Dead Man’s Hand

by John Joseph Adams

  Ray let the spider down on the ground beside him. It paused, raising two legs at him, then turned and scurried down the path. Heaving a sigh, Ray pushed up from his seat and followed.

  It didn’t take long for him to notice something sticking to the bottom of his boot. At first he tried to scrape it off in the dirt, but whatever it was stuck. With one hand against the canyon wall, Ray looked at the sole of his right boot.

  Something… shiny. Like string. But sticky. Ray picked the filaments from his boot, and the thread stuck to his fingers… and kept going. Now that he was looking for it, Ray saw an almost invisible line of thread stretching down the path, farther than he could see.

  Spider web.

  The mechanical spider had left a web. And not just a normal spider web, one that could break with a single tug. This slender thread of web was unbreakable, cool to the touch like metal, as flexible as a blade of grass but stronger than an oak. Ray wrapped the string around his fingers and tried to pull it apart, but the strong web tore his skin before he could break it.

  Ray tugged. The web was more than just an unbreakable string… it was also a path. One that led directly to the spiders.

  To answers.

  * * *

  Following the web proved a good idea. It took him down paths he didn’t think were possible, and twice he had to hold on to the unbreakable string for balance as he scrambled over perilous gaps in the path. But finally, finally he reached the end of the string.

  There was no spider in sight. The thread stopped at the mouth of a cave. Ray carefully wound the last bit of string around his hand and slipped the bundle into his pocket. Such string could be useful in future.

  As Ray debated whether he should go into the cave or wait till morning, he heard rustling movement from just beyond his sight. Something big—much bigger than a spider.

  “Cheveyo,” Ray said as the Indian emerged from the cave.

  “You are not supposed to be here,” Cheveyo said. “I told you, this place is sacred.”

  Ray noticed that Cheveyo’s hand was on the .44-40 at his hip, his fingers wrapped around the grip, ready to draw. Ray took a breath. He couldn’t pull his gun out before Cheveyo could shoot. But that was fine. Ray never shot first anyway.

  “How did you find this place?” Cheveyo shouted. His voice was no longer peaceful, contemplative. He was starting to sound mad.

  “It should have been impossible for one such as you to come here,” Cheveyo continued. “I cannot let you into the heart of the sipapu.”

  Behind the Indian, in the darkness of the cave, Ray could hear a loud clack, click, clack sound. Cheveyo’s grip on his gun tightened.

  “How did you reach this cave? And in one day? Are you part god? Are you from one of the other worlds?” Cheveyo’s voice was hysterical now, panicked. “Are you even a man?”

  Ray looked down his front languidly. “I got man parts, don’t I?”

  A crooked, evil grin spread across Cheveyo’s face. “If you are man, then you can die like one.”

  He shot. Ray only had the sense of gunpowder and smoke wafting in the breeze before he felt the slug hit his chest. The force was so powerful it knocked Ray off his feet. He lay in the dusty ground, the stars twinkling above him, and he knew the hit had been direct. Cheveyo’s aim had been true. The bullet had hit his heart.

  Or… it would have hit his heart, if Ray had had a heart. He sat up, still struggling to catch his breath, and reached into the bloody, gaping hole in his chest. Without his flesh covering it, Ray could hear the whrr-chrr, the mechanical sound that he had instead of a heartbeat.

  “What are you?” Cheveyo whispered.

  “I got man parts,” Ray said, “but that’s not all I got.”

  He stood, and Cheveyo could finally see what had once been covered by flesh: a metal pump, embedded with glowing wires.

  Ray reached his finger into the hole in his chest and felt the dent where the bullet landed. He tried to pick the lead out, but couldn’t.

  Ray dropped his bloody hand to his side and drew his gun. “You shot me,” he told Cheveyo. “Seems only fair that I return the favor.”

  Enough. The word was not spoken aloud, but seemed to reverberate through Ray’s skull. He dropped his gun, clutching the sides of his head.

  Cheveyo’s eyes widened. “You hear the voice of Grandmother, too?”

  This man is Pahana, the voice inside Ray’s head said. Let him pass.

  “Pahana?” Ray asked, still clutching his head.

  “You are the lost white brother,” Cheveyo said. He reached a hand out to Ray. “And Grandmother wants to see you.”

  * * *

  Ray had expected “Grandmother” to be an old Indian woman, shriveled like a fig.

  He had not expected a giant spider, easily eight feet tall, with long legs tapping along the back and sides of the stone cave so big that it disappeared into the darkness, only the sound echoing from the black.

  You are not of this world, Grandmother said inside their minds. I sent out my children to bring you back.

  Ray glanced at the cave walls. Hundreds of mechanical spiders clung to the walls, clacking their tiny, geared legs.

  “He is a man that is not a man,” Cheveyo told the giant spider.

  That was a bit harsh, Ray thought. But also true. He had known for some time that he was different. The way he could calculate cards, read people. The way he always knew exactly when to pull the trigger.

  And there was the matter of his heart. Not just his heart—when he had been shot in the leg, he’d discovered metal instead of bones. He had gears inside him, just like the spiders.

  He didn’t know where he came from, or why. He’d been wandering the West for years now, trying to figure out why he didn’t age when his friends did. Why he was never sick. Why he couldn’t be hurt.

  But he’d never thought he’d find the answers in a giant spider in a cave at the bottom of a canyon.

  There are four worlds, Grandmother spoke in their minds. And you are from the second, Pahana. You slipped through. And you left a hole that could not be closed.

  “Is that where the spiders have come from, Grandmother?” Cheveyo asked. He held out his hand, and one of the small clockwork spiders crawled onto his palm.

  The giant spider inclined her body toward Cheveyo. It is. They are from the second world, too. They have sought you, Pahana. They wish to bring you back.

  “Back?” Ray asked.

  To the second world. Your home.

  “My brother and I have been trying to discover why the sipapu was open,” Cheveyo said, turning to Ray. “More and more spiders have emerged. And other things. Some dark. Some good. But none of them belong in this world.”

  “And neither do I, is that what you’re saying?” Ray’s voice rose, anger weaving in and out of it. He had known from the moment he saw the spider that he wanted to learn more. It was like him, part real, part mechanical. But he hadn’t known that discovering the truth would mean leaving this world. Panic rose in his throat. This world was his home, the only home he knew.

  The second world is your real home. You will find others like you.

  Cheveyo stepped forward. “I and my brother were the gatekeepers. My brother is no more, Grandmother.”

  The giant spider lowered her body in a way Ray knew meant sorrow.

  “If this man is Pahana,” Cheveyo continued, “then he is a brother, too. He has crossed the plains of the worlds.”

  “But I don’t remember it…” Ray said, his voice weak. “I don’t remember any of it. My earliest memory is far from here—not in another world, I mean, but in the East. How could I have come from this place, from another world?”

  The paths across the worlds are complicated and long.

  “Perhaps his path was meant to end here, rather than begin,” Cheveyo said. “Perhaps Pahana is meant to be a gatekeeper with me. With my brother dead, we need another. One who can cross into the other worlds.”

  This is true, the gre
at spider said. Is that what you would like, Pahana? Rather than go through the door to the second world, you would be able to open and close the doors to all four worlds. You would protect them, with your brother Cheveyo.

  “First time I had a brother who shot me in the chest,” Ray said.

  Cheveyo grinned. “The second world is mechanical, and its people have discovered ways to longevity. Each world has its advantages. Would you like to discover the rest of them?”

  Ray thought about what this would mean. He had once believed the West was the great unknown, the hidden heart of America that might show him the answers to who and what he was. Now he realized that the unknown lay just beyond this giant spider, through the gates to whole other worlds.

  He could think of nothing he would rather do than explore them all.

  WRECKING PARTY

  ALASTAIR REYNOLDS

  Arizona Territory, 1896

  We caught him wrecking the horseless carriage on Main Street a little after two in the morning. It was a hard rain that night, the kind that keeps most folk indoors. Hardly ever rains in Arizona, but when it does it comes down like something Biblical. Our wrecker must have thought he had the town to himself. But Doctor Hudson was abroad, returning late from attending a birth at the ranch in Bitter Springs. He had already attempted to remonstrate with the wrecker. This earned him a powerful swing from an iron bar, the kind gangers use to lever up railroad tracks. The Doctor dodged the bar, and after scrambling up out of the mud he came to my office, where Tommy Benedict and I were sipping lukewarm coffee and wondering if the roof would hold against the rain.

  I buckled on my holster and revolver, leaving Benedict in charge of the office.

  “You recognize this man, Doctor Hudson?”

  “Haven’t seen him before, Bill. Looks like a wild man, come down from the hills. Smells like he’s got half a gin house inside of him, too. He’s riled up about something.”

  It didn’t take us long to find the wrecker still at work in front of Quail’s saloon. The horseless carriage was already in a sorry state. Under the violence of the bar, the machine clanged like a cracked bell. Pieces of it were already in the mud. One of its lamps had buckled, turning it squinty-eyed. I couldn’t help but think of a dog being beaten, cowering against the next blow. It was stupid because the horseless carriage was just a thing, made by men from metal and rubber and leather. It didn’t have a soul or a mind. But it looked pathetic and whimpering all the same.

  “Be careful,” Hudson warned as I neared the scene.

  Mindful of what had nearly befallen the Doctor, I drew my revolver and held it up to the sky, the barrel catching the rain like a chimney spout. “This is the Town Marshal!” I shouted. “Stop what you’re doing!”

  But he didn’t stop, not even when I’d fired a warning shot. The man just kept swinging away at the machine, seemingly more enraged with each strike. One of the mudguards had come off now.

  I told Hudson to go back to the office and summon Tommy Benedict. I circled around the wrecker, peering through the rain as it curtained off the brim of my hat like Niagara Falls itself. Not that it excused the wrecker’s actions, but it was a fool thing of Parker Quail to leave his horseless carriage out there like that, in the mud and rain, letting everyone know he was rich enough to own that fancy German toy.

  I kept a wary eye on both the wrecker and the saloon. I didn’t want Parker Quail or his men getting mixed up in this. Chances were good they were all sound asleep after a heavy evening of drinking and carding. But I watched the windows all the same.

  If I could just time things, get that bar off of him. But I wasn’t quick on my feet these days. Even less so on a cold wet night, when the bullet in me started wriggling around.

  I took a lurch for the bar and missed. My leg buckled under me, and I went down in the mud. Lightning flashed, lighting everything up in black and white. The wrecker really did look like a wild man, all rags and beard and crazy long hair. Enraged by my attempt to spoil his fun, he lunged at me with the rod. Thinking fast, Doctor Hudson grabbed my shoulder and tugged me sharply out of harm’s way, my posterior skidding on the mud.

  “That wound playing up again, Bill?”

  I pushed myself to my feet, now just as muddy as the Doctor. “You did the best you could for me. Dig any deeper, you’d have come out the other side of my leg.”

  Hudson nodded—we both knew I was lucky to have kept that leg at all, after that Union bullet went into me in ’62. Better men than me were walking around on pegs. But on a damp night that Yankee shot sure did like to remind me it was there.

  Thankfully, Benedict was quicker than either the Doctor or me. Before he signed on as deputy, he’d wrangled cattle. Now he came with his rope and had it around the wrecker on the first try, like they were both part of the same circus act. Hudson seized the chance to scoop up the iron bar. Benedict and I got hold of the wrecker and hauled him like a sack of horse oats back to the office. He put up a struggle all the way back, and Benedict and I lost our footing more than once. By then it really didn’t matter how much more mud we had on us.

  I thanked the Doctor and told him to go and get some shut-eye.

  “Why’d you do it?” I asked the wild man when we were indoors and Benedict was fetching the keys to open the cell. “What has Parker Quail done to you?”

  “Never heard of no Quail,” mumbled our man. Inside the office, the fight had gone out of him. He was slumped down in the chair we’d pushed him into. He seemed more worn out than angry now, all his rage gone from one moment to the next, the way it often did with drunks. He gave off a stench like a barrel of vinegar.

  “You were smashing private property,” Benedict said evenly, opening the cell. “That horseless carriage belongs to Parker Quail, as if you didn’t know.”

  “Doesn’t matter who it belongs to,” the man said resignedly. “Had to smash it. That’s what you do. You smash ’em. Smash ’em to pieces, so they can’t move, can’t do nothin’. Smash them before they smash us. It’s just another kind of war, just like the one between the States.”

  I tried to gauge the man’s years. “You fought?”

  “Sure I fought. Did you?”

  I nodded. “Hampton’s Legion, under Hood’s Brigade. My war only lasted ’til Antietam, though. Guess I was lucky to get out of it with just a limp.”

  “You were Legion?”

  “What I said.”

  “I was Legion as well.”

  I looked at him skeptically. “This far west, that’s some coincidence.”

  He truly did look like a wild man come down from the hills. Hair so long and straggly it fell all the way down his face, so you couldn’t tell where hair ended and beard began. No hat, and clothes that were halfway to shreds. Boots that were hanging off his feet. Smelled like he hadn’t been near any kind of water, warm or otherwise, in years. Hard to guess his age, too. The grey hair made him look old, but the eyes that looked through the hair, where it allowed, were sharp and attentive. They were clear, too. If he had been Legion, he couldn’t be much younger than me. But the war between the States was thirty years gone.

  All of a sudden, I felt a shiver of recognition.

  “You got a name?” I asked, with a tingling feeling going right through me.

  “You know who I am, Bill. Didn’t realise it was you, ’til you mentioned the Legion. But what are the odds of two southern boys fighting in the same infantry unit, windin’ up in the same one-horse town in the Arizona Territory? Unless we came here together?”

  “Abel,” I said quietly, almost as if I didn’t want Benedict to hear me. “Abel McCreedy.”

  “Been a while, Bill.”

  Benedict sauntered over. He had splashed his face in the basin and washed most of the mud off. “You two acquainted, Bill? Thought you didn’t recognize him.”

  “I didn’t, at first. But it’s been—what—twenty odd years?” For Tommy Benedict’s sake I added: “Abel and I shipped west after the war was done. Tried to make
a living as bounty hunters. When that didn’t work out, we signed on with the Pinkertons. Later, I ended up deputizing for a marshal in Eloy. Abel stayed with the Pinks… least, that was the last thing I heard.”

  “Worked out for a while,” Abel said philosophically. “But you know how it is. Always been better on my own. Tried to go freelance.”

  “And?”

  “Got myself into some trouble, Bill. Big trouble.” He raised his filth-caked hand slowly, and pushed the hair away from his face. He still had the beard, but there was no doubt now. I was looking at my old partner.

  Big trouble. I guess it had to be.

  “You’re in a whole heap more of it now,” I said.

  “I got carried away out there,” Abel said. “But I had my reasons, Bill. I’m as sane as the day we parted.”

  “What brought you into town now, after all this time?”

  “Things built up. I guess I was kind of hopin’ our paths would cross, Bill—figured you’d help out an old friend. But then I saw that man’s horseless carriage and it all boiled up inside me and I couldn’t stop myself.”

  Benedict was watching us, arms folded. Abel’s story about not recognizing me was obviously a lie, if he’d been looking for me from the outset. “Want to lock him up yet?”

  “Hear me out,” Abel said. “Then do what the hell you want.”

  I nodded to Benedict. “Stroll over to Quail’s saloon. If no one’s awake, leave it that way. Otherwise, do what you can to placate ’em.”

  “And if Quail decides to send some of his friends over to have a word with the man who smashed up his horseless carriage?”

  “They’ll be breaking the law.”

  “Ain’t stopped them in the past, Bill.”

  “McCreedy’s in custody now. That’s all Parker Quail needs to know. Any problem with that, he can take it up with me.”