Fiction River: Unnatural Worlds (17 page)

One thing I did know, the Titans’ major city
existed in the same location as Las Vegas, only many, many eons in
the future. So their coming back to this time would be a pretty
large problem that I doubted anyone wanted to face.

“Are all your sisters looking for a key?”
Stan asked.

“Sure,” Sherri said. “It’s sort of a hobby
for all four of us. We’re giving the keys to Mom for safekeeping
when we find them. We have no intention of bringing them together,
especially after seeing the wonderful city the Titans are living
in.”

“And you four have only found the one key,
right?” I asked, trying not to be too stunned at Lady Luck having
four daughters. I really, really, really needed to talk with
someone about who had been married to whom and who was a child of
whom.

“Just the key that you four helped my sister
return with from Elysium,” Sherri said, “although I feel that if I
could find the lost riddle, I would be able to retrieve the second
one.”

Her bright smile had now vanished and she was
clearly thinking about her problem. And I had zero idea what she
was talking about when she said a “lost riddle” and my glowering
team was sure no help at the moment.

“How can a riddle be lost?” I asked, slightly
fearful I was walking into some trap.

Sherri just shrugged. “Lost in time, maybe.
Never written down. Lots of ways a riddle can be lost.”

“So it’s just called “The Lost Riddle?” I
asked.

She nodded.

Now all four of us were just looking at her
as she headed back down the bar to the right to serve drinks to
another waitress who had arrived at the station there.

“Someone want to tell me what’s going on?” I
asked.

“I think she’s finally lost it,” Screamer
said, shaking his head sadly.

“She’s fantastically beautiful,” Patty said.
“More than I even remember.”

I stared at my girlfriend for a moment,
realizing she hadn’t been mad at Sherri, she had just been in some
sort of fan-girl state with her.

“She’s serious, all right,” Stan said. “And
she’s as sharp as she ever was, trust me.”

“So why do you hate her so much?” I asked
Stan.

He laughed, softly, something I rarely heard
him do. “I don’t hate her. My wife, her sister, thought I fell in
love with Sherri and caused all sorts of problems that led to me
leaving Helen.”

“You didn’t?” I asked. “Fall in love with
Sherri, that is?”

Again Stan just laughed. “I don’t even really
know her, to be honest. And Sherri’s been married to Screamer here
for a very long time.”

“Over two hundred years,” Screamer said.

“And she left you?” I asked.

“No, I left her,” he said. “When I acquired
this new power and could read all her thoughts every time I touched
her. Staying together wasn’t fair to either of us until we figured
out how to deal with it all. We never got a divorce. It’s been ten
years now.”

“So you are still married?” Patty asked,
looking at Screamer, who nodded.

“Oh,” was all I could say again. I had been
working with this team now for some time and seen the inside of
Screamer’s mind more than I wanted to think about, and he had kept
all this blocked from me. Clearly he had gotten pretty good at
walling off parts of his own thoughts.

“She’s so beautiful,” Patty said, almost
sighing. “We have to help her.”

Now both Stan and I were shaking our heads at
my girlfriend. Everything was screwy about this assignment and it
was making me slightly annoyed. No one was in danger, I wasn’t
saving anyone, not even a dog, and I wasn’t playing in a poker
tournament. So far all I could see was a complete waste of a
perfectly good evening.

Sherri again came back to a place in front of
us. “Will you help me?”

“A couple more questions,” I said. “So you
need this riddle to find the Janus key?”

She shook her head. “I know where the key is
at.”

“So why do you need the lost riddle?” I
asked, almost afraid of the answer.

“Stan,” Sherri said, smiling at my boss, “If
you wouldn’t mind taking us all out of time for a moment, I’ll
answer Poker Boy’s question.”

He shrugged and an instant later the sounds
of the casino stopped around us. And so did everyone and everything
else.

I loved being able to step between an instant
of time. One of my abilities was also to take myself and others out
of the natural time flow. But Stan was a ton better at it and
wouldn’t have to strain to hold this for hours.

Sherri pointed to a place in the air behind
her and an image like a three-dimensional movie appeared.

“That’s new,” Screamer said, looking
puzzled.

“Learned it from you, actually,” Sherri said,
smiling at her husband. “It’s a projection from my mind.”

“I can’t do that,” Screamer said.

Sherri looked almost longingly at her
husband. “We both have our new powers. I would love to talk
later.”

I was starting to get the clear understanding
that she wasn’t a god, but only a superhero like three of us at the
bar. And she was learning new superpowers as she went along just as
all superheroes did.

She turned back to the image she was
projecting in the air as everyone in the casino remained frozen in
their instant of time around us.

The image showed what looked like an old
ghost town from a height of about a thousand feet in the air.

“Virginia City,” Sherrie said. “South and
slightly east of here.”

The view came down and focused on some old
buildings, then flew inside like a bird going through a wall.
“Yellow Jacket Mine,” she said. “Part of what most people think of
as the Comstock Lode.”

The traveling view of the image floating in
the air went straight down, under some water and finally came into
a flooded huge cave.

Sherri went on narrating the tour that was
coming from her own mind. “The Yellow Jacket Mine broke into this
huge cave and couldn’t contain the flooding and had to retreat. No
pump could ever clear it. It’s over three thousand feet under
Virginia City and the water temperature is over one hundred and
fifty degrees.”

At the bottom of the huge cave was a stone
stand with a clear glass bubble covering it and protecting what
looked like a very old key from the water.

“That’s the second Janus key,” Sherri said,
her voice wispy.

“Why couldn’t these stupid keys ever be
hidden above ground?” I asked, shaking my head. My warning senses
were going off big time just looking at that key so far down
underground and underwater.

“So why the lost riddle?” Patty asked, the
spell of Sherri’s beauty clearly now broken by the little tour
underground.

The image of the submerged cave vanished and
Sherri just shrugged. “Not a clue what the riddle does,” she said.
“Or even what it is or why it’s lost. I just know it’s attached to
this key in some fashion. And we don’t dare touch the key until we
understand what the riddle is all about.”

I just shook my head. “This is a very strange
hobby you and your sisters have.”

Sherri laughed high and light. “Don’t you
think I know that? But after you guys helped my sister get the
first one, Mom thinks it would be a good idea to get all four of
them and get them really protected. So she’s trying to help
us.”

I didn’t want to say that having a key three
thousand feet underground in one-hundred-and-sixty degree water
wasn’t already pretty protected, but what did I know? Lady Luck
thought this was important for some reason. And she was Stan’s boss
and Stan was my boss, so by that reasoning I thought this important
as well.

Stan let us slip back into the normal stream
of time and the noise from the restaurant and distant casino
slammed back into use like a tidal wave. And the wonderful smells
from the restaurant came back as well, making my stomach rumble
again.

“Okay,” I said, trying to grab onto something
that made sense in all this. “Tell me when I get this wrong.”

Stan and Patty nodded and Sherri and Screamer
just sort of looked at each other.

I ignored them and started trying to check
off what I knew. “The four keys each have one side of the face of
Janus on them. Right?”

Sherri and Stan both nodded.

“Apart they keep the doors locked, the Titans
in the future, and the war between the Gods and the Titans
stopped,” Sherri said.

“Got that,” I said. “And no one wants to
start that war again.”

“Exactly,” Stan said.

“Does this Janus still exist?”

“No,” Sherri and Stan said at the same time.
They clearly did not like that question and I made a note to ask
what happened to him at a later date.

“So why would anyone associate a riddle with
a key?” I asked. “And then lose all record of the riddle? I’ve only
been around this superhero and god world for a short ten or so
years and I’ve come to realize that all you folks have very long
memories.”

“Good question,” Stan said. “But the battle
between the Gods and the Titans was long before any of our times.
Long before Atlantis.”

I nodded to that. I still have never asked
exactly how many years all this stretched back. Another question
for another time in my history lesson.

I leaned back and just stared up at the back
bar. No one else said a word and Sherri moved back down the bar to
serve another waitress with a tray full of dirty glasses and a long
order of fresh drinks.

I tried to ignore my rumbling stomach and my
desire for a cinnamon roll and just think.

On the back bar were a number of bottles of
Jack Daniels, all with different colors and added names on the
labels.

There were other bottles of the same brand,
but different types back there as well. I stared at that for a
moment and then it suddenly hit me what we were dealing with.

Being able to put things that made no sense
together to make sense was one of my super powers, it seemed, and
if I was right, I had just done it again.

“Stan, could you call Laverne to come and
help us?”

He nodded and a moment later, without him
moving, Lady Luck appeared, taking the empty stool to my right.

In my fondest dreams as a poker player, it
never would have occurred to me that I would be sitting at a bar
with Lady Luck herself.

Sherri finished the orders and came down the
bar as her mother appeared.

“You want your usual, Mom?” she asked,
smiling. Clearly the two of them had a good relationship.

“Later, honey,” Lady Luck said. “First I want
to hear what Poker Boy has to say about all this.”

For the first time in a long time I wished I
actually drank. I had a hunch I could use one right now. I took a
deep breath and turned toward one of the most powerful gods that
existed and asked the question I needed to ask.

“Do the keys have names besides one, two,
three, and four?”

Lady Luck looked at me for a moment, then
laughed and said, “I don’t know, but I know who to ask.”

She vanished.

I decided I could breathe again. It felt
good.

I took a sip out of my Virgin Bloody Mary as
Patty touched my leg and sent a calming sense through me.

“You think the key might have a name?” Sherri
asked, clearly puzzled.

Stan just smiled and Screamer sort of smiled.
They had seen me ask these kind of questions before that got right
to the heart of a problem.

“Just an idea,” I said.

It seemed like forever, but then suddenly
Lady Luck was again sitting at the bar beside me.

And she was laughing.

“The one you all retrieved from the Titan’s
city under Vegas was called
Mystery
. The two that have not
been found yet are called
Enigma
and
Dilemma
.”

Then Lady Luck smiled at Sherri. “The one you
found, dear daughter, is called
Riddle
.”

Sherri clapped her hands together and did a
little dance as she laughed and smiled. “It’s not protected!”

“I’ll get it,” Lady Luck said, smiling at the
joy her daughter felt.

She vanished and then a moment later
reappeared holding the key that had been under three thousand feet
of Earth and very hot water. She wasn’t wet at all.

She started to hand the key to her daughter
who held her hands up. “I don’t want to touch it. Just get it safe
and sound.”

“I will,” Lady Luck said.

Then she turned to me. “Once again, Poker
Boy, thank you. And to your team as well for taking the time to
help with this.”

It never got old having Lady Luck thank me
for helping her.

Never.

Then Lady Luck looked down the bar at
Screamer and smiled. “Talk to your wife. If you two got back
together, she’d make a great addition to this team.”

“Mom!” Sherri said, but Lady Luck was already
gone.

For the first time Stan really laughed. And
hard. And that also was a rare thing as well for the God of
Poker.

“Great seeing you again, Sherri,” Stan said.
“And listen to your mother. We could use you.” Then he
vanished.

Sherri actually blushed.

Patty smiled at Sherri and then at Screamer
and touched my leg. “Come on, I’m dressed up and I think I need to
do some dancing.”

“Dancing?” I asked, looking at her. In all
our time together she had never told me she liked to dance.
Ever.

She winked at me and squeezed my leg just a
little higher and I got the message. “Oh!
Dancing
.”

A moment later we were in the living room of
her apartment in Las Vegas, leaving Sherri and her husband alone in
a crowded casino in Reno.

“Wasn’t she beautiful?” Patty asked as she
headed for her bedroom.

“Sherri?” I asked. “She was all right, but
not as beautiful as you by a long ways.”

“You sure know how to say the exact right
things,” Patty said.