“And you told the God Weirders you would sell her for them?”
“That is so.”
“And what will the Bear get from this?”
She shrugged. “Our needs are small. A hundred keys.”
“A hundred keys?” Max asked. “The ransom for Lucy is a million keys, and all you get out of it is a hundred?”
Bear Woman sighed. “We did not know she was worth so much. But we made a deal with the God Weirders.”
“How would you like to get double your money, and screw the God Weirders out of their million?”
“You can do this?” she asked.
I nodded, thinking of the cages out front, the griz eager to feast. “Let us just say that the God Weirders are not likely to see one of their own meet the Bear.” I told her my plan.
She listened, and when I was done, she smiled. “I like you, Man Marked By Bear. We have a deal.”
CHAPTER 13
We waited at the bottom of a bluff on the west shore of Cook’s River, across from Far Island and a mountain that looked like the profile of some old hag. The sun set behind the hag, a fiery ball piercing her brow. Out on Cook’s River the ice cracked into big pancake icebergs, and the edges jammed up against the shore in small mountains. Cook’s River glowed orange, then scarlet, and began fading into indigo.
On the beach below the bluff, Nivakti got a big fire going. Max and I stared out at Far Island, the shippo prison, where the Wonderblimp was. The dogs were tied up at the top of the bluff, off in some bushes, and Rindi stood watch near them, watching for the Bear Baiters to come.
“This better work,” Max growled at me for like the ninety-fourth time. He took his Nissan out, slid a clip into the butt. “I don’t think we’ll want to be stuck between a blimp and a bear.”
I smiled, checked my own gun, a Mitsubishi automatic rifle Max had bought for me at the fair. “They each have something the other wants, and we’re both making sure they get it.”
“I’ll see it when it happens.”
“It’ll happen.”
But I wasn’t so sure. The tricky part had been the Bear Baiters. Somehow I had a hunch that they were honest to the letter, but also literal-minded. It happens. I hadn’t been sure what deal they’d made with the God Weirders, but I had guessed, and my guess had been right. Bear Woman had told me that they had promised to sell Lucy for the God Weirders, and that they would get a hundred keys for their efforts, the God Weirders getting the rest. What the Bear Baiters hadn’t promised the God Weirders was who they would sell to, or how much. The God Weirders knew that Big Mac would pay good money for Lucy, but of course they couldn’t tell the Bear Baiters that. And if the Bear Baiters hadn’t been told about Big Mac’s bid, why, they could just feign stupidity and sell to whoever they wanted.
It reminded me of a story I’d heard once about a woman whose husband had left her for some sleazy blonde. The husband had left behind a Porsche, which was this really good assault rifle, and wrote his wife and told her to sell the Porsche and send him the money. So the woman sold the Porsche for a half-a-key, when the rifle was worth maybe twenty keys. And she sent her husband the money. What that woman had done to her husband, the Bear Baiters were going to do to the God Weirders. And we’d help.
“The blimp’s coming,” Rindi shouted from the bluff.
As the Wonderblimp rose up from Far Island she caught the light, and her starboard side gleamed silver in the sun. The tips of her props were silver crescents, her nose a half-moon. She came toward us, toward the fire and the beacon. As she came up we slipped our face masks down. They couldn’t know who I was, not yet.
The dogs howled in the bushes up on the top of the bluff where we had staked them out. Rindi ran over to hush them, but it didn’t matter, not in the roaring of the blimp’s engines as she hovered above. I looked up at her, up at the belly I’d seen from a similar angle only a month ago. A few new holes marred her skin, a few dings were in the bottom of the nacelle, but she looked as majestic as ever. I saw the barrel of a machine gun in the forward nacelle swivel around toward us, saw a hatch open in her belly and two ropes come tumbling down.
Two guys rappelled down, gutter guns slung over their shoulders, hoods of their parkas wrapped tight around their faces. They hit the ice of the beach, ropes still attached, and pulled their hoods down: Bron and Nike. Max walked up to them.
“You got the jizzum?” Nike yelled over the wash of the blimp’s props.
Max nodded, held up a small pouch. “Where’s Odey?”
Nike motioned up at the blimp. “Let’s see it.” He took the pouch, opened it, pulled out a vial, held it up to the light. “How can I trust you?”
“You have to,” Max said. “I saw the Hammer milk his dogs himself.”
Nike put the vial back in the pouch, closed it, slipped it inside his parka. “Okay. I’ll take your word, um . . . ?”
“No names,” Max said. “That was in the deal.”
“Sure.” Nike waved up at the blimp, and another rope fell down from the hole. A figure in red long johns, curly blond hair, gold lamé dress, and white bunny boots came down the rope. Max pulled his Nissan forward, pointed it at Nike.
“That ain’t Odey,” he said. He glanced back at me. I shrugged.
“That’s how he came to us,” Nike said. The figure hit the ground, and Nike walked over and took off her wig: it was Odey. Max lowered the Nissan, nodded.
“Okay.” He motioned to Nivakti and me, and we went up, undid Odey from the monkey harness, and shoved him back to the bluff.
“Thanks, guys,” he said.
“Don’t thank us yet,” I murmured. I jammed the end of my rifle in his stomach.
“Get back on the blimp,” Max yelled at Nike. “Stand offshore. When I signal you, come back in and you can get the second part of the deal we promised you.”
Nike nodded, and he and Bron climbed back up into the blimp. The hatch slid shut, and the Wonderblimp drifted back over Cook’s River. Her lights flicked on, and she hovered about a mile out.
“The Bear Baiters are coming,” Rindi yelled down from the bluff.
Nivakti shoved Odey in front of us, and Max and I followed them up the long path to the top of the bluff. As we cleared the edge, I saw a sleigh pulled by enormous dogs coming toward us. There was a cage in the back of the sleigh, and I could see a figure squatting in the bottom of the cage. The sleigh stopped in front of us, and the dogs swayed back and forth, then sat down. I walked up to them, then stopped: they weren’t dogs.
Their hips were covered with fat, and their rumps had no tails. Their legs were like tree stumps, stumps that ended in clawed feet. Their forequarters were massive, and muscles rippled like tidal waves through their thick fur. When they opened their muzzles, little mountain ranges of teeth gleamed in the twilight. Those suckers were bears, 350-pound black bears. Two was all they needed to pull that sleigh.
Bear Woman stood up in the sleigh. “You have our friend?” she asked.
I stepped forward, shoving Odey with my gun. “This is him.”
She smiled. “Ah, a big man. He has good meat on him. He will please the Bear.”
“What are you doing?” Odey asked. He whirled around. “Guys? Hey, I thought I was being traded back to the God Weirders?”
“Only the Bear Baiters trade with God Weird,” I said. “You should know that.” I looked at Bear Woman. “Do you have our friend?”
She nodded, gestured to a man next to her. The man went back, unlatched the cage, helped a figure wrapped in a bear skin out of the cage and down from the sleigh. He pointed toward us, and the person ran up to and behind us.
“Is that her?” Bear Woman asked.
I turned, walked up to her, pulled back the bear hide. A blue braid slithered over her shoulder, down her chest, pulled the hide back up. Her face was puffy and bruised, her eyes swollen, but it was her. Electrolux. Lucy. I smiled. Lucy.
“It’s her,” I yelled. She jerked her face toward me, stared, but I tried to ig
nore it. I walked up to Odey, shoved him toward the sleigh. Odey stumbled forward, dodged away from the bears, tried to break away. Nivakti stepped in front of him, cut him off. The bear man jumped down, yanked Odey up with one hand, and threw him in the open cage. He latched the cage shut behind Odey. Odey rattled the cage, screamed at us.
“You assholes! God will damn you!”
“Like he damned Kaditali?” I yelled back.
“I’ll get you!” he screamed, pointing at me. The bear man took a big staff, poked it through the bars of the cage, and jammed it into Odey’s stomach. He shut up. I turned away, thinking of that kid with his heart cut out, and trying to convince myself that people like the God Weirders deserved to have their faces ripped off. I turned back to the sleigh.
“Good hunting,” I said.
“Good hunting,” Bear Woman said. She growled a guttural command, and the bears got up, turned to their left, and dragged the sleigh away.
I took hold of Lucy and started to walk her down to the bottom of the bluff. Max stood at the head of the path, Nissan pistol in his hand pointing down to the ground.
“Let’s signal the blimp,” I said.
“I don’t think so, Holmes,” Max said. He raised the pistol.
Lucy turned around at my name. “Holmes?” she asked.
“What’s this, Max?”
“We fulfilled our bargain,” he said. “I made a fair trade for Odey, on the blimp’s terms. And we made a fair trade for Lucy, on the Bear Baiters’ terms. Deal’s done. Now we go back to the trade fair.”
I turned around, saw Nivakti and Rindi bringing the teams out of the bushes. “Max, the Wonderblimp will be back. I told them we would have Lucy.”
“And the note I sent them told them they would get her when I got my coke.”
“A note?”
“A reader wrote it for me. I slipped it in with the jizzum.”
“Holmes . . . ?” Lucy asked. I ignored her.
“But they don’t have a reader,” I said. “They won’t—”
“They’ll get a reader, ” Max said. “They’ll figure it out.”
“They’ll blow us away from the sky,” I said.
Max yanked Lucy away from me, shook his head. “They won’t. You know that.” He pushed her toward his sled. “Get in,” he said.
Lucy looked up at me. “Holmes?”
“Do as he says. It’ll work out.”
Lucy got in the basket on the sled, crawled inside the sled bag. Max laced it up, pulled it tight around her, so only her head poked out. It would keep her from leaping out.
“I don’t want to have to tie you up, Holmes,” Max said. “Will you stay with us?’”
I looked at Rindi and Nivakti holding their teams. Rindi had my team harnessed, ready to go. Max had Lucy, and Lucy was the key back to the Wonderblimp. I had to stay with them. The Wonderblimp was my way north.
“I’ll stay with you,” I said. I moved to my sled.
“Good,” Max said. “Let’s move it.”
* * *
While I had been making my own plans for liberating Lucy, Max had been up to some scheming on his own. He got us a safe house in Down Town, back behind the wall of rubble. That was why he had suggested we make the exchange out on the bluffs: we could get to Down Town on the old railroad tracks and avoid the strip entirely.
The Rubbler militia passed us through a gate on the Cook’s River side of Down Town, up a hill that had slid down to the tracks in the last big quake—the beginning of the rubble, Max said. The Rubblers put us in the basement under a black skeleton of a building that said HUNT on front of it. Max said the building had once belonged to a group called the Hunts who used to go after game with silver bullets back before the Zap. The Hunt was a good place to hide from the Wonderblimp: we were surrounded by the steel frames of skyscrapers nearby, so it would be hard for the blimp to come in and attack, even if they knew where we were.
We staked the dogs out in a big room full of rusting automobiles. In the center of the room were a couple of houses on wheels, aluminum boxes with big W’s painted on the side; I guessed Wonderhomes was what they were. The Wonderhomes were parked side by side, and connected by short plywood hallways: our safe house.
Rindi went off to take care of the dogs and Max, Nivakti, and I took Lucy inside. Inside the house we removed our hoods. Lucy’s eyes got real big when she saw me, and her mouth opened in a little O. Then she shook her head.
“Holmes?” she asked. “You look like . . . No, it couldn’t be. Holmes, what’s happened to you?”
I scratched my new beard. “I don’t know. Things change.” I wanted to hug her, but it didn’t feel right. Screw it. I hugged her anyway, felt her warm body in my arms, felt the familiar bumps and ridges and contours of her flesh. She held her chin in my shoulder, and we hugged tight, afraid to let go again. But something still didn’t feel right. She didn’t feel like Lucy and I didn’t feel like me. We let go, and I turned to Nivakti and Max, introduced them.
“Nivakti’s from the far north,” I said. “He’s going home, like me. Max you may have heard of.”
“The Hammer?” she said. She looked him up and down “Yeah, I’ve heard of you.”
I looked at Lucy, back at Max. He glared at Lucy, then nodded. “Benelux,” he said. “Margarite Benelux, Ph.D.”
“Excuse me?” Lucy asked.
“I know you,” Max said. “Two names I remember from before the Zap. My own, and that of Margarite Benelux. Dr. Benelux. ‘Good light.’ You’re the bitch who put this goddamn bomb in my chest.” He pulled his hat off, rubbed his bald head. “You’re the bitch who put a killing dose of radiation in my body.” He shook his head. “I should have let the Bear Baiters keep you.”
“Holmes,” she said. “I don’t know this man. What is he saying? Did I . . . ?”
“Did you put a bomb in a man’s chest?” I asked.
“Maybe,” she said. “Yeah, I think so. Long ago. Before the Zap.” She blinked her eyes, ran a hand across her forehead, looked for a chair. Lucy sat down on a long couch along one wall. “But he was a criminal, they fried him anyway, and this guy . . . he’s alive. I couldn’t have done that to him, could I?”
“Not many people walking around with bombs in their chests,” Max said.
I nodded. I remembered a name scrawled in a child’s writing inside Little Monster Grows Up, the book on Lucy’s bedside table: Maggie. “Are you Maggie?” I asked.
“I’m Lucy,” she said. “Electrolux.” She stood up, grabbed my shirt, yanked me forward. “You read my name, you read the card. You said I was Electrolux!”
I shook my head. “Names are . . . names are words. I just read the word that seemed to fit. It was your card. You chose the card.”
“I am Electrolux,” she said. Her face went kind of weird, as if someone had turned a switch off. She sat back down, crossed her arms over her chest. “I did not do this to you!” Her voice rose. “I know nothing of this other woman!”
I looked at Max, and he shook his head. “We all lost parts of our previous selves.” He scratched his chest through his shirt. “If you did this, that part of you is dead. What will killing the shell of that person do to bring back my life?” He laid a hand on her face, stroked the bruises. “You are Electrolux, then. Just be very sure that you never become Benelux. If you ever become Benelux”— he stopped stroking, let his hand fall to her neck, and gently squeezed it—“then I will kill you.”
Nivakti smiled, opened his eyes. “Electrolux is a vacuum cleaner,” he said.
* * *
Max and I went into the trade fair the next day to post our new hostage. At the gate the Rubblers handed us passes to get back in: bronze coins with the image of an anchor and ship on one side, and the words BUS TOKEN on the back. We passed through the wall of rubble and onto the strip.
At the entrance to the trading shed a group of people milled around, waving fists and yelling. I could see flashes of red armbands through the crowds, and the glint of gu
n barrels. When we got close, I saw that there was a group of men in brown robes and rainbow-colored hats arguing with six shippo militia folks barring the door. The men in brown robes had colored braids sticking out from under their caps, just like Patagonia.
God Weirders.
“Those Bear Baiters gave up our hostage!” one of the Weirders was yelling. “We demand entrance!”
“The memors will not speak to you,” one of the guards said. “Go talk to the Baiters.”
The Weirder shook his fist. “We will not talk to those savages,” he said.
“Then I suggest you leave,” the militiaman said, “since those are the only people who will talk to you.”
We came up to the entrance, and two of the guards stepped aside to let us pass. The Weirder tried to follow behind us, but the guards crossed guns in front of him. “Find out who has the blimper!” the Weirder yelled after us. “I will pay you well!”
Inside, the room was as quiet as it had been a day earlier. Fewer people stood in line; the fair was winding down and most everyone had probably done all the trading they wanted. I looked up at the board again, saw that Odey’s name was still up, but with an asking bid of forty keys. I smiled. The Bear Baiters were going to come out fine. Lucy’s name had been erased. A chair emptied before a memor, and she motioned us toward her.
She looked like the memor we’d seen the day before: same gray hair chopped at the shoulders, same wrinkled face. But when I looked closer I saw that she was slightly different: different eyes, different nose, different face.
“I want to deliver a message,” Max said. “A private hostage deal.”
“That’s slightly irregular,” the memor said, again not in rhyme. “But it can be done. Who do you have?”
“Electrolux, the blimper,” Max said.
The memor raised her eyebrows, then shook her head. “She changes hands so often. Okay. And what is your price?”
Max scratched his chin. “It’s more . . . fulfillment of a contract. The blimper is only collateral. Tell them that if they deliver Max the Hammer’s co—um, goods, to the Redoubt, we will liberate the blimper.”
After the Zap Page 18