by IGMS
As far as she could tell, the Daimyo could only pick up on articulated thoughts. That helped. And he was most likely to pick up on her thoughts if he was listening for them, which he probably was.
"Mary, Mother of God, pray for me," she whispered. "Saint Jude, Patron of Lost Causes, pray for me."
And there, like a comforting hand on her shoulder, was her solution.
The words of the prayer formed easily in her mind. "O most holy apostle, St. Jude, faithful servant and friend of Jesus," Jasmine whispered as she crawled over to the bars. "People honor and invoke you universally as the patron of hopeless cases, of things almost despaired of . . ." She let the familiar words of the prayer fill her mind; she concentrated on them, and on the feel of the metal under her hands. "Pray for me, for I am so helpless and alone" -- her eyes saw the gaps between the metal and the cave wall -- "Please help to bring me visible and speedy assistance . . ."
It took Jasmine a good forty minutes to jar the metal corner loose enough that she could worm through it. The fence left deep gouges down her back, and at one point her habit got caught on a bent wire. She had to tear the fabric to get free, focusing as she did so on the rhythm of Latin syllables in the Oratio ad angelum custodem. She hoped whatever telepath was listening in was thoroughly bored by this point.
She scuttled down the carved stone passageway, mentally running through the Ava Maria as she did so. It was harder to focus on the prayers now that she needed to make decisions. She didn't have long before she screwed up, and then whoever was monitoring her -- she suspected it was the Daimyo -- would realize what she was doing.
Her original mission had been to destroy the Daimyo's power base, if possible, and return with information if it wasn't. Jasmine's personal goal was to find Einstein, but without weapons or psychic shielding, none of her goals seemed like they were achievable.
She stomped down her pain -- Saint Anthony, Patron of Lost Things, please help me find Einstein -- and studied the dusty, mottled surface under her feet. Apparently the cultists weren't used to keeping prisoners; she guessed her cell had been constructed in a rarely-used section of the tunnels. Towards the sound of voices, then.
Jasmine saw a metal rod lying free and picked it up. Any weapon was better than none.
She crept from shadowed tunnel to shadowed tunnel. At one point, a cluster of ragged people passed close by her, talking loudly. Jasmine pressed herself into one of the wet crevices in the wall. Luckily, they didn't see her.
At a certain point, she became aware that she was being hunted. Loud voices echoed through the tunnels. Men rushed by, clattering metal, into tunnels she had just exited. She thought she heard the Daimyo's voice shrieking orders. The prayers slipped from her mind. Jasmine tried to sink further into animal-logic, thinking only of moving onwards, drifting from shadow to shadow, being one with the darkness.
A clatter ahead of her. Jasmine shrank back against the wall, trying to edge out of view. Men were definitely approaching, and their steps were slow and methodical. They talked in lowered voices. She saw their shadows spill along the wall. She shifted her grip on the metal rod, and changed her stance.
"Hello!" A bright, overly-cheerful voice cut through the darkness. "I am Capers Williams, Girl Detective, and this is my assistant --"
There was a thud and then a scream of pain.
"Well, that was just rude."
More thuds and screams followed. Jasmine rounded the corner to see the girl detective surrounded by a pile of bodies groaning and writhing on the floor. She looked up as Jasmine approached, and released the man she'd been holding in an arm-lock. He flopped to the ground and lay still.
"Hello, Sister Jasmine!" Capers said, bounding over the carpet of bodies, pig-tails flapping like the wings of a demented bird. "We solved the Mystery of the Mysterious Kidnapping! It turns out there's this Daimyo guy who wants to rule the wasteland --"
"I got that," Jasmine said quickly. She delivered a swift blow to the head of a man who was trying to crawl away. "How did you find me?"
"Well, first we had to follow a trail of clues that led to New Tokyo, and from there, we had to infiltrate the Daimyo's tunnel system by dressing as guards. But I guess we look too short to be guards, so. . . . Anyway," she said, seeing Jasmine's expression, "Detective Bell finally picked up your thoughts and tracked you here!"
"As did I," said the Daimyo, in what he obviously hoped was a booming voice. He stood at the end of the tunnel with his hands on his hips, flanked by guards.
"Oh, you again." Capers made a face. To Jasmine, she stage-whispered, "Bell says he's been around the corner the whole time, waiting for someone to say something entrance-worthy. What a goofball!" To the Daimyo she called out: "You're a goofball!"
The guards, however, were definitely not goofballs. Jasmine saw the glistening muzzles of guns pointing in their direction. She also recognized the competent, grim-faced man standing at the Daimyo's back.
"I'm going to give you one last chance to cooperate," the Daimyo said. He tried to snap his fingers a few times and then gave up. He gestured to someone standing just out of sight.
A cage rolled into view, pushed by the thin, frail-looking man Jasmine had seen earlier. A familiar metal shape bounced and circled inside the cage, making muffled yelps.
"Einstein!"
"It's the dog!" Capers shouted excitedly down the tunnel. "We solved the case, Bell! Yay!"
Glancing in the direction Capers was shouting, Jasmine saw a furry black shape in a miniature guard's uniform edging along the wall towards the Daimyo. She hastily looked away. Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccáta mundi, parce nobis, she thought.
"Will you please stop praying all the time!" the Daimyo shouted. "It's really annoying."
The psychic spider detective halted its progress along the wall to nod vigorously in agreement. Jasmine gritted her teeth. It was all she could do not to motion Bell along.
Einstein, she thought, looking at her dog. They'd put a muzzle on him, but other than that he looked in good repair.
"Yes . . . Einstein," the Daimyo said. "If you agree to come with me right now and give us the defense plans of the abbey, you'll get him back. If not . . ." He trailed off into dramatic silence.
"If not, we'll shoot this dog," the grim-faced man said. He evidently valued clarity over dramatic tension. The safety clicked on his gun; he pointed the barrel at Einstein's cage.
"Well, that's kinda mean," Capers said.
The Daimyo smiled.
"Why are you still here?" he asked. "Don't you have other mysteries to solve? You found the dog. What more do you need?"
The android's face froze as she ran through her programming. "Er," she said. "You're bad guys . . .?"
"Are we?" the Daimyo said. "We're trying to bring back technology to the wasteland. That's a good goal. And even if we were bad guys, sometimes at the end of mysteries, bad guys get away. The important thing is that the mystery gets solved, right?"
Jasmine winced. The last thing she needed was the detectives' programming working against her. "I think the bad guys should get punished," she said loudly. Her voice was dry and cracked; she could barely force the words out.
"I think the people in Gary have a mystery that needs solving," offered the grim-faced man.
Atop Einstein's cage, the spider turned back towards the girl detective. Its eyes slid sideways in a quizzical expression.
Jasmine could feel the moment slipping away. In a few seconds, her android allies would turn, obedient to their programming, and head out to solve the mysteries of Gary. Without their help, she would almost certainly be recaptured.
The time had come to shift strategies.
Lock, Jasmine thought furiously. Seeing the Daimyo's expression change, she turned her gaze on the spider, trying to make the words as distinct and psychically "loud" as possible. Pick the lock, Detective Bell.
"I dunno," said Capers. She looked down at her red sneakers. "I guess solving the mystery is the most important thing. But i
n Mathnet, Pat Tuesday says . . ."
Jasmine never did get to hear Pat Tuesday's words of wisdom.
Following Jasmine's gaze, the Daimyo looked down and saw the string-like legs of Flaminel Bell trying to pick the lock of Einstein's cage.
"What's that?" he shrieked.
The thin-faced man leaned over and quickly recoiled. "Spider! Kill it!"
Even as the guards went into motion, Jasmine was already running, already charging towards the guards and hoping to close the distance before they looked up, when a blur of color ran past her, impossibly fast.
Androids did not care about human things, but they were inhabitants of a post-apocalyptic world. However hard things got out on the wasteland, whatever laws might be broken, one thing remained true: a girl loves her spider.
"You leave Flaminel Bell alone!" screamed Capers Williams, kicking the thin-faced man down the length of the tunnel. She turned and clobbered a bearded guard with his own shotgun. "He's a very nice spider!"
Jasmine plowed into the grim-faced man, carrying him off his feet. The shotgun blast took out part of the wall behind her. She applied a Vatican-approved choke hold and held on for dear life.
"That's right! Run away!" Capers howled behind her. "You . . . You scaredy-cats!"
The grim-faced man stopped clawing at Jasmine's arms. He relaxed, unconscious. Jasmine punched him in the face for good measure, then turned back to Capers.
Capers was standing in front of Einstein's cage, crying. She hugged the spider in her arms.
"He's had to overcome so much!" She kicked at the Daimyo, who was cowering against the wall. "Do you hear that, you Labrador mutant? How would you like to be an epileptic psychic spider and have nobody understand you, huh?"
"I think Detective Bell has done very well," Jasmine said as she edged towards Einstein's cage.
"That's right!" Capers patted the spider on its furry head. "You're a great detective!" She glared at the Daimyo, who was trying to move sideways along the wall. "Where do you think you're going, you big meanie?"
Jasmine shot the lock off Einstein's cage and released her dog. It took her a while to remove his muzzle: the K9 unit was too busy gamboling excitedly around her feet.
"Ohboyohboyohboy!" Einstein said once she'd got the muzzle off. "I missed you! But now you're here! Can we hunt zombies now?"
"Soon, Einstein," Jasmine said. She hauled the Daimyo to his feet and clocked him on the jaw.
Canticle 5: Gloria Patri
". . . and that's how we solved the Mystery of the Missing Ice Sculpture."
Capers' feet were up on the dashboard of the Silver Stallion. Detective Bell skipped back and forth on her shoes, playing with the laces.
"I never would have thought that memorizing the digits of pi would prove so useful," Jasmine said, scanning the horizon. Something was up.
"I think there should be more zombies in that story!" Einstein said, perched on the coffin in the back seat and staring out the rear window. He wore a new bandana proudly around his neck.
From inside the coffin, the bound and gagged Daimyo gave a muffled groan. Jasmine smiled, grimly. Without the Daimyo's psychic abilities, his followers would not be able to control the army of cellular madmen. The threat to the Wasteland was diminished. And the Order of the Serpent would no doubt be interested in the information the Daimyo could provide. All she had to do was deliver him to them.
"We can't add zombies," Capers said doubtfully. "That's not how it happened."
"But everything's better with zombies!"
"Quiet, all of you." Jasmine narrowed her eyes. "This place is dangerous."
In the silence they could all hear the Daimyo's nervous breathing. Einstein whispered something about zombies.
"How many more creatures do we need to fight before we get to the abbey?" Capers said. "We've already had to fight armies of ninjas and cellular madmen and a giant mechanical anaconda. We need to solve more mysteries! Why --"
The dinosaur attack came out of nowhere, just like they always do. There was a screech of metal as the mutant T-Rex tried to get a purchase on the car.
"Dumb lizard!" Capers rolled down her window and aimed her slingshot at something Jasmine couldn't see. "We've got raptors, too!"
"Zombie raptors?"
Jasmine sighed and reached for her double-barreled Reptile Annihilator. Deliver us from evil, she thought . . . and prepared to bring the pain.
Frankie and Johnny, and Nellie Bly
by Richard Wolkomir
Artwork by Anna Repp
* * *
I always ran down to the Depot at 3:37 p.m. to see if the Central Florida Express brought persons of interest to Duster. Also, I liked to visualize myself boarding a Pullman and steaming out into the world -- I would achieve éclat, then extricate my mother from the Ascending Angel and provide her with fine dining and wholesome activities.
Éclat, if you've never looked it up, means "brilliance of success or reputation." I imagined crowds at newspaper kiosks clamoring to read the latest scintillating dispatch from Budapest or Marrakech or Rangoon or Cincinnati, penned by the lustrous Susanna Entwhistle, who is I.
So, that momentous afternoon, guess who disembarked! Nellie Bly! The most famous reporter in the world!
She was precisely as attractive as in her pictures, with her hair pulled back at the sides, but down over her forehead, and her eyes set wide apart and intensely observant. Her plush blue dress had a white embroidered collar, like a many-rayed star. She stood beside her two valises, deciding which way to go, so I ran right up and told her I would be enthused to proffer my assistance.
She said: "Why do you dress like a boy?"
"It is my idiosyncrasy," I said. "I am eleven, but I know everything about Duster, including an impending crisis involving a spellslinger-for-hire, so I can help you."
"Where did you learn a word like idiosyncrasy?" she asked.
"I read lots of books, in preparation for my future career, which will be of a literary nature," I told her.
"Fewer words are better," she said. "I'm seeking a reputable hotel -- what do you suggest?"
I told her Duster had four hotels, all owned by Phosphate Extraction Enterprises, meaning Daryl "Sweetie" Hieronymus, and that the least disreputable, in terms of bowie knifings and smashed glassware, also profane shouting, was the Ascending Angel, in which I resided myself.
"Lead the way," she said.
I made sure her room had laundered sheets, and a good view -- she looked out on Main Street, and the Okie Livery Stable's corral. Then I ran to my own room, since I did not share quarters with my mother, Marigold. I had borrowed books piled everywhere on the floor, and newspaper clippings tacked onto the walls. I untacked one and rushed back to her room to show her.
"What's this?" she said, looking at the clipping.
"That," I said, "is you!"
On top was her picture, just under the headline: "Ace Reporter Nellie Bly Bests Jules Verne's fictional Around the World in Eighty Days, Performing the Same Feat in 72 Days, 6 hours, 11 minutes, and 14 Seconds."
She rode, the story said, ships, trains, jinrikishas, sampans, horses and burros. And it recapped her previous scoops for The Pittsburgh Dispatch and the New York World, such as reports on divorce, slums, and the situation in Mexico. Once, she pretended to be insane to get committed to the Blackwell's Island asylum, her exposés leading to reforms. She wrote about tenement conditions. Also -- this was particularly relevant to subsequent events during her Duster stay -- she exposed the techniques of mashers!
"What will it take for you not to give me away?" she asked.
"I'll be your secret assistant," I said.
"Done," she said.
Nellie and I conferred, in her room and mine, for her exposé of conditions in Duster's mines. She took notes while I explained how Sweetie Hieronymus had gripped the town so tight. For one thing, besides the saloons, Phosphate Extraction Enterprises owned the general store and every other store, and their prices sank wor
kers ever deeper into the company's debt.
Nellie: "Why don't they just run off in the night?"
Me: "Because of Sheriff Fitzpatrick Duprey and his three deputies."
Those "deputies" actually were gunslingers, and Fitzpatrick Duprey was a spellslinger-for-hire, and the whole sorry bunch really worked for Sweetie, just like the "mayor" and practically everybody else in Duster. And this is a solemn fact: if you irritated Sweetie Hieronymus, you'd wind up dead in the dirt on Main Street, because I've seen a lot of that.
Nellie took notes on everything I told her. But I wanted to maintain my usefulness, so I kept back about Sweetie's brother, Placido Hieronymus, a story breaking even as Nellie and I conferred.
That very next afternoon, when I ran down to the Depot to perform surveillance upon the incoming train, two strangers disembarked.
First, a woman stepped onto the platform: a short thing, shapeless in her baggy gray dress, face pear-shaped, with a curtain of dark hair hanging down on either side. Her only interesting features were a lack of expression and smoked glasses. From inside the train, a long arm handed down her valise, and then a man stepped down, looking around and seeing me.
I was unenthusiastic about the male gender, based on what I saw in Duster, but he was lean, with slicked-back yellow hair and a trimmed yellow mustache and sky-blue eyes, and he looked glowingly elegant and urbane. Also, he had stunningly long legs. He reached into the train and pulled out his own valise, and then a guitar case. I guessed right away who he must be.
He said, "Hey, gorgeous -- that's right, you, the little cutie in pants -- will you advise me?"
I worried his mousy companion might create a jealous scene, but she just stood there, saying nothing. What, I wondered, did so handsome a man, quite charming, actually, see in such a clot?
He was, he told me, seeking work as a musician, ideally with the possibility of off-hours poker. I said I might know of an opening, but I couldn't recommend him without hearing him perform.
"I must evaluate your suitability," I told him.
"Hey," he said, giving his silent lady friend a wink. "She's sharp -- will she give me good marks?"