Too Like the Lightning (66 page)

The wine fell as both MASON's hands, black-sleeved and gray, seized me by the rough weave of my habit and hurled me to the floor. “Get out of my sight.”

“What? Caesar, I—”

“Never speak Apollo's words again. Get out!”

 

C
HAPTER THE
THIRTY-FIRST

Dominant Predator

“Mycroft!” Hear now Bridger's sobbing scream rise through the dawn-streaked flower trench. “Where are you, Mycroft? Mycroft!” He had been reduced to old clothes, a green striped wrap which was almost more holes than fabric, and socks, no shoes, their threadbare toes ripping open as grass and rough dirt scraped his rushing feet.

I freely confess, reader, that this chapter is half imagination, for I was still a prisoner at Madame's.

“Bridger! Slow down there, kiddo. What's wrong?”

It was a stranger's voice, and the boy turned, brandishing a plastic ray-gun. “Keep away!”

“Whoa!” The stranger put his hands up as he stepped from the cover of the trash mine, chuckling, perhaps, at Boo who bristled at Bridger's side, his sweet blue face not designed to bare teeth. “Mycroft sent me.”

“Do you know where Mycroft is?” the boy half-shrieked.

“Nope. I'm looking for them too, but their tracker's been off all day.”

“Turn around, put your hands up on the wall!” Bridger braced the toy weapon well in both hands—do you think the Major would not have taught him that?

“If I turn around you won't be able to see me.”

It was the truth, for a Utopian Coat enveloped the stranger in invisibility. Overlong sleeves swallowed his fingers, a hood his hair, so only his face and hints of legs and torso showed through the coat's open front, a sliver of a person, like an otherworldly voyager halfway out of the rift.

The boy cocked his head. “Are you dressed as Apollo Mojave?”

The smiling stranger pushed the vizor up away from his eyes and onto his gold-blond wig. “Yes, I am. Mycroft showed you pictures of Apollo, didn't they?”

“Mm-hm.”

A fanged smile. “I'm a ghost, you see. It's easiest if I look like someone it's not surprising to see a ghost of.” The stranger's eyes measured the boy's limbs, how long his stride, how fast one would have to sprint to catch him; even a common housecat toying with a mouse calculates how far it can let its plaything limp and still keep escape impossible.

“Who are you?” Bridger asked.

“I'm Mycroft's oldest and most trusted friend.” The stranger slid down into a crouch, offering his hand for Boo to sniff. “Mycroft asked me to take care of you if things got bad.”

“What's your name?”

Saladin offered as kind a smile as his snake-smooth face can muster. “Only Mycroft gets to know my name. And you can't tell anybody about me, okay, Bridger? I'm a secret.” He held a finger to his lips. “Just like you.”

The tension in Bridger's stance began to ease as he saw Boo wag, seduced by my scent on Saladin. “How come you don't have any eyebrows?” he asked.

Saladin laughed. “When I was a kid I was in a terrible accident and all my skin burned off. See, no hair, either.” He lifted the corner of his wig above the temple.

“That must've hurt!”

“Yes, yes it did, but Mycroft grew me new skin in the meatmaker and patched me up with that. I think they did a good job.” He traced the back of one hand with the other's fingers, following a seam between two patches, now only detectible to we who know that body perfectly.

“Was that the same accident that hurt Mycroft?”

“Yup, almost killed us both. Well, officially it did kill me.” Though he still played with the dog, Saladin's eyes were ranging the trench, the light and shadow, the texture of the walls, where best to climb, to hide, to trap. How do I know he did this, reader? My Saladin always surveys his surrounding thus, as wild dogs do, and soldiers learn again to do when civilization's rose-tinted daydream breaks.

Bridger frowned. “Couldn't you get new eyebrows and hair if you want? Doctors can do that.”

“I could, but hair has DNA in it that the police can find. I'd rather opt out.”

“Yeah, hair's hard.” The child's voice was soft after tears. “Mycroft makes me use special clumpy shampoo that's supposed to make my hair not shed except when I comb it.”

“And special soap that makes loose skin flakes dissolve, right? I use it too. Smells terrible, doesn't it?” As wild a thing as Saladin has never learned to make his chuckle friendly. “But look, I can have eyebrows if I want, see?” He lowered the vizor back over his eyes, and the projection filled in brows and lashes faithfully. Not his face. A different face, the cheek bones higher, skin a Northern European pale, the eyes like sky. He lifted it and lowered it again. “See? Eyebrows, no eyebrows, eyebrows, no eyebrows.” The game failed to coax a smile from the boy. “What happened, Bridger?” Saladin asked. “Why were you running just now?”

A fast sob made the ray-gun fall slack at last. “They killed Redder.”

“Who's Redder?”

“My friend.” Bridger hugged to himself the bag, old army green, which hung at his shoulder, and perhaps a strand of perfect doll's hair peeked from the flap. “They pulled Redder's guts out and strung them all around the cave.”

“Who did?”

“The person who's been watching me. They broke into my cave before and stole my backpack, and the No-No Box, and dropped a big bookshelf on Mommadoll, and now they came back and killed Redder!”

Bridger's shudder left him vulnerable, and Saladin pounced in an instant, wrapping the boy in a hug, and in that Utopian Coat, as thick and safe as when, in childhood, even the scariest closet monster was thwarted by the magic of the covers. “Hey, it's okay,” he soothed. “Relax. No one else can hurt you while I'm here.”

Sobs come quickly once it feels okay to cry. “They've … been … wa … tching me. I took my clothes off to take a shower and they stole them while I was inside. Aimer and Pointer and Nostand were in my pockets and they … they're gone and everybody's … scared and Mycroft's missing and I can't go to Thisbe be … because Thisbe's bash' is being scary.”

Bridger tried to break free of the hug enough to look up at Saladin, but the hug locked tight. Animals may hunt by speed, by trap, by disguise, by ambush, but name for me another besides mankind that hunts by trust. “Shhh. It's okay.” Saladin lifted the boy in his strong arms and started to carry him back along the trampled path to the cave. “Come, show me where your friend is.”

“No!” Bridger tried to wiggle free. “I can't go back there!”

Saladin's practiced fingers locked around the child. “They might still be alive, and need help.”

“They aren't.”

“You'd be amazed how long a body can stay alive, even after the most astounding things are done to it.”

Bridger shook his head. “Redder's not alive, they're imaginary.”

“Imaginary?”

The child's throat gave a plaintive squeak. “Redder's my imaginary friend, an old imaginary friend from years ago. They're still in there, and there's red guts all coming out and splattered all over the cave. I wanted to miracle it better but then Redder would be all real and then the bad guy could hurt them worse.” Bridger sobbed against Saladin's threadbare T-shirt. “That would be worse, right? Do you think it hurts worse if it happens when you're real?”

Saladin held the child awkwardly, inept at holding without hurting. “They killed your imaginary friend?”

“I want Mycroft. I want my friends back. I want all this to go away!”

Faithful Saladin let the child slip back to the ground, but took the boy's head between his hands, gently but firmly, as when one tests a fruit to see if it is ripe enough to pluck. “Do you want me to make it so they can't hurt you anymore? Do you want me to make everything go away?”

Imagine now, reader, that you are Providence. You have already decided that your Intervention, this miracle with which you have trespassed upon the ordered cosmos, will not die here at Saladin's hands, as I had asked. But how will you prevent it? How will you make my supreme predator ignore the tearful wishes of the one person in the world who matters to him? The answer depends on what kind of Providence you are. Are you the deterministic ricochet of pool balls on a table? If so, then you must already have another pool ball on its way: a bird to startle the hunter and make him let go, or a hole to trip him, dug by some rabbit now five generations dead. Perhaps you are instead a chess master, moving pieces on a board? Then you move a new piece into play; my queen threatens your king so you advance one of your own knights, Dominic perhaps, or Thisbe. Perhaps you are instead a master of puppets? The all-commanding author of the Great Scroll who has predestined every act of your creatures from infinity? If so, you can simply make Saladin choose not to kill, as you make every decision for every person, from creation to the end of days. Or are you perhaps that mildest form of Providence, a parent, who has reared your children carefully, teaching them the values you think will guide them best, different for each, in hopes you might thereafter trust them to make their own decisions as they explore your world? This last, hands-off image of Providence appeals to many, especially to those afraid to face a universe without a Father but unwilling to call themselves unfree; contemplate it longer, though, and you will find it no more liberating than the others, for such a universal Parent would make every one of us a set-set.

Providence had its king defend himself: “I wish you really were Apollo Mojave.” The child sniffled. “Apollo would be able to figure out what the bad guys want, and make me understand it, and then we could make a plan, and get Utopians to help.”

Will you believe me if I claim the predator's breath caught? That his hands shook? Tame humans are easy enough to surprise, but for a creature always on guard, watching his back, as paranoid as nature intended beasts to be, this was the first time in Saladin's life that he had let a person draw so close and only then sensed danger. I told you, reader, man is a beast that hunts by trust. A lion cub may lash out with claws it does not yet know it has, and so may Bridger. “That's right,” Saladin answered. “That's exactly what Apollo Mojave would do.”

“If I just keep running away, all that'll do is make more places I can't come back to. I have to make the bad guy stop, but I can't figure out how to make them stop until I know why they're doing it. What do they want? I don't understand strangers enough to figure out what they want. Do you?”

“Me?” Saladin shook his head. “I don't have much experience with other people.”

“They want me to come meet them, but I don't want to.”

“Who? The attacker?”

“They left a note, an address. But I don't want to go. I'm sure they'll do something awful. I know if I go maybe they'll tell me what they want, but there has to be another way. Some people are good at figuring out what people really want, even if they won't say. Apollo was, that's what Mycroft always says. That's what I need.”

This smile Saladin should only have for me. “Sorry, I can't turn into Apollo Mojave for you.”

“Do you want to?”

“What?”

Bridger dug his fingers into the contours of the coat. “Do you want to turn into Apollo Mojave? You'd be a lot less scary that way.”

What now, Providence? You have saved your king, how will you write yourself out of this little predicament? A stick with a rag for costume is a doll, and a human in a costume is one just as much. But if you wanted Apollo on the board you would not have let me take him in the first place.

“No, the last thing I want is for Mycroft to have to kill me, too. Come on.” Saladin took Bridger by the arm and started back toward the cave. “Show me the note, and the body. Human beings I can't read so well, but gore, there I'm fluent.”

“No!” Bridger tugged hard. “I don't want to go back there!”

What face would my Saladin have now? Disgust, I think, as when the golden prince Laurel Mardi passed out in his arms on the steps of our guillotine, and so napped through his final moments, learning nothing. “That's the thing about gore, Bridger, if you don't let yourself look at it then your imagination twists it in your mind and makes it into a kind of nightmare instead of letting you learn from it. You have to look at it, see what they did exactly, blood for blood, or you'll never understand it.”

“No! I want to forget!” The boy tried to break free, but Saladin hoisted him, and slung him kicking over his shoulder.

“What did you feel when you saw it?” Saladin asked. “Did you want revenge?”

“No!”

“You did, didn't you, just a little bit? You want to forget so you can pretend you're incapable of thoughts like that. Well, all human beings are capable of thoughts like that, kid, and you can act on them too if you want. It's up to you whether you do or not, but if you've had those thoughts you can't un-think them just by running away.”

“No! I don't want to! I don't want someone with my powers to think like that!”

Saladin paused, sensing again the danger, as birds and hounds stiffen well before the earthquake. “What are you, kid?”

“I don't know. Mycroft says I'm a miracle.”

Saladin set Bridger down once more, and peered into their open face. “You're thirteen, aren't you?”

“Yeah.”

“How long have you known Mycroft?”

“Years and years, since I was little.”

“And Mycroft raised you to be this soft? Mycroft Canner could've raised you to feast on corpses if they'd wanted to.”

Bridger's sobs made Saladin's invisible sleeves rustle, like those almost-present tremors in the corner of the eye which make the credulous tell tales of ghosts. “Mycroft says it's important for me to be a kid, because only a kid can grow up to be a human being. I of all people need to not be a monster.”