum Security Psychiatric Unit, the Coast Guard sentries on the rest of the island, the cold waters of New York Harbor and back to the city itself, to its mirrored fortresses of glass where his enemies danced their dance of power, and then it would be Shad up on the bandstand, voice a low whisper telling everyone, Hey, motherfuckers, last waltz ...

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

Philip Baron von Herzenhagen adjusted his pearl-gray fedora and walked expressionlessly through the media vermin swarming on the stoop of his townhouse. He opened the door of his Jaguar sedan and stooped to enter.

"What about the latest revelations of the Card Sharks?" A booming baritone voice, chiseled features, razor-cut hair. Some local television news personality, tired of covering back-alley murders and city council elections, here trying to make the big time.

Herzenhagen rose from his crouch and put on his world-weary face. "Really," he said, "what evidence exists for these 'Card Sharks'?" Putting the quotes in his voice. "As I understand it, the chief witness against me is a talking hat." He pulled off his own hat and held it up for the camera. "Shall I call my own hat as a rebuttal witness?"

This got a laugh. Herzenhagen figured he'd made the news.

He gave them a brittle grin. "Again for the record, the last time I drew a government paycheck was 1945." He looked at the reporter again. "You can look it up, if you're so inclined."

He got in his car and headed for his club.

What he was really afraid of was that one of those media lice actually would start to do his own research, instead of just parroting the Hartmann allegations or each other. Because, though it was true he hadn't drawn a government paycheck since 1945, that was only because in the CIA, founded in large part by gentlemen with independent incomes, one could still check off a box on the application form whereby one could return one's salary to the government. And if the little media weasels got really lucky, they'd discover that, though Herzenhagen had left the Agency in the fifties, he'd been a member of one covert organization or another ever since.

Biological Research Unit. Unit Omega. Special Control Group. The Vice-President's Special Executive Task Unit.

The Sharks. All the Sharks.

Herzenhagen took off his hat, smoothed the brim, and was heartily glad it couldn't talk.

The allegations had to end, he thought.

Something had to happen to Gregg Hartmann. Something bad>.

And soon.

Herzenhagen rather thought he knew what it was going to be.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

Shad wondered why Chalktalk hadn't walked through the walls and helped him escape. Maybe she hadn't heard he was in trouble. Maybe she didn't like him any more.

Names went through his head like a mantra. Puppetman. George Gordon Battle. Crypt Kicker. Pan Rudo.

He hoped they would all live long enough for Shad to catch up with them.

Your-mentality defines Pan Rudo=enemy?

The question rang in Shad's mind with a voice of thunder. Shad's heart thundered.

"Who the fuck ... ?" And before he could stop himself he was looking around, head jumping on his shoulders like a thing out of a jack-in-the box.

This-unit is known to you as Croyd Crenson.

Croyd? Shad had been scoped by telepaths before and hadn't liked it one little bit. Cautiously he beamed out little thought-particles. That really you, man?

This-unit is known to you as Croyd Crenson. Your-mentality is defined= Home/Black Shadow/Neil Carton Langford=ally. You define Pan Rudo=enemy?

He's the shrink who put me in here. A two-hour interview, man, and me full of anaesthetic: next thing I know, I'm declared insane and slammed in the jug.

Pan Rudo-mentality defined=enemy. Defined=Shark. This-unit's purpose=termination Pan Rudo-mentality.

Shad couldn't help but be impressed. I can get behind that, man. Only thing - why are you talking like that?

This-unit flew to United States to attempt assassination of Pan Rudo. This-unit fell asleep on aircraft, awakened incarcerated. This-unit capable of advanced multi-path calculation, telepathy. This unit incapable of termination Pan Rudo-mentality without allies. Your-mentality defined=ally.

"Uhhh, thanks."

This-unit will arrange escape. Arrangements must conclude within 28 hours before this-unit sleeps again, before arranged pandemic occurs Governor's Island. Your-mentality stand by. Affirmative?

Shad straightened, alarm tingling in his nerves. Hold on. What's this about a pandemic?

Card Sharks/Governor Raney/Pan Rudo/Phillip Baron von Herzenhagen/CO Ramirez/CO Shannon plan release toxic virus chosen targets Governor's Island. Objective: termination Black Shadow, Croyd Crenson, Tea-Daddy, Glop/Boris Scherbansky, Fade ...

The alarm was wailing now. They're gonna kill us?

Termination is Sharks' objective. Medical care will be onsite but deliberately ineffective or lethal. Autopsies will be performed by Shark pathologist brought in for purpose. Diagnosis will be death by Legionnaires' disease.

You're telling me the Sharks are real?

Escape will be arranged. Your-mentality stand by. Affirmative?

Stunned. Got nothing else to do.

Shad's mouth was dry. He licked his lips and his frame shuddered to a useless adrenaline charge. Run! the adrenaline said. Fight! Something!

Stand by. You bet.

He hadn't known whether to believe in the Sharks or not. Whatever it was, he knew, Hartmann was scamming somehow, using his television tease to Puppetman's advantage.

That Correction Officers Ramirez and Shannon were Sharks, Shad could believe - they'd always been bastards. But the governor of the facility? Planning on dumping a virus in the air-conditioning?

Shad could feel gunsights on the back of his neck.

He hoped Croyd knew what he was doing.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

George Gordon Battle blinked myopic eyes. "Jesus, Phil, it's bad enough being joker. Now you want me to be a liberal?"

"Only for a few days," Herzenhagen said. "And then the liberal can have an accident. Or perhaps kill himself in despair at being duped." He reached in his pocket for his cigarette case. "I'm leaning toward the latter, myself."

"I feel so useless in this damn place," Battle said.

The dinner table was covered with dirty dishes and a half-finished game of solitaire. Dismembered guns sat on every horizontal surface. A flak jacket hung on the coat rack.

The field agent at home.

Since his transformation, Battle had been hiding in a safe house - safe apartment, really - in the East Fifties. He'd had to be smuggled in, since jokers weren't permitted in such places anymore, and he'd had to stay in here with nothing but the cable TV for company.

"As soon as we can get Mademoiselle Gerard up from Washington, we'll do it," Herzenhagen assured.

He lit his cigarette and watched Battle with some interest. He had never been repelled by jokers, was in fact mildly fascinated by them. His desire to eliminate the wild card wasn't a result of any personal repulsion, only science - only clean, objective facts.

History was a progression, Herzenhagen thought, an endless, inevitable progression to better things, perhaps to racial greatness. All his life he had considered himself a servant of history, a servant of that progression - smoothing things here, advancing them there. Fighting the irrationality of fascism, then Stalinism.

It was Einstein who proved how the wild card could spread, had shown Herzenhagen and Hughes and the others the math. The wild card was a random factor of incredible dimensions. The progression of history stumbled, lurched, leaped ahead, stepped cautiously back. The numbers wouldn't add up anymore.

Einstein - brilliant, compassionate, yet tormented by the numbers. Einstein, Our Founder. The first, after being called in by Truman, to see the chilling facts clearly.

The plague had to end in order for history to become orderly again. In order for Herzenhagen and people like him to be able to control things again, to move them along in their proper order, proper perspective. And it was Albert Einstein who'd shown him the way.

Einstein, the first Card Shark, the one who had recruited all the others. Who had finally been driven mad by the truth, gone all wiggy and sentimental and soft, and who had finally had to be disposed of. Herzenhagen still regretted it, the fact of it, the necessity. The restraints, the gag applied gently, the loaded syringe put to the old man's arm, the stonefish toxin that stopped his heart ...

Herzenhagen had no personal animus. He had nothing against wild cards. He had nothing against rabid dogs either, only knew they had to be put away, with rigorous efficiency and as little sentimentality as possible.

"I can still do it!" Battle said. He was a little joker now, bright yellow, less than four feet long, with six limbs. He could walk precariously on the last pair, or run on four legs. He had a perfectly ridiculous face, with what looked like a red putty nose right in the middle and more red putty noses where the ears should be. Little tufts of bristly hair stood out on his body like rebellious cowlicks, and his voice piped like that of Mickey Mouse.

"I can overcome this body!" Battle ranted on. "It's all a matter of will. Give me that lighter."

Dutifully Herzenhagen passed his silver Dunhill Rollagas to Battle. There was no point in trying to stop Battle now: he was determined to prove himself in front of his chief.

Battle flicked on the lighter with one of his middle limbs, held it to the yellow flesh hanging under one of his upper arms. His eyes went wide. Then suddenly the mutant body was in motion, zooming over the floor, up the walls, across the ceiling, moving too fast for Herzenhagen's eyes to follow. Battle kept it up for twenty or thirty seconds, cursing a blue streak the entire time. Paint flaked off the ceiling as he crossed it. Finally he stopped in the middle of the living room. Herzenhagen stood and collected his lighter.

"Jesus, Phil," Battle panted. "I didn't mean to do that."

"So I gathered," Herzenhagen said. He patted the little joker on the head. "But don't be overanxious. We'll get you a new body, tomorrow or the next day."

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

Your-mentality prepared/jailbreak?

Shad practically bounded out of his cot at the touch of Croyd's unearthly mind.

What the fuck else do I have to do?

It was two hours past shift change, and Ramirez was on duty in the corridor, a fact Shad gleaned from the observation that his TV and heater had been shut off.

Take position upper northwest corner of cell.

Shad looked at the featureless concrete ceiling of his cell. Which corner's the northwest? He'd never seen the sun, never been out of this concrete cage, and he didn't know.

Upper right, your-mentality's perspective.

Shad climbed the wall, planted one foot on the ceiling, waited.

Reach out with your power. Above and to west

Which way's west again?

Instructions followed. He reached out to the extreme limits of his power, found a thin trickle of electrical energy, sucked just the faintest bit of it.

Your-mentality stand by. Take all power on my signal.

Would you mind telling me why?

Croyd's answer was instant. All-cells monitored by hidden fiberoptic lens. Essential/escape plan to blank monitor in Dervish's cell ...

Mind explaining the rest of the plan?

Shad swayed as a mental picture invaded his mind. Croyd wasn't telling him the plan, just broadcasting the action as it happened, slices transmitted from other people's heads.

At the moment he was looking down at a pair of elderly black hands that held a cup of tea. Tea leaves swirled in the bottom of the cup.

I say this moment be's auspicious. An old voice, speaking with an antedeluvian rural accent Shad couldn't place.

Shad was outraged You're having your tea leaves read?

Croyd didn't reply, but the mental channel switched. Suddenly Shad felt himself in a small body that didn't feel right at all - center of gravity all wrong, weight distribution strange. His mind was heavily concentrated, straining a power that wasn't quite clear to him.

Click, click, click. He realized the body was female - that's why the center of gravity was wrong - and that she was trying to push buttons. Buttons that weren't actually in sight. Croyd had to tell her where they were, in what order to push them.

The buttons, Shad figured, that opened the electric cell doors.

Splitscreen. Suddenly he was in two heads at once. The other had to be a guard, because he was wearing a brown uniform shirt and sitting at a console filled with television monitors with views of prisoners, all except for the one turned to Jay Leno.

Lots of prisoners, though. Jokers, mostly, but he recognized himself hanging upside-down in the corner of his cell. There were other natlike prisoners who presumably had a hidden ace or two.

And one old black man, shrunken in his prison coveralls, staring into a cup of tea. What the hell had he ever done to get here?

Now.

Croyd's command rolled into Shad's head. He strained his power and ate the electricity from the distant source. And he watched, through the guard's eyes, as one of the little monitors went black. But the guard barely paid attention, he was watching Leno.

And then Shad was in another head. The walls loomed in toward him, as if they were seen through a distorting lens. Everything looked terrifying. Little creatures, half-seen things with scaly glistening bodies and silver fangs, slithered in and out of vision. Sometimes they offered advice; Shad could see their lips move. But he wasn't receiving audio and didn't know what they said, and for that he was grateful.

This was a maximum security sanitarium, after all. Some of the inmates had to be genuinely crazy.

Dervish. Croyd had given Shad the madman's name.

Titanium bars slid, and then the point of view spun into the corridor. Walls and cell doors swam past. Shad realized that Dervish wasn't walking straight, probably couldn't: he spun as he walked, turning circles.

But he moved fast. Out of the corner of the guard's eye, Shad saw Dervish coming - a massive long-armed torso above tiny crooked legs, knuckles almost dragging, evil red eyes and a shaggy mane that covered head, shoulders, upper arms. The guard half-rose from his seat, held out a hand, stop, and then Dervish swarmed onto him, and the guard's point of view thankfully went blank.

Apparently Dervish wasn't up to pressing the buttons that opened the cells, because the woman's point of view returned again, and she strained once more to the limits of her power.

Shad's door whirred open, the one time that had happened since he'd been here. He was out in a shot.

He ran to the console and stopped short, his heart crying, when he saw Dervish crouched over Ramirez's body. The huge joker had pulled off an arm and was eating it like a turkey leg. He looked up at Shad and growled. Blood matted the hair on his giant chest. Shad called the photons to him, shrouded himself in night, and then cautiously moved to the console and began pressing the numbers Croyd gave him.

On the monitors he could see people wandering out. A big joker in the lead, with claws and a set of wolfs fangs set in a pointed snout. She would have looked like the Wolfman if she'd had any hair, but she was bald, and bright orange to boot. The woman whose telekinesis had opened the doors came next: her Caucasian body was shaped like that of a nat, but she had a nose that drooped past her chin, and earlobes that fell past her shoulders. Shad wondered why she hadn't had cosmetic surgery. She was followed by the old black man, still holding his cup of tea.

Then came a muscular white man, hard-eyed, wearing a muscle shirt and prison tattoos - and hatred warred with wariness in Shad's mind as he recognized the man. He called himself the Racist in the same way that John Wayne was the Shootist - he was fast, supposedly capable of two hundred miles per hour on the straights - but he was a racist in the other sense of the word, too, a member of the Aryan Brotherhood. Some of his tattoos were swastikas. He'd been an ordinary stick-up man until he'd volunteered in prison for an experiment with the wild card virus, and to everyone's surprise he'd drawn an ace and escaped prison. Not that he'd stayed out of the slams for long - Straight Arrow had caught up with him and held him in a cage of fire.

Shad wondered idly if he should drain the Racist of all his photons and leave him here on the prison floor.

No/forbidden. Racist/Mark Wagner is necessary to plan.

Just thinking. That's all.

Shad watched, and pressed more buttons. A dark-haired white woman came out, attractive and anonymous in prison coveralls. A long-haired, long-bearded man in his forties whose brain had literally exploded out of his head, running down over his ears like oatmeal boiling out of a saucepan. Shad knew of him - he was an old hippie who'd become a projecting telepath, able to make others experience his psychedelic visions. Not surprisingly, they called him the Head. He sold his talent to young acid-head wannabees - it was illegal to deal drugs, but not to get others stoned by telepathy. There'd been some interesting court cases, and the Head had won them all.

Until, apparently, the case that put him here.

Next came a joker who puddled into the room, looking like fifty gallons of lime Jell-O - no skeleton, no visible organs, nothing but shimmering translucent green. He was followed by a chitinous creature in black armor, with a vast, swollen head and side-mounted eyes. This turned out to be Croyd.

There were more levels to the complex, more electric locks, more guards - but no more master control rooms full of cameras, no reason for Shad to use his power. Witchy picked the locks, seeing through Croyd's mind and reaching out with her TK; Racist and Dervish took care of the guards, always messily - and the last door, the door to the outside, opened with a simple push.

Cold sea-air blew in. Shad filled his lungs with it, let it slide over his tongue. Felt it fill his heart.

The smell of freedom. Nothing was going to stop him now.

Everyone held hands. Shad called photons and covered the whole group in darkness.

Holding hands, they shuffled out of the building. Governor's Island was a curious mixture: there was the Coast Guard establishment, frame buildings filled with high-ranking guardsmen and their families, serviced by their own ferry that ran back and forth to Manhattan. Green lawns ran down to the water's edge. The snug family dwellings of the Coast Guard shared uneasy quarters with the wild card psychiatric facility and its dangerous collection of aces and jokers, all confined in the concrete monolith on the south side facing the rubbish of the Rox across the bay. And then there was the old stone bulk of Fort Jay, with its display of rusting cannons dating to the War of 1812, ready to contest the passage of King George's frigates.

Shad's heart lifted as he saw the lights of Manhattan rising above the sensible frame buildings of the Coast Guard facility. Freedom was that close ...

Shad saw two figures take to the air - one a man who flew silently into the sky like Modular Man, another who flapped on mantalike wings.

Where are they going?

Will assassinate Governor Raney and CO Shannon. Death of Sharks not necessary to plan, but may sow confusion and cover our retreat.

Shad thought about it Solid, he decided.

The Governor's Island Ferry was docked, closed for the night but brightly lit. Keeping to the shadow of Fort Jay's rough stone walls, Shad slipped his people past, to a motor launch in another slip.

All-mentalities inside Commander's gig.

Shad dropped his cloak of darkness so the others could find their footing on the dock. Racist was first in the boat, heading for the ignition.

Then there were shots. Three distinct shots, bang-bang-bang, and as Shad's nerves leaped in reaction he heard an alarm, a furious urgent buzzer, endlessly repeated. Floodlights came on automatically, and suddenly the dock was lit brighter than day; a hot white glow that pinpointed the refugees, caught frozen in their tracks by the sudden onset of light.

Apparently one of the assassinations hadn't gone well.

Shad turned to where Racist was still bent over the gig's controls. "You doing all right there, speedy?"

"Shut the fuck up."

Shad turned at the sound of running feet and saw guards with guns, assault rifles held at port arms as they ran from the complex, heads swivelling as they looked for escapees.

Shad called more darkness to him, dropped to a crouch. He was going to have to stop those people before they started unloading automatic weapons at the packed escapees in the boat.

"Wait!" It was the dark-haired white woman, jumping to the dock. She threw out her arm in the direction of the pursuers, her fingers crooked slightly - and then a giant bloom of white light encompassed the guards. Shad eyes dazzled, thought for a moment that there had been an explosion - but no, it was silent, and when it faded the guards were unharmed, just fallen, hands over their dazzled eyes.

The gig's engine caught, boomed loud in the night. Shad threw off moorings fore and aft, then followed the white woman into the boat. She held out a hand.

"Lady Light" she said. Her voice was small and feminine.

"Black Shadow." Taking the hand. "Pleased to meet you."

They lurched as the boat took off toward the towering lights of Manhattan, dead ahead.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

"Lights are on," Herzenhagen reported as he peered into his telescope.

"About fucking time," piped Battle.

They and Mademoiselle Gerard - Herzenhagen couldn't quite bring himself to call her Mam'zell, as everyone else did - stood on the roof of a building across from Gregg Hartmann's apartment. They'd been there for hours, since Battle's joker form had scaled the building, opened the roof door, and let them all in.

"Is he alone?" Battle asked. With his poor eyesight he couldn't see for himself.

"Apparently." Herzenhagen peered into the scope once more, saw Hartmann clearly as the former senator stood by his window, staring moodily at the night while he took off his jacket and loosened his tie. Herzenhagen turned to Gerard.

"Viens ici, s'il vous plait."

"Bien."

She was a tough-looking French girl, maybe sixteen, in jeans and a leather jacket. Brainy, too, because she'd trusted the government amnesty and left the Rox before it was destroyed.

Now she worked for Herzenhagen. Maybe she believed the Shark allegations, maybe not. It didn't seem to matter to her. She had the life she wanted - she was jumping, and living well, and had all the protection the government could give her.

Jumpers. Herzenhagen had the only three jumpers still active under his control, and his only conclusion was that it made him remarkably like God. He could decide who lived, who died, and more importantly, who got to be who. Who got scrambled. Who got a new chance at life in a new body. Who was condemned to old age and death.

Who got to be Gregg Hartmann.

Lux fiat, he thought.

Roofing gravel crunched under Mademoiselle Gerard's boots as she approached the telescope and put one dark eye to the eyepiece. Herzenhagen reached into his pocket for his Browning Hi-Power, ready for what would come later. Gerard concentrated for a brief moment ... and then her body came unstrung, fell to the roof like a puppet with its strings slashed.

Battle reared himself up on his hindmost pair of legs, and thumbed on a large flashlight to illuminate his absurd face from below so that Mademoiselle, in Gregg Hartmann's body, could see him from the window. Then there was another shock - Battle dropped the flashlight and fell to all six limbs - and then Mademoiselle's body gave a start, and she sat up with a little cry of satisfaction.

Triple jump. Leaving Battle in Hartmann's body, Hartmann in the ridiculous yellow joker, and Mademoiselle back where she started.

Now all that remained was to finish off Hartmann. Since people were normally paralyzed after being jumped, Herzenhagen planned simply to shove the spastic six-limbed body off the roof - though he did carry the Browning Hi-Power just in case things didn't go according to plan.

But what he didn't expect was that the joker would give a whoop and run like a mad six-legged racehorse, kicking up gravel as it scuttled to the roof parapet, yellow rump flashing as it went up and over, all before a stunned Herzenhagen could raise his gun to the firing position....

Just as the joker had done when Battle had tried to do his stunt with the lighter. Apparently it was some kind of automatic defense mechanism.

Herzenhagen moved quickly to the parapet, looked down, and saw the joker body already on street level, zigzagging madly along the street, screaming all the wnile. Herzenhagen raised his gun, then decided against it. He'd probably miss, and shots would only call attention to what had just happened.

He'd have to move faster, he thought. Get the Hartmann business over with, accelerate the viral test on Governor's Island, head to Washington to try to move the Quarantine Bill through Congress....

Herzenhagen turned to leave. Mademoiselle Gerard was watching him, hands in her jacket pockets, a quizzical expression on her face.

Herzenhagen shrugged. "Quelle affaire," he said, and offered her his arm.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

Above, the shattered span of the Brooklyn Bridge stretched across the night sky. Underneath, in the shadows of the great arches beneath the bridge approaches, Shad paced along, followed by figures in prison coveralls who scuttled from darkness to darkness.

The jokers were making their way deeper into Jokertown. Most were following Witchy, who had promised them that the Twisted Fists would help smuggle them to one of the Jokertown havens, Jerusalem or Guatemala or Saigon ...

That, Shad realized, was why she hadn't had cosmetic surgery. She was an ideological joker as well as a physical one, and accepted her deformity as part of her joker identity.

The aces were left on their own. Racist had chosen to keep the Coast Guard boat and take it over to the Brooklyn side, where he had friends. Shad hoped that would confuse and divide any pursuit.

You still there, Croyd?

This-unit is monitoring.

Can we talk? We might have business to discuss - you want Rudo, and I want certain other people.

Your-mentality may accompany me.

Good. You wait here, I'll get us transportation.

Shad stole an old Pontiac on Pearl Street and brought it back under the bridge approaches. Croyd waited there. Shad leaned across the front seats and opened the passenger door.

This-unit knows of safe house uptown.

Sounds good.

The Pontiac pulled away from the curb. Shad headed north out of Jokertown on Fifth Avenue. At one point he had to swerve wildly to avoid a bright yellow six-legged joker that screamed as it raced across the street.

Shad thought seriously about his own safe houses and whether he could trust any of them. The places he trusted most were in Jokertown, and he wanted to avoid Jokertown for the moment. That's where the search for the escapees would be at its most intense.

Still, he could probably trust the Diamond house and the Gravemold house. Not but that his skin didn't crawl at the thought of disappearing into the Gravemold identity with its hideous chemical stench....

There was a horrible mental scream from Croyd, a cry so intense as to jangle pain through Shad's mind.

Your-mentality=Black Shadow=Neil Carton Langford=Mr. Gravemold!

Oh hell. Gravemold had once captured Croyd when he was in one of his psychotic fits. Shad had almost forgotten about it, but Croyd had just plucked the thought from his mind and wasn't about to forget.

Croyd lunged over Shad's shoulder for the wheel. Shad fought for control, felt wheels rebound from the curb ...

Your-mentality=Gravemold! Your-mentality redeflned=enemy!

"You were crazy, Croyd!" Shad shouted. "You were killing people left and right and - "

Die, enemy! Croyd's hands fumbled for Shad's throat.

The Pontiac crashed into a parked Thunderbird. Croyd's head drove into Shad's from behind, slamming into the mastoid. Shad blinked stars from his eyes.

"Dammit, Croyd!"

He turned around, blood boiling, ready to backhand Croyd out of the way, but the joker had crumpled into the back seat, limp as a ragdoll.

"Croyd?"

Shad could see Croyd's chest moving up and down. Maybe he'd been knocked unconscious when they banged heads.

Shad checked Croyd carefully and saw he wasn't bleeding or damaged in any obvious way. It looked as if he'd just gone to sleep - gone to sleep right in the middle of a fight, which had to be something new even for him - and if that was the case, Croyd could be gone anywhere from days to weeks.

Shad slid out of the car. He would just leave, eat photons and walk up a building and get away.

But that would leave Croyd in the hands of the authorities.

Your-mentality redefined=enemy!

Shad hesitated. He couldn't leave Croyd to the tender mercies of the Sharks.

He went back into the car, worked Croyd out, and carried the joker into the night.

He had a horrid feeling he was going to pay for this sooner or later.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

Herzenhagen smoked a cigarette and pondered the news as he watched Peggy Durand draw on her clothes. All the wild cards on Governor's Island gone. None as yet recaptured. All the Sharks killed - though at least Shannon seemed to have wounded his attacker before his head was ripped off.

For a moment he was distracted by the vision of Peggy drawing on her Spandex bicycle shorts. Amazing, he thought, the things available for young people these days. He'd been raised on Long Island with wealth and privilege - his morphine-addicted Danish grandfather had married American money - and he'd thought himself lucky. But the eighteen-year-old Philip von Herzenhagen, he suspected would have thrown it all away for a chance to live in the Nineties and chase girls who wore Spandex.

He dragged his mind back to business. It couldn't be a coincidence, he thought, that of the five men killed during the escape, three were Sharks, and that two of these had been killed, not in the escape, but executed quite deliberately in their beds.

None of the Sharks killed were those named in the Hartmann accusations. Which meant that the killers had other sources of information.

A leak? Possibly. Perhaps one of the other guards had helped the escapees. Possibly the escape had been arranged from on high. The prison break bespoke organization. Someone in the facility, familiar with its procedures.

Perhaps there were counter-Sharks out there. Shark Hunters.

"Be careful," he said.

Peggy cocked an eyebrow at him as she arranged the feathers of dark hair that fell down her forehead. "What was that?"

"Something's going on, and I don't know what. But I don't think I want to trust the phones. If you need to call me, I'll be at the club every day from noon till two, and again at dinnertime."

She smiled at him, her eyes glowing with an intelligence beyond her apparent years. Peggy Durand had been Herzenhagen's mistress in Germany after the war. He had found her in the shambles of the Runstedt Offensive, a naive little girl from Idaho who sold Red Cross doughnuts to angry GI's at ten cents apiece and other favors - exclusively to officers - on a mattress in the back of her truck. He had shown her a better life. Peggy had been attentive and learned her business well; and when the CIA had been formed, Herzenhagen had recruited her as a courier. And after the CIA, she'd followed him into the Sharks. The last few decades she'd been living with Faneuil, but now things had changed.

After the fiasco in Guatemala, she'd been jumped into the luscious body of an eighteen-year-old runaway named Dolores Chacon, and it was thought too dangerous for her to associate directly with Faneuil, even though he was in another body as well. She was employed as den mother at Latchkey, the organization's jumper facility in Maryland, but Herzenhagen kept finding reasons to call her to New York. He found the combination irresistable - the juicy young breasts and flat belly, the round buttocks and smooth long legs, all inhabited by a sophisticated woman with a lifetime of experience. Better than any real teenager could ever be.

Peggy sat on his bed, took his cigarette from his fingers, drew on it.

"When you get back to Washington, you'll have to warn Rudo," Herzenhagen said. "That Croyd creature, for one, was swearing vengeance on him."

"Warn which Rudo?"

Herzenhagen looked up at her. "Both of them, of course."

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

Mr. Diamond peered owlishly through gold-rimmed spectacles and hefted a metal briefcase full of hundred-dollar bills. He searched in his pocket for keys, remembered he didn't have any, and uttered a mild reproach to himself.

Then he climbed up the wall and went in a window.

The ineffectual pleadings of his criminal attorney had drained Shad's cash supply, and he needed to increase his liquidity. A small packet of diamonds, retrieved from a safety deposit box in Brooklyn, then transported into Manhattan's diamond district, would do for a start.

Mr. Gregory Diamond was one of Shad's aliases. He lived atop a building in Jokertown owned by the Diamond Company, Ltd., a division of Diamond Transport, a company held by Diamante N.V., incorporated in Aruba. Diamond's apartment had its own entrance, a huge steel door with massive locks, and its own stair leading to the apartment door.

For both of which Shad had lost the keys.

The apartment itself was fairly modest - neat, inexpensive furniture, some throw rugs, and a steel-lined safe concealed behind sliding panels. Shad put the suitcase of cash in the safe, then put Coltrane's Black Pearls on the sound system, jacked up the volume, and took a long shower with the sound of the music wailing over the hissing water.

It was his first shower in three years. He made it last till the album ended, tried to wash Governor's Island out of his soul. Then he toweled himself off, put on clean clothes, and decided to catch up on the news.

He snapped on CNN.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

Gregg Hartmann looked ill-at-ease, and had put on fifteen or twenty pounds since Shad had last seen him. Usually a fine off-the-cuff speaker, he now read from notes. His voice was either inaudible or a booming fortissimo.

It was the content that was riveting. Shad found himself leaning forward, elbows on knees, as he warred in spirit with what the voice was saying.

"I call this conference in a spirit of sorrow," Hartmann began. "I regret to inform you that I have been deceived. Although I believe that my informants were well-meaning, my own investigations have shown to my satisfaction that they were wrong. The so-called Card Sharks, I now believe, do not exist. They never existed, except in the minds of a small number of deluded people, among whose numbers I until recently counted myself. From the escape and existence of Etienne Faneuil, we unhappily created a fantasy conspiracy...."

Puppetman, Shad thought. What game are you playing now?

Maybe he'd better find out.

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

"Mr. von Herzenhagen? The telephone. Mr. Gregg Hartmann, sir."

Herzenhagen stubbed out his cigarette, and followed his club's balding concierge from the smoking room to where a telephone waited in a small office. He thanked the man, held onto his polite face while the man left, and closed the door before he picked up the receiver.

"Yes?"

"Hi. It's me."

Herzenhagen pursed his lips. "Where are you calling me from?"

"From the apartment. I haven't been out all day."

"That's not a secure phone."

"Hell, nobody has any reason to tap it but us."

Herzenhagen found it eerily disturbing to listen to Battle's words and cadences in Gregg Hartmann's voice.

"Only this once," he said. "But after this, use a public phone."

"I can't. That Hannah woman is staking me out. She's been calling all day, and she finally showed up on the doorstep, but I told the doorman not to admit her."

"That was good."

"I think she needs taking care of."

Herzenhagen gave it some thought. "All in good time," he said.

"I mean it, Phil. She went batshit after she heard the press conference. Jesus - do you know that she and Hartmann were fucking?"

Herzenhagen laughed. "So give her a good screw, George! Maybe that'll shut her up!"

"Listen, this is serious. She knows too much. She's got to be taken care of."

"It will happen," soothingly, "I promise you. But first she must be thoroughly discredited - after that, no one will care what happens to her."

"Listen, I want out of here!"

Out of his body.

Perhaps, Herzenhagen thought, Battle could be jumped into Hannah, and then Hartmann's body, with Hannah inside, could take a walk off a pier, after leaving a poignant, disillusioned note behind lamenting chances lost. Kill two birds with one stone.

Herzenhagen smiled as he anticipated Battle's aggrieved complaints at being jumped into a woman's body.

"Don't worry," he said, "I think I have a way of neatly wrapping up the whole adventure."

♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

The words rang in Shad's head. I call this conference in a spirit of sorrow.

He forced the window open and slid silently into Hartmann's immaculate kitchen - apparently Hartmann didn't cook much. From another room, Hartmann ranted on the phone in a grating voice that Shad had never heard before.

The voice of Puppetman.

Shad's gloved hands opened drawers until he found a kitchen knife - always useful - and a couple of extension cords.

Shad heard the phone hang up. Anger bubbled in his veins. He left the kitchen and walked past a dining room and living room to Hartmann's office. Hartmann, in slacks and a striped shirt, stood behind his desk and stared moodily at the phone. Shad walked into the room, and as Hartmann's eyes tracked up Shad stole just a bit of heat, enough to cause an involuntary shudder to run through Hartmann's frame.

"You!" The line, and the dropped jaw, was straight out of a melodrama.

"You expecting someone else, Gregg?" Shad walked forward, leaned on the desk, tried to smile, but hatred kept turning the expression into a snarl.

Hartmann recovered composed his face. He brushed at his graying hair with his prosthetic hand and, as if he wasn't used to it yet, bumped his forehead in the process.

"Sorry," he said "You caught me at a bad moment." He frowned "I suppose you think I can help you."

"All I want is to meet a friend of yours."

"Yeah? Who?"

Shad smiled. "Puppetman."

Shad had hoped for a start of surprise, a guilty catch in the voice. Instead, Hartmann seemed genuinely puzzled.

"Who? Could you, uh, refresh my memory?"

A good actor. Shad had to hand it to him. He leaned closer to Hartmann and bared his teeth.