George R.R. Martin - [Wild Cards 18] (53 page)

He went to the door and opened it. “Come on in,” he said to those waiting outside. He gestured sweepingly toward the band.
“Entrato. È tempo di celebrare …”

She had the face of a cat and her skin was blanketed with silken fur mottled like an orange tabby, but the body was very much a young woman’s. The name she’d given Michael was
Petit Chaton
—little kitten—and she was French, not Italian, having followed the band from Paris. She was beautiful, even in sleep. Michael could swear she was purring as she slept curled under the covers. He slid his several arms from under her, stroking her face gently with his top hand: yes, she
was
purring; he could feel the vibration in his fingers. He slipped out of bed and, naked, padded into the other room of the suite. The clock said five A.M. local time, but Michael’s internal
clock was blurred by travel and he wasn’t sleepy at all. He picked up the remote and turned on the television set, tapping the mute button, since he knew about a half-dozen words of Italian. The channel was still set to the news where he’d left it, and Egypt evidently remained the big story, as it had been for a few days now. He watched the images flickering by: jokers with heads that he vaguely recognized as those of Egyptian gods; jerky, confusing footage of a battle; bodies strewn across a sand-rippled landscape; and …

Curveball.…Kate.

Michael sat up abruptly, entirely awake now. The camera panned away and he cursed doubly, since fucking Captain Cruller was standing next to her, looking like he hadn’t slept in a week, the scarab that had possessed him sitting under the skin of his forehead like the world’s largest pimple. Fortune was talking to someone off-camera. Michael fumbled for the mute button, but he couldn’t hear Fortune over the Italian translation. The camera panned back again, showing Kate, Ana, Lohengrin, Holy Roller, Fat Chick, Hardhat, Toolbelt, Simoon, and Bugsy all clustered around Fortune, with desert in the background and what looked like a dam structure in the middle distance. Michael watched only Kate. She was solemn, her face dirty with a streak that might be dried blood along one cheek. She looked like she would collapse the moment the camera was turned off, as if it were only force of will keeping her upright. They all looked the same way. And Kate was standing right alongside Fortune. He saw her fingers link with his as the camera panned back.

Light shifted in the room as the program went to a split screen, with a commentator speaking on the left while on the right was promo footage of King Cobalt from
American Hero.
“… King Cobalt
morto.
…” the commentator intoned, and the last word jumped out at him.
Morto.
He could figure that one out. Michael suddenly knew why King Cobalt’s picture was on the screen.

He felt as if someone had punched him in the stomach.

The scene switched abruptly to a reporter interviewing a crocodile-headed ace who looked like he’d just stepped from
a mural in a pharaoh’s tomb, standing outside one of the restored temples.

Another shift, and a new reporter was placing a microphone in front of the fierce scowl of the Righteous Djinn, the former strong right arm of the Nur and now the primary weapon in the new Caliph’s arsenal. He glared into the camera as it focused on him, and Michael found himself scowling back.

“Fuck,” he said aloud.

“If you would like.” The answer came in French-accented English. Chaton was leaning sleepily against the doorway to the bedroom, illuminated by the shifting light of the television. Her belly was cloaked in soft orange, her tail curled lazily around a knee, the end of it flicking restlessly. “But you left our bed.”

“Can’t sleep,” Michael told her.

A shrug and a smile.
“Bon.
Then—”

“Not right now. Go back to sleep. I’ll be in later.”

Her gaze drifted over to the television. “The problems in Egypt? That is bothering you? You know them,
oui?
From
American Hero ?
”

He didn’t answer. With his middle left hand, he tapped at one of the tympanic membranes on his chest—a low, steady
dhoomp-dhoomp-dhoomp
that reverberated through the room and his body. The sound was somehow comforting. Chaton finally shrugged and padded back into the bedroom. A few minutes later he heard her purr-snore again.

“Michael, you’re a great guy,” Kate had said with her soft, quiet voice, not long after they’d met. “But I don’t think I’m ready for this.” He started to protest, but she cut him off with a smile. “Maybe when this whole thing is over. When we’re not so distracted.”

But it would never be over. The cameras would always be there for both of them, no matter where they were or what they did. And Fortune…goddamn John Fortune had somehow managed to say the right things that she wanted to hear. Kate saw Michael as the lightweight, the entertainer, the womanizer.

He’d slept with a dozen of the contestants and staff of
American Hero
after his stupid affair with Pop Tart, after it was apparent that Kate was never going to forgive him for the slip. It was stupid and he knew it, but if she thought of him as the slut rock star, then he’d play the role to the hilt. The tactic earned him the response it deserved. After he’d been “drafted” by the Diamonds, after Fat Chick had been voted off the show, after the show had revealed that he was sleeping with Tiffani, he’d tried again to patch things up with Kate and she had stared at him as if he were a stranger. When he’d persisted, things were suddenly flying at him very hard and very fast, and he was too busy ducking and shielding himself to make any reply at all. The other Hearts took judicious cover.

“You’re an ass, Michael!” Kate shouted in the midst of the barrage. “Go bang your drums!” A vase exploded on the wall nearest him, scattering water and petals and china shrapnel and leaving a hole he could have put his head through. “Go bang your groupies, too!” A pencil caught him on the ass, punching through his jeans and embedding itself point-first in his buttocks. He gave up trying to cover himself and retreated entirely. He heard glass hit the wall beside the door and shatter. “Stay away from me!” he heard her say as he fled.

Fortune was serious; he had a vision that included more than CDs and concerts and screaming fans, even if that vision was driven by the goddamned bug inside him. Fortune was also dangerous. Michael felt that instinctively; but Kate…Kate didn’t see him that way, just as he felt she couldn’t see beyond the persona of Drummer Boy.

Hell, sometimes he couldn’t do that either.

He’d been sent to the Discard Pile after the Blacks had lost their challenge, and that’s when his growing fury and discontent couldn’t be contained any longer. He lasted a single day there, listening to the stupid prattling, the ego games, the posturing all of them did for the cameras. It was stupid, all of it—fake drama and fake heroism. That same evening, he packed his clothes and headed for the door, only to find his way blocked by King Cobalt and Hardhat. Other discards watched the confrontation: Ana, standing in the middle of the huge living room with hands on hips, shook her head as if she’d been expecting something like this; Toad Man lurked in
the archway to the kitchen like a wart-ridden VW Beetle; Brave Hawk, his arms folded on his chest, gazed down stoically from the balcony above them; two five-foot-tall Matryoshkas huddled against the wall. And the cameras. Always the cameras.

“Where the hell you going, DB?” King Cobalt said.

“I’m outta here,” Michael told them. “Fuck this shit. I got music to play with people I actually like. I’m done with this crap.”

King Cobalt shook his masked head, the silver lightning bolts sewn there glistening. “Uh-uh. That ain’t how it works, and you know it.” Hardhat gestured, and a crosshatch of glowing steel beams barred the door of the mansion.

“You think that shit’s gonna stop me from leaving?” Michael told him. He flexed his six arms, looking at all of them. “It’s gonna fucking take most of you to do that, and it’s gonna be real. No stuntmen, no dummies, no breakaway furniture, no pulled punches. Real.” He wanted them to try, in that moment. He wanted to lose himself in blind rage. All it would have taken was a word or a movement. Hardhat glared. King Cobalt’s eyes glittered behind the blue mask, but then King Cobalt stepped to one side. He waved at Hardhat; the barrier at the door vanished.

“Michael,” Ana said as he stalked past them to the door and wrenched it open. “All you’re proving is that you’re still an ass. Kate—”

He hadn’t allowed her to finish the sentence. “Fuck Kate. Fuck you. Fuck John Fortune and Peregrine and this whole goddamn show.” He doubted that they would play those exit lines on the weekly wrap-up, and the slamming of the door behind him was entirely unsatisfactory. He took some small pleasure in ripping the locked steel gates of the driveway from their hinges and tossing them aside. He gave a sextuplet of fingers to the cameraman filming his exit.

As he walked down the street looking for a taxi and drumming irritated riffs on himself, his anger slowly cooled. He wondered what Kate would think when she heard, and how he could ever apologize, how he could ever apologize to any of them.

He would never be able to apologize to King Cobalt. Not now.

The news program had turned to another story now—floodwaters and boats rescuing stranded people in some local city—and he picked up the remote and channel-surfed, looking for Kate or Fortune or anything to do with the escalating crisis in Egypt. Nothing. He tapped on his chest with his free hands as he pressed the channel button with his lower left hand. Drumbeats surrounded him, fast and hard. He focused the sound through the open throats on his thick neck, tightening the muscles there and shaping the sound—he could feel it in his own body, though someone standing five feet to his side would have heard very little. But a person standing right in front of him, where he was staring …

The television set vibrated in its wooden cabinet.

Tighter yet. Tighter …

A jagged crack ran quickly across the screen, from lower left to upper right. The television hissed, sparked, and went dead. Michael tossed the remote across the room.

He rose from the couch and went into the bedroom. Without waking Chaton, he dressed quickly and packed a small duffel bag with underwear, jeans, T-shirts, and a bundle of his signature graphite drumsticks. He left the room and took the elevator down to the lobby. The night staff looked up with surprise at his appearance.
“Scusilo.
There’s a young lady in my room,” he told the woman at the desk as he placed a hundred-euro note conspicuously on the counter. “Make sure someone sends breakfast up to her around eleven-thirty. I need a cab, also, and I’d prefer that no one knows that I’ve gone out.” He tapped the note for emphasis. “Oh, and there’s a slight problem with the TV—just put it on my bill.”

The woman blinked. “Surely, Mr. Vogali,” she said, her English accented with the Roman lilt. “The concierge will help you with a cab.”

A half-hour later, he was at the airport.

The call on his cell phone came about 8:30—hours earlier than he’d been hoping it would come. It seemed that a hundred euros wasn’t as much of a tip as he’d thought, or maybe Grady just tipped better. At least it was Cohen and not one of the guys in the group; that would have been much harder. “Hey, KA,” Michael said as he flipped open the phone. “I figured you’d be calling eventually.”

“DB, where the hell are you and what the fuck are you doing?”

“I’m just taking a walk, Grady. Enjoying the scenery. Y’know, the Coliseum, the Parthenon …”

“The Parthenon’s in Athens.”

“It’s been a long walk.”

He heard an exasperated huff. “The desk clerk from the hotel called me. I’ve talked to the concierge and I’ve been to your room, DB. I’ve talked to the girl, I’ve seen what’s missing, and I’d appreciate it if you’d treat me like an adult. Now, where are you?”

“At the airport,” Michael told him. The private prop-jet was idling on the runway a hundred yards from him. He could feel the prop wash whipping his pants legs and whistling past the throats on his neck. From the open door of the plane, a hand gestured toward him.