Mollie shrugged and disappeared.
The sharp, painful sensation that was engulfing her hand was now in both of her feet as well, but she didn’t look down again. She locked her eyes on Centigrade’s. He was whispering something, and though he was looking straight at her, he didn’t seem to see her, seemed to be, instead, looking through her. The sensation crept up to her knees. She tried to step away, but couldn’t move. He’s going to kill me, she thought. They’re supposed to try to not do that.
She thought of the gunshots and lightning bolts and the terrible blows she’d seen landing on the Infamous Black Tongue. I wonder where Joann Jefferson is, she thought. I wonder if she knows what’s really going on. And then she pushed again, harder this time.
Centigrade opened his mouth, moved his lips like he was trying to speak, but Mathilde knew there was no moisture in his throat now. The painful sensation retreated from her knees. She could feel water streaming down her legs.
The two of them stood, nearly motionless, holding hands, staring at each other.
Then Centigrade held up his other hand. A dagger of ice extended from his fingers. He reached back, preparing to strike.
And Mathilde, terrified and saddened and awfully, awfully thrilled, pushed again.
Centigrade’s features grayed. For the barest moment, he looked like a perfectly mimetic sculpture of himself done in volcanic rock. Then the pillar of ash that she had made of his body collapsed and the dagger of ice fell to the floor, shattering into a thousand shards.
Mathilde found the bicycle she’d ridden up from the main gate still in a rack next to the front door. Making her way through the greenhouse and the mansion had been a trial because the power was out and the sky was still dark and cloudy.
The storm had mostly passed, but fallen trees and the battered remnants of shrubs and bushes told the tale of how fierce it had been. In the distance, smoke was rising from a burning outbuilding. No one was in sight.
She tried her radio again. “This is Mathilde. Is anyone there? Theodorus? Cliff?”
No answer.
She mounted the bicycle and started coasting through puddles of standing water, steering around debris. It was a long way to the gate. She came upon the two armored personnel carriers Cliff’s people had stopped. They were abandoned. There were a few bodies strewn on the ground around them. She was about to check them when she heard a grunting noise from the other side of one of the vehicles.
Malachi was sitting in a widening pool of his own blood, back to a running board. His eyes were glazed, but he clearly saw her, because he made the effort to wave his hand.
Mathilde rushed to his side, simultaneously shouting into her radio, “Mollie! Mollie, come to the front gate right now, we’ve got to get Malachi to a hospital!”
“No use,” said Malachi, coughing. “Some kind of electronics dampening going on. Prevented…” He coughed up more blood. “Prevented me from doing much good.”
“They left you here?” Mathilde demanded, aghast. She unbuttoned his coat jacket, his vest, his shirt, lifted his undershirt. God, why did the man wear so many clothes, where was all the blood coming from, how could she staunch it?
“Sent them away,” said Malachi. “Tesseract’s allegiance was always … to me. She sent the nearest government agents outside the grounds … took Theodorus and the others to the final redoubt.”
The sounds of gunfire came from the direction of the Kincaid house. Mathilde ignored it.
“What’s the final redoubt? The Moon?” Her probing fingers came across something sharp and Malachi gasped. It was, she realized, a jagged, protruding rib.
“Not yet. They’re waiting … waiting for you.” Malachi closed his eyes and took in a shallow, ragged breath.
“Malachi!” Mathilde shouted. Then, because it seemed right after all these years, “Father! Hang on! I’m going to find a car!”
“No,” he said. “Wouldn’t work … anyway. Electronics, remember?”
“Can’t you do something about that?” she pleaded.
“No…” More coughing, more blood. “Whatever or whoever is dampening signals … shut me down … completely.”
“There has to be something I can do.”
He took her bloodstained hand in his own. “There is so much you can do,” he said. “But not for me.”
And then he died.
A portal opened a few minutes later and Troll stepped through. He had a large doglike creature tucked under one arm.
He dropped the dog and fell to his knees, taking in huge gulps of air. Blood trickled from wounds here and there on his torso and arms, and from one on his scalp.
Mathilde didn’t say anything. She looked around for Mollie, but the woman was nowhere to be seen. “Mathilde,” Troll said eventually. “Where is everyone? I was fighting all these bastards at the Kincaid place and suddenly they doubled in number, started popping in from nowhere.” He stopped, saw that she wasn’t looking at him. Saw what she was looking at. “Oh, Mathilde, oh, no. I’m so sorry. What happened? What was he doing out here?”
She took in a shuddering breath of her own. “He was trying to save the fucking Moon,” she said. Then, standing, “Where’s Mollie?”
Troll shook his head. “Haven’t seen her.”
“Then how?” Mathilde gestured toward where Troll had stepped out from the air a moment before.
“Oh! That was this guy!” He pointed at the not-quite-a-dog. “He’s a teleporter, too. He was with the feds, but I think he wants to come with us.”
Then Troll’s head snapped back, the rear of his skull exploding outward in a cloud of blood and brain. He didn’t shout or scream or react in any way, just fell to the ground.
“Right through the eye!” The drawl came from a grizzled man in hunting fatigues holding a smoking rifle, rounding the end of the APC. “That son of a bitch wasn’t bulletproof after all!”
Mathilde held the back of her hand to her mouth, fighting the urge to vomit.
“And look here! Another one. Only this one’s a lot nicer to look at.”
The dog growled.
“Blood! There you are, brother! I was wondering what happened to you. The way you’ve been acting lately I thought you might have taken a mind to run off on your own. Can’t have that, now, can we?”
The man leaned his rifle against the vehicle. He shrugged off his jacket. “Our new buddies in SCARE will be along in a few minutes, I’m guessing. But a few minutes should be enough.” He put his hand on the APC, grinned a brown grin.
Mathilde put her hand on the APC, too.
“Ow!” the man said, jerking his hand back. “Why’s this thing so fucking hot?” Then he saw that Mathilde was walking toward him and he grinned again. “Well, ain’t this something? You ready for old Buck?”
And she said, “Yes,” and she burned him to his bones.
The dog—she guessed she should think of him as a man—kept following her as she walked back toward the main house. She didn’t know why. But then, she didn’t know why she had an impulse to go back to the house, either. Everyone was gone. Or dead.
Then a shimmering gateway the size of a garage door opened, and an orange Duesenberg limousine rolled through. The passenger side door opened and Mollie Steunenberg called to her from the driver’s seat. “Get in. We’re all going to the Moon.”
“I’ve always wanted to drive this car,” said Mollie.
They were speeding along a lane at the rear of the estate. Mollie was a terrifying driver.
“Where did you get it? Wait, never mind. Where are we going?” Mathilde had briefly wondered as well how the Duesey was working before she realized that, of course, it had no electronic parts.
“The pits,” said Mollie, amiably answering her question.
Mathilde remembered Theodorus referencing these earlier, during the attack. She wondered if they were the “final redoubt” Malachi had mentioned toward the end.
“You knew about those?”
“Not until a li
ttle while ago. I don’t think any of the others knew about them, either. Except the boss, of course.”
“Of course,” said Mathilde. Just Theodorus. Just him and Malachi.
Mollie slammed on the brakes. The dog, Blood, slid off one of the rear seats onto the floor.
She turned off the ignition, and they all got out. There was nothing to see but a copse of poplars. Mollie jingled the car keys in her hands, then hurled them into the distance.
“Why did you do that?” Mathilde asked.
“Figure it’ll at least cause a mild annoyance to whoever’s coming to clean all this up,” said Mollie. “Mild annoyance is about all I’ve got left in me. It’s been a tough day.”
“You teleported seven hundred people to the Moon,” Mathilde said, just now realizing the scope of that. “In what, an hour?”
“Not to mention all the giant snails. I hope those things aren’t poisonous. Theodorus made me use the cisterns for them.”
“Is he up there now?”
“No, he’s, well, he’s down there.” Mollie pointed. They’d come to a utility shed with its door open. The interior was lit with what must have been a battery-operated fixture mounted just inside. The only feature was a steep ramp descending into the darkness. “Careful here, whatever that stuff coating the ramp is, it’s slick.”
“Witherslime,” said Mathilde. She shook her head, and started down to learn one more of Theodorus’s secrets.
As secret underground facilities designed for the breeding and raising of giant snails went, the pits were actually quite nice. He should call them something different, thought Mathilde, walking into a well-appointed room decorated in French modern. Not that it would make any difference. They would never be used again.
Nothing at the House Secure would be, probably, at least not by them.
Theodorus was talking on his headset when she and Mollie joined him, Clifford Bell, and Marcus Morgan. The latter two both looked much the worse for wear. “Yes, well, we’ll just have to divert water from the other bases for now,” Theodorus was saying. He saw her then, and added, “Look, I’ll be there in a few minutes. We’ll discuss this then.”
“So this is it?” Mathilde asked.
“My friend among the government aces has some more information for us. This wasn’t the attack we’ve been fearing,” said Theodorus.
Mathilde thought of the wreckage of the estate. She thought of a man turning to ash. “What are you talking about?” she asked.
“My source tells me that she’s just learned this was a, how did she put it? A ‘softening up.’ There’s an armored column of regular Army on its way here right now. A flight of helicopters. Special operations troops. The SCARE aces were just supposed to take out the more powerful among us.”
“And it didn’t work,” said Marcus.
“It worked perfectly,” said Mathilde. “Troll is dead. My father is dead. The House Secure has fallen. All we can do now is flee.”
“And leave them … well, everything,” said Theodorus.
Mathilde laughed without humor. “Did you hear what I just said? Malachi is dead and you’re, what, worried about your plants? Besides, Theodorus, for all intents and purposes you own the Moon. They’re hardly taking everything from you.”
“My home,” he insisted, rushing past any mention of Malachi. “And this is more troubling, all of the equipment we’re being forced to abandon. All of our computers. All those records.”
Mathilde thought about that. She thought of one man turning to ash. She thought of another burning to cinders. Troubling, yes.
“Are we sure that the estate is clear? We got everyone out?” Theodorus was asking Mollie, who was paying no attention. Clifford Bell nudged her.
“What? Oh! No, not at all. A bunch of ’em ran.” She went back to considering her fingernails.
“We can’t leave anyone behind,” said Theodorus.
Mathilde remembered something that Malachi had said, back at the very beginning. She repeated him. “You’ll never save them all,” she said.
Theodorus heard something in her voice. He looked closely at her. He said, “I know what happened. You had to do it. You had to save yourself. And Malachi had to do what he did, too.”
Mathilde shook her head. “I had to do it,” she said. “I had to save you.” Then she said, “Okay. Okay. Cliff, Mollie can port you back to Charleston, or to wherever you and your husband are going underground. But first, can you, you know, amp me up a little?”
Cliff said, “You’ve never asked me that before. Why now?”
“Because I’m in a hurry,” she said.
“But we’re leaving now,” said Theodorus. “We’re leaving for the Moon.”
She smiled at him, full of sorrow.
He saw her. He knew. He said, “Oh.”
All these years, she thought. All that work. All those lies. And now I don’t want to go. I can’t go.
“I’ll arrange for Oliver to be safe,” said Theodorus. “You’ll be safe, too, when you find him.”
Cliff nodded at her. Mollie waved impossible portals into existence, and then they were all gone. Mathilde ran through the night, moving from building to building, then from room to room of the main house, through the command centers and the greenhouses; she ran impossibly fast.
Behind her, the fires she left burned impossibly hot.
The Moon Maid
PART VIII
2020
AARTI STOOD ATOP MONS Piton, gazing down. She had reached the amazing age of ninety-two.
She was so tired. Tired of the body that had survived almost a century on the Earth; Aarti had hated that body, tolerated it, and even managed to love it for a little while. Now it was simply wearing out.
Let these jokers have the Moon—with her last breaths, she wanted something more. Her gaze lifted up, to where red Mars hung in the sky above.
What would happen, if Aarti were walking another world when her decrepit, decaying body finally gave up its struggle? Might she dream of continuing there, a ghost of a girl, discovering the secrets of an ancient world? What strange creatures might she paint there, well suited to the red sands of Mars? What fabulous abode might she build, if allowed to remain?
Aarti intended to find out.
Journey’s End
by Walton Simons
IT MIGHT NOT HAVE been the first party on the Moon, but it was certainly the best, at least up to that point.
Dutton had designed his own living quarters, making them spacious, perhaps more than was needed. Still, at his age he could be forgiven for being a bit self-indulgent. There were so many people—people, not jokers anymore to his mind—that every room had multiple ongoing conversations. And laughter, more than he could remember hearing for quite some time. He’d made sure the liquor flowed freely, but not too freely. Dutton didn’t want anyone passed out when the big moment came.
He wandered into the bedroom, leaning only slightly on his cane. Due to the lower gravity, it was more an affectation than a necessity at this point. He hadn’t really finished decorating the place, or getting things put away, but it already felt like home.
IBT, the Infamous Black Tongue, had curled his serpentine body at the foot of the bed. A slim, young blonde woman perched comfortably in his lap. Dutton knew IBT well enough, but had only met Olena a couple of times. She didn’t notice him looking about the room at the partyers. The pair were happily focused on each other. Dutton tried to remember when he’d felt about anyone the way they did about each other. If there had been a time, it was before he lost his face. His skull-like visage inspired only fear or revulsion. Up here maybe that could change. Dutton had a box of ornate masks stored away but was determined to keep it unopened.
Beastie Bester was steering his mother around the room, pointing out anything of even moderate interest. In spite of his efforts she seemed more inclined to revisit the bar.
A couple entered the room and seated themselves on the bed opposite Marcus and Olena. They appeared t
o know each other, but Dutton wasn’t sure who the older couple was. That was true of many of the jokers at his party. He’d outlived almost all of his contemporaries.
Dutton let out a soft sigh and entered the game room. It was really more of a poker room. Dutton loved the game. He could even stand losing a bit if the company was good. An accepting attitude toward losing was a new development for him, but ninety-plus years would mellow almost anyone a bit. There was a big-screen TV dominating the wall opposite the poker table and a nearby bar. The TV displayed a view of the lunar surface with a countdown in the lower right corner. It wouldn’t be long now.
Dutton had staked all the players to twenty-five grand in U.S. dollars, hoping everyone would come away feeling like a winner. Some more than others, of course. The game itself was a bit more raucous than what Dutton was used to. This was due largely to Drummer Boy, who was seated at the far end of the table. Dutton was surprised he’d decided to make the trip to the Moon, as he’d been quite popular with nats back home. He was undeniably an exuberant presence. He was down in his chips pretty dramatically, possibly because his five arms (the sixth was just a stump) made for more tells, or maybe because he just wasn’t a serious poker player. The former SCARE agent Moon, appropriately enough, was seated at the opposite end of the table. Her pile of chips had grown more than a bit since the game began.
After watching a hand, Dutton moved back into the main room and settled into the chair that had been his favorite back in Jokertown. Dutton wasn’t sure if it was empty out of deference to him, or if he was just lucky to find it unoccupied. He snagged one of the few remaining salmon hors d’oeuvres on a nearby tray and ate it slowly and with considerable satisfaction. He closed his eyes to savor the last morsel. When he opened them again, Mollie was there.
Mollie’s gaze darted about the room. She looked as if this was the last place she wanted to be. In fairness, whenever Dutton had been around her Mollie seemed uncomfortable. A scar on her face was the only outward indication of all the terrible things she’d seen and done. In spite of the scar, Dutton envied the youth of Mollie’s skin. “Nobody here really likes me, do they?” she asked quietly.
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