“I know. I know. Look, I gotta do this, then I’ll be back, man. As soon as this is over. As soon as I possibly can. Things are gonna break now. They are. I’ll be back soon. I promise.”
He heard the sigh and an under-the-breath curse. “Yeah. You promise. I have the great DB’s word and everything. There’s something we can take to the goddamn bank.” He heard the click a moment later.
The brick of undigested pizza slammed hard against his rib cage.
“Ya think soon, huh?” he heard Rusty say sleepily.
“I don’t know. It was what he wanted to hear.” That was only the truth. Michael didn’t know; Rusty didn’t know; Lohengrin or Tinker or Kate or even Babs didn’t know. No one in this damned flotilla circling the Gulf for too many tedious, hot, and numbing weeks knew. Only Jayewardene and Fortune had the answer.
Michael understood the arguments, or thought he did: industries were shutting their doors throughout the industrialized countries; rapid inflation threatened the world economy; in the U.S. and other countries, cars were being abandoned in the streets; hundred of thousands couldn’t get to their jobs and thousands more were being laid off or fired every day; the entire transportation system was under immense stress; there was talk of a burgeoning worldwide depression. UN forces were being staged all around the Caliphate as a threat, because without oil’s economic lubrication, people were going to die. He’d heard the arguments.
He wanted to believe them.
“Who the hell can tell,” Michael said into the dimness of the room. His fingertips pattered on his torso and drumbeats answered. “I mean, Jayewardene’s talks with Baghdad didn’t go anywhere, and Babs is back here on the Tomlin. Everything’s all ‘we’re not bluffing; this is fucking serious’ but nothing’s happening.” Michael shrugged even though he knew Rusty couldn’t see the gesture. “I’ve lost count of the number of fucking card games I’ve played, the bad movies I’ve seen, and those new episodes of American Hero they keep sending us are about as exciting as watching grass grow.”
“Kate’s here.”
Two words, uttered in that flat, quiet voice; they stopped Michael’s tirade. He chuckled into the semidarkness. “You’re not as dumb as people think. You know that, Rusty?”
“Cripes, get some sleep,” came the response.
Can’t stay the same, can’t stand still
Go on, try it, it might work
And if not what have we lost
Only something that was never ours
Around, around, around we go
Where we start, nobody knows
Inward, outward, up we go
Or is it down and out to close?
The words were from “Staying Still,” one of the cuts on Joker Plague’s second release. The guy singing—a shaven-headed ensign named Bob—didn’t have The Voice’s range or power, but he was doing a decent job. None of the four guys with Michael on the makeshift stage—all of them Navy personnel—were a match for S’Live or Bottom or Shivers, but it was good just to be playing, to banish some of the pent-up energy and tension with a barrage of furious, driving rhythms. While he was playing, while he was onstage, the rest of the world went away. That’s the way it always was, always had been. Onstage, there was only the moment and the energy and the applause. The drug of music was terribly addictive, and he’d long been in its thrall.
Three-quarters of the crew were gathered around the stage placed against the flight deck island: standing in the warm Arabian evening, listening and bobbing their heads, some of them dancing up front. Michael could see the aces there, too, standing in a group off to the side: Rusty, his arms folded and his head nodding in half-time to the beat; Lohengrin—in jeans, a blue USS Tomlin T-shirt and ball cap—looking more like a pudgy graduate student than a formidable ace; Barbara Baden, the Translator, back on the Tomlin since the collapse of the talks in Baghdad; Tinker, one of the new “recruits” in the Committee, whom Kate claimed could make useful tools out of anything.
And Kate. Curveball. Michael nodded to her, standing off to the side next to Lohengrin and Tinker. He moved to that side of the stage, his six arms flailing hard at his body, the drumbeats fast and loud and insistent. He opened one of his throat vents wider, letting the low thrump of the bass drum pound directly at her. He knew she’d feel the concussion, slamming against her body. She grinned at him, waving as he swayed to the beat in the improvised spotlights placed on the catwalks overhead.
The song finished to loud applause and whistles from the crowd. “Thanks for listening!” DB called into his throat mikes, waving. He tossed his signature graphite sticks into the crowd. “You’ve been a great audience! Thank you!” He high-fived the other musicians in the pickup group as the captain’s voice came over the intercom, telling everyone to clear the flight deck and return to duty stations. “You guys were great. Great. That was lots of fun . . . .”
The spotlights went out. From the stage, the Tomlin seemed to be a brilliant platform floating in blackness pricked by the running lights of the cruisers flanking her, the wakes streaming out phosphorescent and white from their bows. There were no other lights but the stars in this universe, and the horizon in all directions was the unbroken, dark line of the Gulf.
He hopped off the stage as the crowd began to disperse and sailors swarmed over the improvised stage to disassemble it. Michael walked over to Kate, who applauded as he approached. Babs and Lohengrin were already walking away, talking earnestly to Colonel Saurrat, commander of the UN troops. Rusty loomed behind Kate and Tinker. “Cripes, you guys were loud,” he said. Tinker wore the too-wide, open-mouthed smile of an awed fan getting to meet his idol.
Michael ignored Tinker, smiled at Rusty, and cocked his head toward Kate. “Well?”
“That was fun,” Kate told him. “Just what everyone needed, I think.” Her hand—her right hand, the deadly one—touched one of his arms momentarily, then dropped back to her side.
“You should hear the real thing sometime. If you liked this, you’d be blown away. I’ll get you guys tickets to our next show.” Whenever that might be . . . . The thought came unbidden, and he shook his head to banish it.
“That’d be fantastic!” Tinker said, his Australian accent broader than usual. “Sure. That’d be great. Just great. If you want, DB, I could whip you up something better than those mikes you use around your neck, though. I’d be happy to do it for you, mate. Y’know, I heard you blokes a couple times now; in New York on your first tour right after Egypt, and, let’s see, I think it was . . .”
“Hey, fella,” Rusty interrupted. “What’s say you and me get some chow, huh?” Rusty clapped Tinker on the shoulders, staggering the man, and half dragged him away. Kate chuckled.
“You have a fan,” she said.
“Fans are good. Sometimes. Hey, I’m thirsty and it’s getting chilly out here. Take a walk with me?”
Kate shrugged. “Sure.”
He walked with her toward what the crew called “Vulture’s Row,” the collection of catwalks climbing the island of the flattop. They went down a few levels, below the flight deck to the crew level. One of the crew lounge doors was open, and they went in, Michael snagging a couple bottles of water for them before they sat on a couch in the room. There was a TV set at the far end set to local broadcasts, a half dozen male sailors gathered around watching the screen, the sound tinny and distant. The channel was showing “spontaneous citizen protests” in Baghdad as Arabic lettering scrolled across below; there were bands of protesters filling the streets and firing weapons into the air. UN DEV ILS! proclaimed one of the signs, with a caricature of a scarab-browed face on it. MURDERER! said another, and on that one, a six-armed man beat his chest like a multiple-armed King Kong while smashing a minaret-adorned mosque.
“I talked to John,” Kate said. Michael grimaced around the mouth of his water bottle. “He couldn’t really say much over the phone, but he said that things can’t stay at stalemate for very much longer.”
“Fine by me. I’m
tired of cooling my heels here. Let’s either go in for the oil or go home. One or the other.” Michael was watching the cartoon of himself jump up and down as the man holding the sign screamed invectives in Arabic.
“Home would be good.”
“But you don’t think that’s what’s going to happen? Or Fortune doesn’t.”
A shrug.
“Yeah, I get it,” Michael told her. “It’s all kinda weird. Hell, we’ve both seen what the oil crisis is doing, but maybe we can fix that. Maybe. I’ve talked to Kennedy and I know how important he thinks this is, and I’m with him, even if . . .” He lifted one set of shoulders. “Even if I’m not entirely sure that oil is what we should be going after right now. But I don’t mind being here.” Because you’re here, Kate. That means more than the rest. He didn’t say that. He didn’t have to. She knew his thoughts—he could see it in the way her gaze drifted away from him, as if she wanted to say something but had decided against it. “You think this is important, too, right, Kate?”
“I’m here,” she answered. “So yeah. I do.” Her voice was unconvincing.
“Yeah.” Michael leaned back and put his top right arm around the back of the couch. Kate didn’t move away; he found himself inordinately pleased by that. “Though I ain’t looking forward to another fight in the desert, I gotta admit.”
She frowned. “Maybe you should have taken John’s advice and gone to Africa, Michael. Or maybe just stayed back home this time, given where we’re going and what happened last time. They don’t like you here—you especially, out of all of us.” She nodded toward the television.
One of the sailors picked up the remote. The video of the Baghdad protests faded into a series of flickering channels. Michael was tapping on his chest softly, quick arpeggios of percussive notes, his throat openings flexing quickly to shape the sound. Kate’s hand touched one of his arms and he stopped the drumming. He put his middle left hand on top of hers so that she wouldn’t pull away. “So they don’t like me. Big deal. I’m glad that we’re together on this one, Kate.”
He saw her glance away with that, biting at her lip. “Michael—”
“Yeah, I know. Sorry.” He let go of her hand, but she left it where it was. It seemed a small victory.
“Michael,” she began again. “I want to stay friends, but I’m with John and you’re not going to change that. Please—quit pushing. It’s just pissing me off.”
“What pisses me off is that you don’t seem to notice the fucking she-bug in his head,” Michael spat out. Kate pressed her lips together, and her grip loosened on his arm and pulled away. “Sorry,” he told her as her eyes flashed angrily. “That was reflex—and a lot of pent-up crap that doesn’t have anything to do with you, or even with John. I guess . . . I guess that if you like John, then there’s gotta be something good about him. I’m just tired of all this fucking waiting around, Kate, and worried about what’s going to happen next. Sorry. Really. I won’t do it again.”
He could see that she didn’t believe him. She started to get up from the couch. He forced himself to remain seated and not rise with her to try and keep her there, when that was what he wanted to do most of all. “Kate, don’t give up on me. Not now. I’m here. I’m here and you’re here and at the very least we have to work together to get this done.”
Halfway up, she paused and sat again. “Michael,” Kate said, her voice quick, quiet, and earnest. “I need you to cooperate with everyone. Everyone: with John, with Barbara, with Lohengrin, everyone. None of us feels good about this, but I’ve made my arguments. And, well, I’m here. The lousy politics keep getting in the way of the Committee, and the publicity garbage that goes along with all this—yeah, that’s all getting to me, too. More every day. But . . . I trust John, and I believe that he’s trying to do the right things. It’s hard enough for him and the Committee to accomplish anything without us fighting among ourselves. So let’s stop.”
“Okay,” he said. “Sure. You got it.”
She looked away from him toward the television screen, picking up her water and taking a sip. The sailors had settled on a channel: this season’s American Hero was playing, one of the interminable “introductions” with Buffalo Gal’s lumpy and hairy face staring laconically at the screen, a cud bulging her left cheek as she chewed contentedly against the western mountains in the background. The sailors watching the episode cheered as the video cut quickly to Auntie Gravity, whose ace was the ability to render objects temporarily weightless. Especially with the low sound, it was difficult to focus on anything about Auntie Gravity beyond her breasts, which appeared to have been cut-and-pasted from a bad pornographic cartoon: a massive chest far too large for her frame and defying the pull of gravity, straining at the cloth of her custom-made T-shirt. One of Michael’s multiple throats closed, a finger tapped his chest, and a mocking cymbal crash rang out in the lounge. The sailors turned, gave Michael a thumbs-up, laughing.
Kate grimaced. She set down the bottle of water and pushed herself up from the couch. Michael thought she was going to say something, but she just looked at him, her head shaking slightly.
“Sorry,” Michael said. “But, hey, they thought it was funny.”
“Yeah, they did.” She sighed and touched Michael’s top shoulder.
“Hey, I gotta go. See you later, okay?”
“Sure,” Michael told her. “Later. I’ll be looking forward to it.”
“Want another?” Rusty handed Michael a can of Old Milwaukee beaded with sweat. Michael took it in his middle left hand and opened it with the top left. Rusty shook his massive head as foam hissed at the opening. “That just looks weird, fella,” he said.
Michael grinned and tilted the can over his open mouth, draining half the beer in one swallow. He could feel it running cool down his wide throat on its way to join the other four he’d already had. He wiped at his mouth with the back of a hand.
The fierce Persian sun had set over an hour ago, and Michael and Rusty were sitting in the area called the Junk Yard, aft of the island, sheltered a bit from the wind by one of the Tilly cranes. They were sitting near Elevator Three, which was down. They could look over the edge to the well-lit and cavernous hangar below the flight deck, where sailors were working on one of the fighters. A female mechanic walked into sight in the floodlights, and Michael’s gaze followed her. “Man, look at the ass on her,” he said. “Even in those overalls, she looks fine.”
Rusty set down his own beer and belched loudly. “Kate,” he said. “Remember?”
“Don’t mean I can’t look.” Michael finished the rest of the can and tossed it toward the paper bag that held the twelve-pack. He wasn’t entirely sure it went in, but he shrugged. “Hey, I learned my lesson after American Hero.” He leaned his head back against the Tilly. His eyes closed, and he started awake. Rusty was still looking at him, so he figured it had only been a moment. “After that, I realized there’s no way . . . Hey, got another one of those?” Rusty reached into the bag and handed him a can, popping another one open for himself. Michael opened his and took a long swallow. “No way,” he said, the “way” coming out loudly enough that the young woman in coveralls glanced up at them, “that I can get involved with any aces or anyone famous ’cuz Kate would hear ’bout it. Some bastard like Hive would go an’ tell her, an’ then she’d just get fucking pissed all over again and go runnin’ off to goddamn Beetle Boy. So I made me a rule: don’t fuck aces, don’t fuck anyone famous, so Kate don’t think I’m just some asshole chasing after pieces of ass. ’Cuz I do love Kate. I do. Man, if I were with her . . .” He was gesturing with all six hands. He heard the can clatter against the deck, and managed to rescue it before all the beer spilled.
“That’s a good rule?” Rusty asked. One steely eyebrow climbed the oxidized metal of his forehead.
“Fuck yeah it is. It takes care of the whole problem.” Michael leaned closer to Rusty, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial bellow. “Now, if something happens after a concert, well, what happens in th
e dressing room or my hotel room stays there, right?” He nudged Rusty with an elbow and grimaced at the too-solid contact. “Right? As long as she’s not famous or some ace.”
“I hear you saying that, yeah.”
“Y’know, I could see settlin’ down with Kate one day. Though ’cuz of the virus, we couldn’t have kids—I already got myself taken care of, y’know.” He made a snipping motion with two fingers. “I’d love to have kids, too—did’ja know that? I would. Fucking love it. You ’member those joker kids back in Egypt—always around me, trying to play drums on my chest?” Michael laughed and pounded on his torso, sending a wild, unrhythmic cascade of drumbeats echoing from the island. Below, the mechanics glanced up again. “Hell, that was a blast. Kids would be great; maybe we could adopt some . . . .” He paused, blinking. His eyelids felt impossibly heavy. “But hey, what about you, Rusty?” Michael asked. The beer can was on its side again. He looked at the foamy puddle mournfully. “How is it with you and the women? I bet you get your share, right, big guy like you?” Michael touched his chest, and a cymbal crash rang. Rusty said nothing. “Right?” Michael asked again.
“I never—” Rusty began, then grated to a halt like a broken locomotive. He was staring out at the dark Gulf.
“Never what?” Michael asked, then the import of the words hit him and he sucked in salt air in a great gulp. “Shit, you mean . . . ?” He could see the answer on Rusty’s face. “Wow,” he said. “I really don’t know what to say, man. Never?”
Rusty shrugged. “I was seventeen when I turned my card. Before that, I dunno, I was a kinda shy fella, that’s all. And after . . . Now . . .” Another shrug. Even through the haze of alcohol, Michael realized it was the most words he’d ever heard Rusty say about himself at one time.
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