Suicide Kings

27

Tuesday,

December 22

On the Congo River, Congo

People’s Paradise of Africa

The pilot’s name was Japhet. His face was crisscrossed with pink scars that shone against his dark skin. There was a rifle slung across his shoulder and he had a pistol holstered under his left armpit. Before Michelle’s card turned, he would have scared the shit out of her.

Joey had found a dead chimpanzee near the airstrip and raised it up. Japhet called it a bonobo. He didn’t seem surprised in the least by the zombie bonobo, not even when Joey carried it around like a baby.

“Stop playing with that zombie,” Michelle snapped. It gave her the willies. “It’s not helping. And it grosses me out.”

“Jesus, Bubbles, you are such a fucking pussy when it comes to slightly moldy flesh.” Joey made a kissy face at the bonobo. The bonobo made the same face back at Joey.

Japhet looked quizzically between them. “I still need one thousand U.S. to take you to Kisangani.”

“I can give you five hundred,” Michelle said. “And this watch.” Michelle pulled off her Bulova. It wasn’t very expensive, but it was pretty. Maybe Japhet would go for it.

Japhet gave the watch a skeptical look. “It’s not that valuable.”

“You can tell people it belonged to the Amazing Bubbles.” She held her hand out, palm up, and let a small bubble form in it. Then she targeted a can lying in the dirt about twenty-five feet away and let it fly. The can jumped and pinged as if it had been shot.

That made him smile. “You give me an autograph, too?”

“As many as you want.”

Ackroyd amp; Creighton Investigations

Manhattan, New York

Jay Ackroyd-Popinjay-leaned against his desk, arms crossed, a sense of world-weary amusement radiating off him in a way Bugsy had only dreamed possible. This, Bugsy thought as he finished his explanation, is what I want to be when I grow up.

The office wasn’t pristine. An old coffee cup was sitting on the desk, a pile of folders rose up on the desk. But there was a comfort in the man as he moved through the room, a sense of professionalism that said, Hey, I didn’t start the most powerful ace in the world on a killing rampage. That was you.

“Okay,” Popinjay said slowly, like he was eating something he really liked the taste of. “So you want to figure out what the relationship is between the Radical and Mark Meadows?” He seemed to think the question was funny.

“The Radical’s on kind of a killing spree, you may have noticed. If Meadows is still alive, he may have the key to stopping Tom Weathers,” Bugsy said.

“You could look at it that way,” Popinjay said. “Here’s the thing, Mark Meadows and I were on Takis together, and-”

“Takis? Like the other planet, Takis? With the aliens that made the wild card?”

“That would be the Takis,” Popinjay said. “I was there. With Mark. That whole cadre of aces that hung out with Cap’n Trips? Jumping Jack Flash. Moonchild. Cosmic Traveler. They’re all him.”

Bugsy blinked. “I don’t get it,” he said. “Mark Meadows was Moonchild?”

“And Starshine. And all the rest.”

“And the Radical…”

“And the Radical. Mark is a pharmaceutical genius. Depending on which drugs he took, he became different people.”

“Yeah, okay,” Bugsy said, his hundred different bits of information falling into place at once. “That’s usually just a metaphor, you know.”

“Not for Mark. The Radical was the holy grail for him. He’d managed to get there once. The first time, as a matter of fact. Way back in the sixties.”

“People’s Park,” Bugsy said. “I got that.”

“It wasn’t really the same guy, though. Tom Weathers came later. That one was just the Radical. Ever since then, he’s been trying to get that particular high back. All the others were… well, I wouldn’t say failed attempts. But less than successful.”

Bugsy stood up, pacing slowly back and forth. “Aquarius. The were-dolphin guy?”

“Mark Meadows.”

“Starshine?”

“Mark. And Monster.”

“Jesus! The Radical was the Cock That Ate Chicago?”

Popinjay nodded, then grew somber. “They were all him. Or parts of him or things that he took out of the world and became. I was never really sure. But they were all named for songs, you know.”

“Songs?”

“Sure. Jumping Jack Flash?”

“It’s a song? I knew it was a Whoopi Goldberg movie.”

Jay Ackroyd shook his head. “All of them are songs. Listen to a good oldies station. You’ll find all of them there. Aquarius. Starshine.”

“Moonchild?”

“By King Crimson,” Jay said, “released in sixty-nine. Same year Mark became the Radical for the first time.”

“Vietnam was brought out of civil war by a pop song?”

“You could look at it that way,” Jay Ackroyd said. “The thing you have to understand about Mark Meadows is he’s a really good person. Yes, he saved Vietnam. He saved more than that. You remember the Card Sharks?”

“Was that the show on Cinemax with the girl in Vegas and the chimpanzee?”

“I was thinking more the conspiracy to kill every wild card in the world. They were holding Mark prisoner in China back in ninety-four. Guy named Layton was beating Mark to death. Mark swallowed a bunch of drugs. Who really knows what? And then… the Radical returned. I know what he’s become, but before all this happened, the Radical saved your life.”

“He seems to regret it now.”

“Yeah, I know. Whatever’s going on with Mark, it’s… complex. Seems like his ‘friends’ are aspects of his personality. Maybe they started out being external-part of the drugs, part of the world, whatever-or maybe they were always inside him. But the Radical was all of them together. Like a multiple personality disorder where there’s one persona who knows everything? Tom Weathers was the perfected image of Mark Meadows. He had all the powers of all the others. He was… he was what Mark wanted to be, but never was.”

“Well,” Bugsy said. “Holy shit.”

He left in a daze, taking the subway back to Ellen’s. He couldn’t get his head around Mark Meadows, sad sack icon of the summer of love, being not just Tom Weathers but all those other aces, too. Or the idea that the Radical-the same one from Paris-had saved the world once. Saved him, personally, and every other ace and joker in the world from the Black Trump. It changed things, but he wasn’t sure how yet.

He missed his stop and had to walk back five blocks through the cold December wind. When he got in, Ellen was sitting at the kitchen counter, the slightest frown showing between her eyebrows. He put down his coat.

“What did you find out?”

He told her all of it. Takis. Vietnam. The 1960s. Sprout and Kimberly Ann Cordayne and Mark Meadows, really nice guy. Monster and Jumping Jack Flash. And with every word, he found himself talking louder, gesturing wider, getting angry. “We’ve been fighting a hippie’s wet dream about Che Guevara! All of it, all of it, is the one guy’s psychodrama about not being… I don’t even know. Radical enough in nineteen fucking sixty-eight! Do you have any idea how many people have died because Mark Meadows wasn’t sufficiently cool?”

“Hundreds,” Cameo said. “Thousands.”

“And a couple dozen more last week. And next week, who the fuck knows?”

“And,” she said, “how does that help you stop him?”

Bugsy paused and raised his hands in a gesture that meant No clue. “And you know what,” he said, “it isn’t even that. It isn’t even that he wanted to be this bronzed Adonis. Do you know why he wanted that? To impress a girl. To get into Kimberly Ann Cordayne’s jeans. That’s what all of this is about. Back in sixty-I-don’t-even-know-what, little teenage Mark Meadows got a perfectly understandable boner for Kimberly in his French class, and now that same erection is blowing people up in Vienna. It’s the past, Ellen. The past is killing us.

“And that girl? The one with the funny laugh and the enchanting tits that got Mark’s hopes up? She’s gone. She doesn’t even exist anymore. I’ve seen her, and she looks like somebody’s grandma who just got out of a methadone clinic. Even if he was exactly the guy who would have rocked her back in sixty-eight, it doesn’t matter. That girl’s gone. She’s dead. And people are still dying in order to fucking impress who she used to be.”

“Bugsy-”

“It’s sick, Ellen! It’s sick, and it’s wrong, and it’s straight-out pathetic. He’s holding on to this idea of who he’s supposed to be. This idealized image of who he thinks she would have wanted, even though she doesn’t want that, and he can’t ever really be more than Mark Meadows’s psychological failures in a fucking Halloween mask. And so he’s turned into this twisted, empty, evil, sad-ass version of himself and hurting a bunch of people who had nothing to do with it.”

“Hey-”

“It’s like a poison. It’s like he drank too much of the past, and now it’s poisoning us.”

He stopped. Somewhere in the rant, he’d started crying. He leaned against the wall, wiping the tears with the palms of his hands.

When Ellen spoke, her voice was soft. “We aren’t still talking about the Radical, are we?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t think so.”

On the Congo River, Congo

People’s Paradise of Africa

Where the Hell is Japhet?

He said he needed to go to the village and pick up some supplies, but Michelle thought he was taking too long.

She’d had another dream about Adesina while she dozed off waiting for their pilot. Another pit dream, more vivid than before. The smell was even worse, something Michelle hadn’t thought possible, and the compulsion to get to Adesina was becoming overwhelming. It was like a radio station coming in clearer the closer you got to the signal.

Joey was cradling the chimp on her lap, while it stared up at her with its dead eyes. Michelle thought she might hurl. The bonobo was beginning to stink. The heat wasn’t helping things.

“I need to get bigger,” Michelle said suddenly. “We don’t know what’s waiting for us at Kisangani. Could you raise a couple of zombies and have them pound on me?”

Joey made a circle in the dirt with the toe of her shoe. “There’s always dead bodies, Bubbles. How many do you want? There are hundreds here.” Her voice started to have a singsong quality, and that was worse than the nonstop swearing.

“Just a couple.”

It took a few minutes, but soon a couple of decrepit zombies came shambling up the dirt road.

“I don’t know,” Michelle said. “They don’t look like they’ll do much.”

“They’ll be fine,” Joey replied.

The zombies began to hit Michelle. She’d taken much worse pummelings, but they did make her plump up like yeasty dough.

“Okay,” Michelle said. “I’m good for now. I don’t want to add a lot more weight to the plane.”

Michelle was going to say more, but she’d just seen Japhet coming up the road, carrying two string bags loaded with fruit and brown paper-wrapped packages.

When he got closer she said, “Did you get everything you need?”

He nodded. His mouth was pulled into a tight line. “We must leave quickly. When I told a friend at the store that I was taking some people to Kisangani, he got a funny look on his face. It seems there have been men looking for strangers-American strangers.”

“What did he say?” Joey asked her. When Michelle translated the conversation into English she said, “This could be a world of hurt coming.”

“You’re probably right,” Michelle replied. Then she spoke again to Japhet. “Can we leave now?”

“Yes,” he said. “But I’m going to need more money. I won’t be able to come back here for a while.”

“Fine,” Michelle said. It would wipe out the rest of her cash, but there was no other choice. “Can we help you load?” He nodded and pointed to several boxes sitting near the single-engine prop plane. When he climbed into the plane and started the engine, it sputtered to life in a way that didn’t fill Michelle with confidence.

Michelle and Joey were loading the last of small cargo boxes when Japhet jumped from the plane, yelling something Michelle couldn’t quite make out over the engine noise. Then he pulled the pistol from his holster and started firing. Michelle turned around. Bounding up the dirt road, kicking up dust, came seven huge leopards.

“Shit! Go! ” Michelle yelled at Joey. She pushed her toward the plane, then spun and let a barrage of bubbles fly at the leopards. These were rubbery, nothing lethal about them. But they would hurt like hell. She didn’t want to kill the leopards, but animals didn’t normally behave this way. What the hell was going on?

The bubbles hit two of the cats, one in the shoulder, the other in the leg. They went down and rolled over and over in the dusty road. But the other five kept running toward the plane.

Michelle saw that Joey was still outside. Japhet grabbed her arm and yanked her toward the open plane door. Michelle felt claws sinking into her back and she was slammed into the side of the fuselage. She bounced off the plane, spun around, and saw another leopard leaping at Joey as she scrambled into the plane. Its claws raked down the back of her leg. The zombie bonobo leaped up and grabbed the leopard’s head, then started gouging out its eyes.

The other leopards were on Michelle. They clawed and bit her, but that only made her fatter. She created bubbles the size of soccer balls and sent them into each cat’s chest. The leopards popped up into the air. As the first one hit the ground, she heard Japhet’s pistol. The leopard screamed and then turned into a naked man.

Michelle scrambled, grabbed Japhet, and yelled into his ear, “Stop shooting. They’re people.”

“No. They are Leopard Men.” He spat. “They’re not getting my plane!”

“Let’s get the hell out of here.” Michelle released rubbery bubbles at the remaining leopards. He nodded, jammed his gun into his holster, and climbed into the plane. Michelle followed, yanking the door shut behind her.

Joey sat on one hip on the far seat. Her leg was bleeding and stained her pants brownish red. There were four deep gashes in her flesh and blood was welling up in them. Japhet climbed into the pilot’s seat and started the plane down the dirt runway.

“Do you have a first-aid kit in here?” Michelle asked. She glanced out the windshield and saw the end of the runway-and the jungle where it stopped-coming up way too fast. “Christ, we’re not going to make it.”

Japhet just laughed and pulled back hard on the throttle. The plane shuddered, bounced up and down a couple of times, then rose in the air. Michelle could hear jungle foliage whapping the underside of the plane.

“No first-aid kit,” he said. “There’s a bottle of water you can use to clean the wound and I have a clean T-shirt in one of those packages.” He pointed to the string bags he’d brought from the village earlier that were now on the floor in front of Michelle’s feet. “You can use it for a bandage. It’s one of those wrapped up in brown paper.”

She pulled the first twine-tied parcel out and held it up. “Is it in here?” she asked. He nodded. She undid the twine and discovered a couple of T-shirts, underwear, and socks. “That’s what you were doing in the village? Your laundry?”

“No,” he said defensively. “Laundry is woman’s work. There’s a widow who does it for me. I give her money and bring medicine for her boy from Kisangani and she washes for me.”

Michelle rolled her eyes, grabbed one of the T-shirts, and retied the package. “You got a knife?” He nodded and fished one out of his pants pocket and handed it to her. “Thanks.” She crawled back to Joey. “This is going to hurt.”

“Just do something, you fucker,” Joey said. Her voice trembled and Michelle knew she was crying.

Michelle got to work tearing up the T-shirt. The jungle slid by below them, every mile bringing her closer and closer to Adesina.

In the Jungle, Congo

People’s Paradise of Africa

Through the gap between the hills ahead of them, there was a line of darker blue. Lake Tanganyika.

The sight filled Jerusha with hope. Maybe, maybe she could do this

…

They had moved into less fractured ground. The hills were lower now, the jungle beginning to give way to more open ground. They were moving across a wide field of tall grass, making good time, following a half-hidden trail. People obviously came this way occasionally. The sun beat down on them, but after the half gloom of the jungle, it felt good to see unbroken sky overhead. She was hoping to find another village, perhaps a phone…

Waikili was walking alongside her, his hand grasping hers. She felt his fingers tighten. “Bibbi…” he said. “He comes again

…”

“Cesar! Everyone!” Jerusha shouted as she dropped Waikili’s hand. “Watch-”

There was no time to say more. She saw the grass rippling to the right of the path they followed. She heard the roar of the monster. She heard the children shrill in alarm and someone’s gun firing widly. She saw the ruff of tan hide as the hyena-lion leapt and heard the terrible clashing of its jaws.

She saw it toss a child’s torn body aside even as she ran toward it. Cesar and Gamila were firing into the grass, the chatter of the gunfire causing birds to erupt from the trees bordering the field and tearing the frond of grass. “Stop!” she told them, panting. “Wait until you can see him…”

The silence was deafening, the roar of the weapons still echoing. Three of the children were badly injured, claw-raked as the were-creature had passed through the line, and there were two still bodies with other children around them: Pili and Chaga. “Are they

…?” The children didn’t need to answer. She knew. “Waikili,” she said. “Is he still there?”

“Yes, Bibbi Jerusha. He has decided it’s time to end the game.”

Jerusha nodded. “Cesar, Gamila,” she said. She was staring into the field, at the faint path of trampled grass where the boy had gone. “Take the children and keep moving.”

“Bibbi…”

“Do it,” she snapped, not looking at him.

She heard him call out to the children both in French and Baluba. She heard them pick up Eason’s stretcher, heard them half run down the path away from the bodies. She rummaged in her seed pouch, cast seeds in a close circle around her.

“I know you’re there,” she called out in French. “I’m here. I’m alone. You want to end this? Then take me first.”

Laughter answered her from the grass.

“Come on,” she told him. “I’m waiting for you.”

There was more laughter, moving now, sliding to her left. She turned toward the sound.

He came almost too fast for her, a blur of motion. Jerusha tore at the seeds she’d scattered with her mind, and a mass of thornbushes lifted toward the sky, the black knives of the bushes snagging and tearing at the hyena body of the child ace, lifting him in midleap. Even so, the claws of his right paw ripped along her arm and Jerusha cried out in pain and shock. She could smell his foul breath, and her face was spattered with his saliva as he roared. As the thornbushes lifted him, the beast struggled in their grasp and she stabbed him a thousand times with the long black thorns. Branches broke and tore, scattering black snow as he tore at them furiously. The claws raked at the thorns, at her, at air; she retreated, still trying to wrap him in her dark, deadly cage. She could feel him slipping loose.

Too strong. She could not hold him. He was too strong.

He roared. The branches holding him creaked and splintered even as she tried to strengthen them.

Then she heard Cesar shout, heard his weapon fire. The were-thing screamed as the bullets tore into its tan hide, as Jerusha wrapped yet more thorn limbs around the beast to hold it, to slow it. And suddenly, it was no longer a beast but a naked child snagged in thorns and dying, his own face shattered and broken. Cesar was still firing, and the child’s body shuddered and writhed from the impact of the bullets. “Stop!” Jerusha screamed at Cesar. “Stop. It’s over.”

The gunfire ended. Blood dripped to the ground from the still, broken form. Jerusha turned away from the sight, unable to look. Cesar was grinning, and she hated the look of triumph and satisfaction on his face.

The grass swayed near the path, and another boy emerged: the emaciated child, just a hand’s reach from her. He had a waif’s face, with eyes too large and too sad in his sunken face, his belly drawn tightly in, his arms and legs no more than sticks. His mouth was open, as if he were trying to speak.

“Bibbi!” She heard Cesar calling to her in alarm. “No!”

The child glanced from the body in the tree to Jerusha, his eyes shimmering with tears. “You can come with us,” she told him. “You don’t have to be with them anymore. You can be free of all this. I can help you. I’ll get you to people who can help you.”

He cocked his head toward her as she spoke. Jerusha didn’t know if he understood her French, but she hoped he could understand the tone. She held out her hand toward him, and he took it in his. She could feel the trembling in his fingers, could feel bones under the thin wrapping of skin and tendons.

His hand tightened on hers. He pulled her arm forward, and as she stumbled to catch her balance, his mouth yawned open and he bit down hard on her forearm.

“No!” She didn’t know if the shout came from her or Cesar. The boy grinned at her, licking lips dark with her blood. The wound burned, as if his saliva were acid. Cesar’s gun stuttered and the child ran, plunging back into the high grass. “Stop!” Jerusha shouted: at the child, at Cesar. She cradled her injured arm to her belly. “Stop! Come back!”

Cesar came running to her. He looked at her arm, and she saw his eyes fill with tears. “It’s okay,” she told him. “I’m fine. It’s just a bite. He’s gone. We’ve won here. It’s over. Come on, let’s go get the others.”

“Bibbi Jerusha…”

“I’m fine,” she told him sternly. “Let’s go. I’m fine.”

She hoped that she was right.

Ubundu, Congo

People’s Paradise of Africa

“This can’t be kisangani,” Michelle said. The landing strip was cracked mud and ruts, surrounded by thick jungle. Not a building was in sight. “Kisangani is a city.”

“Kisangani was a city,” Japhet said. “Now?” He shrugged. “There’s an airport in Kisangani, yes, but they aren’t fond of independent contractors like me. The cut they want of my merchandise is outrageous. There are police at the Kisangani airport, too. And soldiers, and Leopard Men, and men in suits who ask inconvenient questions about flight plans and passengers. It is better here in the jungle. The people living here keep a runway clear and I bring them what they need.”

“Capitalism at its best,” Michelle murmured.

“And the two of you have already been more trouble than I bargained for.”

Michelle smiled at him. “It looks like you know your way around trouble.”

He gave her a toothy grin. “That I do.”

“Where are we, then?”

“Outside Ubundu. Kisangani is that way.” He pointed. “From here you must walk. If you lose your way, find the Congo and follow it downstream. It was a pleasure to meet you, Bubbles.” He took her hand and shook it. “Get your friend to a doctor. Wounds go bad fast in the jungle.”

“I’ll do my best,” she replied. By the time they heard his engine roar past overhead, she and Joey were already deep in the green, making their way through thick underbrush.

Japhet had left them a machete, and that was certainly a help. But Joey was not happy. “Fucking asshole,” she complained. “Look at this shit. Walk, he says. There’s no fucking road. And where are the elephants? I thought Africa was full of fucking elephants. Their own graveyards and everything. One dead elephant, that’s all I need, we could fucking ride to Kisangani.”

With every step they took toward Kisangani, Joey grew more and more agitated. By late afternoon, she was furious. “You don’t fucking know, Bubbles,” she muttered. “You can’t feel it. There’s dead shit all around. Kids, dead kids. So many dead kids. I can feel the little fuckers rotting in the ground.”

Michelle gave her a shake. “Okay, I got it. Dead kids. A lot of them.” And one who is still alive.

Joey looked up with a furious expression on her face. “You’re the coldest bitch I’ve ever known, Bubbles. I’m telling you about fuck only knows how many dead children, and you don’t give two brown shits. Ink would never have acted this way.”

Michelle released her. “I’m not Ink. Thanks for the insight. But those children are dead. We can’t do a damn thing about them. Adesina is still alive.”

Joey glared at her, but there was a weird glassy-eyed quality to it. Michelle put her wrist to Joey’s forehead.

“Christ,” she said. “You’re burning up.” She squatted down and pulled the bandage up to look at Joey’s leg wound. It was bright red and swollen. “We need to get this looked at. Soon. Look, when we find Adesina, we’ll find out who killed those other kids. If there are as many dead as you say, there has to be some sort of record. We’ll do something.”

Joey grabbed her arm. “You fucking promise, Michelle? Do you swear?” She swayed a little. Michelle suddenly felt horrible for bringing her along. Yeah, Joey could raise zombies, but she was as fragile as any nat herself and still a kid herself in many ways.

“I promise,” she said.

The Red House

Outside Bunia, Congo

People’s Paradise of Africa

The sun had left the sky, leaving only a lavender glow with a hint of blood to silhouette the trees on the ridge west of the huge and complicated old red-brick colonial mansion. Bugs called from the chopped-back trees and brush. Something big and dark-either a bat or a really humongous moth-flew past Tom’s head to vanish over the steeply pitched slate roof.

In the grey-velvet twilight stood Alicia Nshombo, stuffed not quite successfully into a dark tunic and jodhpurs. Her secret-police boss suit, Tom thought as he hovered briefly before the white-roofed portico. A slight man in a doctor’s coat fairly hopped from foot to foot at her side.

As Tom touched down on the grass Alicia trundled forward to catch him in her usual moist embrace. “Dear Tom,” she said, kissing him on the cheek, “welcome to the Red House. This is Dr. Washikala. He’s the director of our facility here.”

Washikala swallowed before saying, “It’s an honor to meet you, Field Marshal Mokele-mbembe. ” At Alicia’s gesture the little doctor turned and trotted up the steps to open the door. Tom started to follow.

From somewhere out of sight around the house to his left he heard children wailing and crying. There was a big frame annex there. He stopped with one foot up on a step.

The noise quit. An engine revved. A moment later a panel truck rumbled past. A beat later a black Land Cruiser followed. The man in the passenger seat wore unmistakable Leopard Man drag: a brimless leopard-skin hat and sunglasses at night. The others wore the cammies of PPA regulars-second line infantry, not Simbas.

Tom stood frowning after them until the guards at the brick house to the north had opened the wrought-iron gates with the spiky tops. The truck headed off toward the west, its yellow beams bouncing like an insect’s feelers before it, up the flank of a ridge scraped bare for a hundred yards beyond the wire. The Cruiser followed.

Dr. Washikala cleared his throat. “Comrade Field Marshal. If you please-”

Alicia seemed to be studying Tom intently. Without a word Tom mounted the steps and went inside.

A strong chemical smell filled the air. It must be some kind of cleaning agent. Washikala trotted past as if afraid he’d burst into flames if the sleeve of his coat so much as brushed Tom. Alicia walked by his side. “So you come at last to the heart of the matter,” she said.

“Who am I here to see?”

“Two most promising products,” Dr. Washikala said. “ Moto. The name is self-explanatory: it means fire in Lingala. You should exercise caution. He doesn’t have perfect control of his abilities yet. The second we call Martial Eagle. For our largest African eagle. She’s”-he glanced nervously at Alicia-“she’s a joker-ace, really. She has the head and wings of the eagle; the rest is a normal if undernourished eleven-year-old female.”

“And why did you accept her?” Alicia sounded as if she was on the verge of being disappointed.

“Oh, Eldest Sister,” the doctor squeaked. “We thought-surely she can serve the Revolution. She flies.” He looked imploringly at Tom with liquid-brown eyes.

“Could she carry a kid?” Tom asked.

“Oh, yes. I-I’m sure of it.”

“We can use her. If that’s true.”

“Bon,” Alicia said, beaming. “The doctor guarantees it.” She gave the doctor a meaningful look. Before she could continue a sound reached their ears. Tom recognized the snarl of distant machine-gun fire. Neither the sturdy brick walls nor the bulk of a ridge sufficed to mute the unmistakable sound.

Tom narrowed eyes at Alicia. “You must understand, Tom,” she said. “We get so many black queens and jokers.”

“And of course there are the deuces,” said Dr. Washikala. He seemed eager to establish his bona fides as a hard-ass after the near faux pas with Martial Eagle.

“What do you think?” Alicia said, sounding half worried and half, strangely, sympathetic.

“I think,” Tom said, “you got to break eggs to make omelets. Now, show me to my two new recruits.”