Inside Straight

by George R. R. Martin

  It was twenty minutes before those first few wasps were joined by others, and another half hour before enough of the small green bugs had gathered for Jonathan’s head to reform. His hair was plastered to his scalp with sweat and his eyes rolled back and forth, looking this way and that. When Klaus lifted the head up by the hair and set it atop the orange crate, Hive’s mouth opened and shut and opened again, but no sound escaped his lips. That came later, when enough bugs had assembled to make a throat, a set of vocal chords, and lungs. “Is he gone?” Jonathan wheezed at last. “What happened? Did you kill him?”

  “I cut him, but he fled.”

  “I told you Egypt was a bad idea.” The air was thick with wasps by then, crawling over one another and thrumming noisily as green chitin turned into clammy white flesh. “We could get killed, I said, remember?” His genitals took shape, small and shriveled. Arms and legs began to form. Thighs and calves, ankles and elbows, little pink toes with ugly yellow nails. His hands came last. To Klaus they looked no worse for having been severed, but Jonathan kept flexing his fingers and feeling his wrists, pinching and squeezing as if searching for a pulse. “That hurt,” he said. “That really hurt. Some of me died. Some bugs.”

  “Ja.” Klaus found himself staring. “Are those…are those your same hands? Or did you make new hands from different bugs?”

  “How would I know?” Jonathan’s voice grew shrill. “New bugs, old bugs…they’re bugs. Do you think they have assigned places, like for a fire drill? Maybe I should name them all and take attendance, so I’ll know which ones are tardy.” He found his undershorts and pulled them on, one leg at a time. “He tried to cut my head off,” he said, snatching up one sock. “Why me? What did I ever do to him? What if he comes back?”

  “He will not come back. I frightened him away when I cut his sword in half.” Klaus nudged the severed scimitar. “See how clean and sharp the cut is? His blade is no match for mine.”

  Bugsy flinched away from it. “What if he gets another sword? What if he comes back while we’re sleeping?” He stood on one leg and yanked his sock on. “Where’s the other sock? Did he take it? Maybe that’s how he finds people, you know, like a dog. Bahir, that was Bahir, do you know how many men he’s killed? He can go anywhere. There’s no keeping him out. He killed a man in Paris, broad daylight, a Syrian general who’d defected to the West, he was eating a croissant on the Left Bank and suddenly this Bahir guy pops up behind him, removes his head, and takes it back to Damascus as a present for the Nur. It was in the news.”

  “In Germany, too.” It had happened while Klaus was still at Peenemünde. He remembered hearing Doktor Fuchs and Doktor Alpers arguing about whether such teleportation was truly instantaneous.

  “I have to get back to D.C.I think I left my stove on. Paper Lion, that’s all I wanted. No one ever tried to cut George Plimpton’s head off, I would have heard about it.” Jonathan snatched up a Curveball T-shirt and pulled it down over his head, but it was one of Klaus’s shirts and much too big for him—and anyway, he pulled it on backwards. HELP IS WHERE THE HEARTS ARE, declared the slogan drooping down across his spindly chest. “Why come after me? You don’t kill the press, it’s in the rules. Don’t they know the rules? Fortune’s the one with the beetle in his head, and you’re the hero with the big sword. So they come after the bug guy?”

  “You blog, too. You bear witness to the world.”

  “So?” Jonathan spied something. “Oh, good, my other sock.”

  “So I am thinking—maybe there is something coming that they do not want the world to witness, ja?”

  Jonathan looked up. His eyes got very big. “What’s the German for oh, shit?” he said. He dropped his sock.

  “Pack your things,” Klaus told him. “We are going to the temple. John must know of this. Him, and Sekhmet.”

  Above, the sun blazed in the blue sky, with not a cloud in sight. Below, its twin burned bright in the still waters of the long reflecting pool that ran down the center of the hidden courtyard. Yet even with two suns, somehow the yard was cool.

  In shady alcoves around its wide perimeter, the Living Gods of Egypt sat upon their thrones, listening as the argument raged on. Taweret was speaking now, the eldest of the gods resident at the New Temple, and their chief. The flesh-and-blood Taweret sat beneath a towering likeness of herself, attended by her retinue of nine dwarf priests clad in linen robes and gold collars. That flesh was gray and rubbery, her legs as thick as tree trunks, her head that of a hippopotamus, held up by a padded steel brace that kept the weight of it from snapping her neck. Jonathan had written that Taweret looked like a fugitive from Walt Disney’s Fantasia who had traded her pink tutu for a jeweled collar and a silken robe. Fortunately, the goddess did not read English.

  “What is she saying?” Klaus asked Sobek.

  “She says she is too old and fat to fight, that bricks and stones are not worth dying for.” Sobek took a pack of cigarettes out of his vest pocket, tapped one out, and lit it. “She was here with Kemel when he built the New Temple and it has been her home for many years, but Aswan has lovely temples, too. She has spent our treasure on a cruise boat to carry us to Aswan. The Pharaoh docks at Luxor now, but will be here on the morrow.”

  An uproar greeted that pronouncement. The child Little Isis sobbed and the grotesque four-headed Banebdjedet began to shout from all his mouths at once. Black Anubis leapt from his throne, brandishing a fist, and Red Anubis screamed at him. From the shadows at the foot of the pool came a rustle and a high-pitched ulullation as Serquet edged forward into the sunlight. She had the face of a beautiful young woman atop the body of a gigantic red scorpion, and the poison that dripped from her coiled tail smoked where it struck the paving stones. Everyone began to talk at once, until Horus slapped his wings together for silence, a sudden thunderclap so loud that it set the water in the pool to rippling.

  He is angry, Klaus knew. He had only to look at the god to see that. Horus began to rant at Taweret.

  “What flew up his butt?” asked Jonathan Hive.

  “Taweret,” answered Sobek. “Horus says that she is a frightened old woman whose cowardice shames us all. That it took Kemel nine years to build the temple, yet Taweret will abandon it in a moment. That we must fight for what is ours.” The crocodile god took a deep drag on his cigarette. “He is always angry, Horus. He was a pilot, a colonel in the Air Force, very famous, but now …” He exhaled a plume of foul black smoke. “I have read how John Fortune’s mother flies with—how do you say it, teke? Her wings are for steering. Horus has no teke. His wings are too big for him to fit into a cockpit, but too small to lift his weight. He cannot fly. How will he fight the army?”

  Jonathan began to cough. “Can you blow that smoke the other way?” he asked. For once, he had no wasps flitting about him.

  Instead Sobek blew a smoke ring. “I should have gone to America with Osiris,” he announced. “I speak the English, I could be a greeter. ‘Hello to you, good sir, and welcome to the Luxor. Good luck with all your gambling, madam. A woman, sir? Yes, I’ll send one to your room.’ Thoth married a showgirl. I could have done the same. I am much prettier than Thoth.” He turned to where John Fortune stood, listening in grim-faced silence. “John, my friend, take me back with you to this other Luxor, where King Elvis rules. I wish to meet him.”

  John did not reply, but Bugsy did. “The king is dead,” he said. “Just imposters left.”

  Sobek shrugged. “Ah, well. I am too old for showgirls.”

  The wrath of Horus finally ran its course. Taweret mumbled a reply in Arabic, looking as sour as a hippopotamus can look. Then some of the other gods stepped forward to say their piece, as Sobek translated. “Babi and the temple guard go where Taweret goes. Serquet means to stay and fight with Horus. She will summon a thousand of her small red sisters, she says. Bast says this is folly. She will go upriver on the Pharaoh. Min is not so sure. Unut believes we should send envoys to Cairo, to sue for peace.” He dropped the cigarette, crushed it out be
neath a heel.

  “My heart would stand with Horus,” Sekhmet said, in the voice of John Fortune, “but my head knows that Taweret is right. If we had the power of Ra—”

  “If we had eggs we could have bacon and eggs,” Jonathan muttered. “If we had bacon.”

  Klaus frowned. “What does that mean?”

  “It means we’re fucked.”

  Sobek nodded. “Aswan is our only hope.”

  “And if the army follows you to Aswan?” asked Klaus.

  It was Sekhmet who answered. “South of Aswan there is only Abu Simbel, and Abu Simbel is not large enough to support a tenth our numbers. If they will not let us be in Aswan, then the Nile must run red with blood.”

  “I saw that movie,” said Jonathan Hive. “Skip the blood, it doesn’t work. Go straight to the death of the firstborn, maybe you’ll get their attention.”

  So let it be written, thought Klaus, so let it be done. He had seen that movie too.

  Nightfall found the three of them in John Fortune’s rooms, overlooking the Nile. Jonathan was on his laptop once again, checking flight times out of Egypt. “Fuck,” he kept saying, “I am so dead. Aswan is the closest airport that’s still open, would you believe it? And all the flights connect through Cairo!”

  “Perhaps God does not wish for you to go,” said Klaus. “If you leave us, who will bear witness for the world?”

  “Wolf Blitzer. Katie Couric. Jon Stewart. Geraldo Rivera. Okay, maybe not Geraldo, he couldn’t bear witness to his dick if he found it in Al Capone’s vault.” The laptop gave a cheerful beep. Jonathan punched a key, read the screen, scowled. “Oh, look, another girl who wants to have John Fortune’s baby. This one’s pretty cute, at least. Why do I even bother with e-mail? All I get is spam, and girls sending naked pictures to the two of you. What am I, your pimp? No offense to your father, John. How come none of these girls ever send me naked pictures?”

  “You turn into bugs,” said John Fortune.

  “Ja,” said Klaus. “And you are very small, where women want men to be large.”

  “That’s cold,” said Jonathan, stung. “I’ll have you know that I’m perfectly normal, Nancy Heffermann told me so in junior high. Anyway, size doesn’t matter. I could show you sites—”

  “I was speaking of your heart.” Klaus thumped his chest with a closed fist. “Here.”

  “Leave him be,” said John Fortune. To Jonathan he said, “The Pharaoh will take you to Aswan. From there you can a charter a plane to Addis Ababa or Nairobi, and connect to a flight back to Europe. Take my Amex card, I won’t be needing it.”

  “The black card? That’s…dude, I don’t know what to say.”

  Klaus could not listen to any more. He turned for the door. “Lohengrin, wait,” he heard John say, but he was weary of waiting, tired of talk. Just now, he wanted quiet.

  He found it in the maze that was the New Temple, wandering through moonlit gardens and down long marble corridors. Red lamps glowed along the walls, mimicking the light of torches. Temple guards and acolytes watched him pass in silence, and once he turned a corner and came upon Anubis, attended by half a dozen lithe young priestesses. The light was too dim for Klaus to say whether it was Red Anubis or Black Anubis, but from the way the jackal-headed god stared at him it was plain he was not wanted, so he made an awkward bow and backed away.

  Finally he found himself in a cavernous hall beneath a towering sphinx. She had a lion’s body and a woman’s face, which reminded him of Sekhmet, but she had the wings of an eagle, too, and ram’s horns coiling from her temples. She was some god, he was certain, though Klaus did not know her name. He wondered if his own god would hear, if he said a prayer to this one. His family was Lutheran, though he had never been especially devout. Church was for Christmas and for Easter. “Father,” he said, in a soft voice, “hear me now. We are lost.”

  A pair of slender arms encircled him, and two soft hands covered his eyes. “And found,” a voice whispered by his ear.

  Klaus knew that touch, that spicy-sweet scent, that voice. “Lili?” he gasped, incredulous. “Can it be you?”

  “Underneath the lantern by the barrack gate, darling I remember the way you used to wait,” she sang. “My Lili of the lamplight, my own Lili Marlene.” The lyrics he had taught her. Her voice echoed in the hall, low, smoky, intoxicating.

  Klaus ripped her hands away, whirled, and took her in his arms. When he kissed her, her own mouth answered him, no less hungry. The dark red lipstick that she wore looked black in the gloom of the hall, but her eyes shone silver pale. Klaus kissed her on each eyelid and then again upon the mouth, picked her up bodily, whirled her in the air. Breathless with laughter, she demanded that he put her down, and Klaus obeyed. “You are here,” he said. “You are truly here, in Egypt. But…but how?”

  A half-smile brushed her lips, full of mischief. “Ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies.”

  “No. Truly. Lili, what could you be doing here?”

  Her face turned serious. “I could ask the same of you.”

  That confused him. “I came for John.”

  “And I came for you.”

  That made him happy. “I have dreamed of you. But how could you know where I was?”

  “The whole world knows where you are, my gallant knight. Every time your friend Hive uploads a new installment of his blog, a million people read about your latest exploits.”

  “A million?” Klaus had no idea. “So many?”

  “This week. By next week it will be ten million, if Hive is still alive. No one likes to find bugs crawling through their dirty laundry, least of all a caliph.”

  “The Caliph will be pleased, then. Jonathan is going home.”

  “Is he? Clever lad. He’ll live to blog again. You should go with him, Klaus. And take your friend John Fortune.”

  “John will not leave. The Living Gods are his people.”

  “Sekhmet’s people, you mean.” She took his hand. “Klaus, you are being used. The Living Gods are no more gods than the characters at Disney World. We’ve known for half a century that the wild card has a psychological component, so it is hardly surprising that here in the shadow of the pyramids some of those afflicted should mimic the forms of Isis, Osiris, and the rest, but to suggest that they are those gods…Kemel, the man who started this cult, belongs up there with Joseph Smith and L. Ron Hubbard. Take a closer look at your new friends, love. They are very good at accepting offerings, you’ll find, but not quite so apt when it comes to answering prayers.”

  This was a side of Lili that Klaus had not seen in America. There it had been all wine and kisses and laughter, and secrets whispered in the dark. Now she was confusing him. He was good at fighting with a sword, but not so good with words. “They are jokers, ja, I know, but the Muslims mean to kill them all—”

  “Abdul-Alim means to kill them all, yes. He is desperate to prove himself a strong man and end the whispers that say he is a weakling and a fool. Do not paint all Muslims with the bloody brush. The situation is more complex than that. The Nur was the most charismatic leader Islam has produced since Baybars, yet it took him twenty years to unite all of Arabia and restore the caliphate. Abdul the Idiot will destroy it all in twenty months. When he falls, the rule will pass to Siraj of Transjordan, who is a moderate, a secularist, and a pragmatist. Prince Siraj is a good man. Under him, the Arabs will have peace and prosperity, the West will get its oil, and the Living Gods and their poor deluded worshippers will be left to live in peace.”

  “Those that are not dead,” said Klaus.

  “Those that are not dead,” she agreed. “First Abdul-Alim must fall, however. And your presence here has only served to prop him up. Nothing unites a quarrelsome people faster than a threat from outside. Do you know what they are calling you on Al Jazeera? The Crusader.”

  “The crusaders were brave men,” Klaus said stoutly.

  “I do not have time to argue Bohemond of Antioch with you, my sweet. Just take my word, ‘crusader’ is
not a term of endearment in this part of the world. All you are doing is giving Abdul the visible enemy that he needs to stay in power. And now that Bahir has failed him, he means to send the Righteous Djinn against you.”

  Klaus crossed his arms against his chest. “I defeated Bahir. I can defeat this djinn as well. I do not fear any foe.”

  “Fear this one. Eighteen months ago, the Israeli ace Sharon Cream went missing. The strongest woman in the world, they say, yet when the Mossad found her body, it was gray and shriveled, like a fly after the spider has sucked the juice out of it. Her flesh turned to dust when they opened her for an autopsy.

  “The Djinn’s first public appearance came a few weeks later. He lifted up an armored car and threw it forty feet. That was enough to earn him a place in the Caliph’s guard, but not enough to excite much interest in the West. Strongmen are a dinar a dozen, and the Nur had other aces in his service.

  “He also had General Sayyid, the crippled giant, his right hand and closest friend. Even in his youth Sayyid had struggled to support his own weight, and twenty years ago an American ace shattered both his legs to pieces. He never walked again. No one was surprised when Sayyid finally passed away. The Nur gave him a lavish state funeral in Damascus, but his casket was kept sealed and he never lay in state. Among the mourners was the Righteous Djinn, grown to gigantic size. He stood thirty feet tall…and he had the strength to support that weight.

  “Since then, several of the Port Said aces have vanished under mysterious circumstances, the heroes who turned back the Israeli armies during the wars of 1948. Old now, and sickly, but still… Kopf is one who is missing. In 1948 an entire Israeli army broke and ran from him, seized by a terror no one could explain. And now we hear reports that two of the Caliph’s brothers died of fear after a visit from the Djinn.