“Close,” I said.
“Close only counts in shaves,” Max said. We went back to Down Town.
* * *
At one o’clock two days later we piled all our gear on top of the remaining sled and dragged it out onto the strip, past the trading shack, into the middle of an open field that had been trampled flat by various camps. Most of the booths of the fair were gone, and only a few campfires burned along the edge of the strip. Some Rubblers moved along the strip, picking up trash, hauling it toward their growing mountain.
The Wonderblimp came in from the west, over a broad forest. I stood up, waved. The blimp floated gently toward us, nose into an eastern wind, props barely turning. She slowed, hovered, then descended near enough that I could see someone moving around in the nose bubble. A hatch opened and three ropes, one attached to a cargo net, fell out. Inside the cargo net were two monkey harnesses.
Max helped me get the sled in the cargo net, and then I showed him how to put the monkey harness on. We stood back as someone winched the sled up. Max’s rope went taut, and then he was yanked up into the blimp; I followed.
Bron met us in the hold. He handed me my old black glove. “Nike said to wear this,” he said.
“I’m not a blimper.”
“Wear it, Holmes.” Bron shoved the glove into my hand. I slipped it on while he stood there, glaring. Then he turned, took us up to the bridge.
One of the ports was cracked, but she looked the same. Lucy wasn’t there, of course, but Ruby nodded at me and smiled when I came in. Doc North came onto the bridge right after us. Nike stood up from his captain’s chair as we entered.
“Holmes, Hammer,” he said. “Welcome aboard. Your friends get off okay?”
“Yeah,” I said. “The God Weirders had a checkpoint set up outside Down Town, but they slipped by.”
“They know where to meet us?”
I nodded. “They’ll follow the Strange Trail to where it crosses the Sue River.”
“Show me,” he said. He walked over to a table, jabbed a finger at a map.
“Right there.” I traced a black line up along the edge of the river, stopped where the black line crossed a blue line. It was the same map Nike had showed me before: I recognized the mark with the X. SUE CITY, someone had penciled in.
“Chart a course,” he said.
I looked at the map, shook my head. “I’m not sure I’m working for you anymore.”
“You want to get north?” he asked.
“On my terms. No telling if you’ll abandon me again.”
“Christ, the only damn blimp in the PRAK, and you think you can just waltz in here like some kind of damn—”
“Reader. Like a damn reader.”
“Hoo-ooh. Like a reader, eh?”
“You got it, Nike.”
“Okay, Mr. Reader, since you’re so damn important, I won’t dump you off the blimp. I won’t abandon you. I’ll take you as far north as we’re going. You can have the run of the ship. And now I’ll ask you very kindly: would you pretty please chart a damn course?”
I smiled. “With pleasure.”
* * *
“Head due north,” I had told Nike. “Keep the old hag— Mountain Sue, my map said—to port.” Cook’s River fell behind us, and we flew over a smaller river and a sea of spruce and bog to another, larger river: the Sue. The late morning blazed clear and bright, a sky like the blue of an iceberg crushed into color by the heavy pounding of time. The Sue River made its crooked way almost due north, and it stabbed up the country at a mountain that made all other mountains anthills. The Mountain.
“The Great One,” I said. “The Ruskies called it Bolshoya Gora, Big Mountain.” Max looked at me funny. “Read that in a book somewhere.”
Denali pulled a range of mountains up with it into the clouds. She was the canine on a row of teeth, the cutting edge of a string of mountains that arced down to the old Hag, Mountain Sue. The Sue River split Denali’s range from a smaller range of mountains to the east. We were headed up a river valley between not hills but mountains, a river valley that spread in a chaotic braid up the lower elevations of mountains into glaciers. The Sue was fed by glaciers, great sheets of white wrapped on the sides of hills, hanging in amphitheaters, blocking passes in great walls. Glaciers fell down from the sides of Denali’s range like tongues thirsting for the sea, and dying in hills of till and rubble.
We came to the Sue River and followed her north. Nike took the Wonderblimp up to 5,000 feet, above the trees and even with the top of Mountain Sue. The river made a thousand channels through the glacial silt, a thousand streams and creeks that would be nearly impossible to follow on the river surface. Bron stood at the wheel, great hands guiding the blimp’s rudder. I told him to keep the river to port, and to watch for a road and railroad tracks to starboard.
“There she is,” Ruby said a few hours later over the intercom from the forward nacelle. “The road just off the starboard bow.”
I walked to the right side of the bridge, looked through a greasy window and around the engine nacelle. Below, two parallel strips of white cut through the woods north. I reached for the map at my station, compared the map with reality.
“The railroad is on the right,” I told Bron. “That’s the line that goes to Sue City. Watch for where the road forks; the railroad follows the right fork. Keep on that.”
“How soon until we get to Sue City?” Nike asked.
I looked at the map, guessed our distance from Sue City, glanced at the air speed indicator. At quarter props, with a good tail wind . . . “Three hours,” I told Nike.
* * *
The Wonderblimp flew in low over Sue City and tried the usual sucking-people-out-of-buildings trick. No one popped out of any buildings, as if we were a passing cloud and not a roaring, spitting, awe-inspiring blimp. Smoke rose from the chimneys of the buildings in Sue City and shapes moved behind the windows, but no one seemed curious at our arrival. Only the dogs welcomed us, howling into the afternoon long moans that reminded me of the good old days of police sirens and civil defense screams.
Sue City hugged the south bank of the fork of the Sue and the Talk River, a stretch of faded old buildings along a quiet, snow-covered street. Smoke rose from most of the buildings, and behind each building was a small dog yard with teams of dogs staked out. I thought I recognized my old team, but we flew by too fast and too high for me to be sure.
The road from the main fork and the railroad tracks ended at a burnt-out bridge that had once crossed the Talk River. A small spur road looped off the main road into Sue City, and another trail went east to an airstrip cut into the woods. We made one more pass over the town, but no one came out, no doors opened, no heads poked out of windows. Sue City was either dead, asleep, or completely bored by the idea of blimps cruising over their town. Probably happened all the time in a place like that. I mean, it was after all on a railroad and a highway, even if the tracks were wrecked, even if a car hadn’t come up the highway in five years.
Bron swung the Wonderblimp around to the strip, and there wasn’t anyone to greet us there either. No pylon. No gangs ready to tug lines. We had to set her down alone, and a bunch of us had to rappel down ropes and pound stakes into the hard, frozen gravel ourselves.
Yeah, Sue City probably had blimps drop in on them all the time, because it took a while for anyone to come out to the airstrip and welcome us to the environs. Maybe they hadn’t heard of the Wonderblimp and maybe they didn’t know about the wonderful stuff the Wonderblimp would be passing out. Maybe they didn’t know about the coke. Maybe, I figured, these folks had long ago figured that machines and objects that made loud noise were bad news, and what they were doing wasn’t so much being less than eager to greet us, but marshaling their forces.
Nike decided that we’d wait for someone in the town to come greet us, or wait for Nivakti and Rindi. He had Bron up on the crow’s nest, and Ruby was forward in the gun nacelle. About two hours after we got there, Bron called down from the to
p.
“Company,” he said over the ship’s intercom.
Max and I were drinking tea in the day room off the galley. I saw Nike get up and go to the window; I followed. Outside, a lone person glided up to the blimp on skis. Nike left the room. I glanced at Max, he shrugged, and we grabbed parkas and followed him down the gangplank and outside.
The person on skis pulled a hood back, and I saw that she was gray-haired, deep lines etched in her ebony face.
“I am K-2, the memory of Sue City,” she said. “I do not welcome you because we have no welcome for those we do not invite. Nonetheless, I am curious about who and what you are.” She stared at Nike, her brown eyes boring into him like laser marbles. It was a question, though she said it like a statement.
“I am Nike, and this is the Wonderblimp,” he said.
K-2 raised her eyebrows at the name. “You name yourself after a shoe?” She shook her head.
I heard a port slide open in the gun nacelle above. The machine gun’s barrel whirled around, pointed forward. Ruby slid another port open and yelled out to us.
“Trouble!” she said.
On the edge of the field, coming out of the woods, were forty, maybe fifty figures. Some of them were on dog teams, and, like the God Weirders, some of the sleds had machine guns mounted in the baskets. The Sue City militia spread out in a large arc, cutting off our flank and rear. We were being circled like herring in a purse seine. Nike let his hand slide down behind his back, and then I saw his hand stop. I looked up and saw that K-2 had a Suzuki cradled against her armpit, the barrel pointing right at Nike’s crotch.
“A tennis shoe,” she continued, as if militias kind of sashayed into her conversations all the time.
The militia stopped about ten yards out from us, completely surrounding the blimp. Nike didn’t even seem to notice they were there. He chatted with the woman, two old friends who had just bumped into each other on an airstrip in the middle of nowhere.
“You know names?” I asked her. “You’re a reader?”
K-2 tugged at her gray hair, glanced over at me, then back at Nike, keeping her eyes on him. “Would that I were,” she said. “I might not have this knowledge that makes me old before my time. I am a memor,” she said. “And you? Often only a reader asks if another is a reader. You are a reader?”
“I am a reader,” I said.
“Good,” she said. She turned to me. “We welcome you.” She waved at the militia surrounding us, and they turned, oozed back into the woods from where they’d come. “Can you speak for your friends?”
“They aren’t all my friends,” I said.
She smiled. “All the better for you. Still, can you speak for this . . . this machine?”
I caught Nike’s eye; he nodded. “Yes,” I said.
“Good. Then what is your business here?” she asked.
“We are here to meet some friends. Three people coming up by dog team. An eskimo and two women. Have you seen them?”
K-2 put a hand to her forehead, pinched her temples. “It is possible . . . We have so many people through here.”
I nodded my head in Max’s direction. “My friend here is also looking for a man named Big Mac. Do you know of this person?”
“Big Mac?” she asked. “That is a bastard name.”
“I don’t understand,” Nike asked.
“It is the bastard’s name for the mountain. Years ago these children would come to our town. They would say to us, ‘We want to climb Big Mac,’ and they would point to the mountain. We’d laugh at them, and refuse to take them. Anyone who would call the Great One such a trivial name had no respect for the mountain.” She laughed. “Big Mac was the name of a hamburger. Do you come looking for ‘Big Mac?’ ”
I lowered my head, spoke softly. “I meant no disrespect for Denali.” She smiled at the name. “I only meant a person who uses that name. Perhaps that person took the name because he was a bastard. Or perhaps he did not know better.”
Nike stared hard at K-2, his eyes boring into her eyes. “Big Mac is here,” he said.
“Big Mac is here,” she said.
“Okay, then. Can you take me to him? Or to our friends?”
K-2 looked over at the edge of the airstrip, jerked her head in a quick nod as if she were signaling someone, then turned to me. “Your friends are here,” she said. “I will take you to them.” She looked at Nike, Max, Bron, and pointed at Max. “Bring him.”
I shrugged, looked at Nike. He nodded. “Go ahead. We’ll wait on the Wonderblimp.”
“We’ll be back,” I said. And we followed her.
* * *
West of the airstrip, between the road and the river, was BEAUTIFUL DOWNTOWN something or other, a sign said; Sue City proper, I imagined. K-2 took us into the heart of beautiful downtown Sue City, down the street to a two-story building painted pink. A sign on the front said it was the TALK ROADHOUSE, and I imagined from the warmth radiating out from the house, talk was not cheap, talk was very dear. We hung our coats by the door; I idly noted a pink anorak hanging from a hook.
“This way,” the memor said. She led us through a big front room with ultrastuffed couches circling a fireplace, around a corner, and to a small dining room. Seated at an octagonal rough-hewn table, sipping tea from earthenware mugs, sat a woman dressed in a white body suit. Her head had been completely shaved, except for a long pink braid that twitched around from the crown of her head. I moved toward her, a smile on my face. Two large men in white jumpsuits stood next to her, tiny braids over their ears; they stood in my way. The woman pushed between them, gently shoved them aside. She laid a pale pink hand on the table. I looked down, moved back when I saw the thing she pointed at me: a Nissan, with the safety clicked off.
“Lucy?” I asked.
She shook her head. “Not anymore.”
“Big Mac?” The words croaked out of my mouth through dry-fear lips.
“Bingo,” she answered as she cocked the hammer on the pistol.
CHAPTER 15
I stared down the barrel of her Nissan pistol—it had been painted pink—and imagined the bullet spiraling up to meet me. I imagined the hammer striking home on the cartridge, imagined the brass denting, imagined the powder exploding and kicking that hunk of lead out the barrel like a devil mother giving birth. I imagined the tip of the bullet rising to my heart, seeking the expiration of its energy in the flesh of my flesh. I imagined the shock, the great kick, and then the quick fading of life. All this I imagined, and then I opened my eyes and saw Lucy, a.k.a. Big Mac, a.k.a. Electrolux, a.k.a. Flamingo, saw the woman who had been my lover ease the hammer down and click on the safety.
“Nah,” she said. “Not yet. Your life is still useful to me.”
I let a slow breath ease from my lungs, the breath I had thought would be my last, and then I inhaled the first in what I hoped would be a long series of new breaths. “My life has always been useful to me,” I said trying to be cool, but not looking very cool, I was sure.
She smiled, put the Nissan back into her belt. The braid slid over her shoulder and wiggled down to her waist. Lucy looked at Max, pointed with her chin at the Snow Angels.
“You may know these people,” she said to him. “I think you killed Dungbreath’s brother, um—”
“Pigbreath,” Max said. “Guy had it coming.”
“He was my brother,” Dungbreath said.
“Yeah?” Max said. “Maybe you got it coming, too.” I jerked around, glared at him. Max caught my eye, smiled. I couldn’t figure out why he was smiling; the coke was radioactive, and the one person who he could pawn it off on had turned out to be Lucy. He’d just kissed his fortune good-bye.
“We got some coke coming,” Dungbreath said.
“Stand in line,” Max said. He glared at Lucy. “Deal’s a deal, though. I don’t care who you are. I told Nike that when we got here I’d turn you over to him if he gave me the coke. Uh, I guess you’ve made your own arrangements . . . Where are Rindi and Nivakti?”
“They’re fine,” Lucy said. “They saw the writing on the wall and decided to let the Snow Angels ‘liberate’ me.”
K-2 coughed behind me. “They’re outside feeding the dogs,” she said.
Max scratched his head. “Nike know about your new, um, persona?”
Lucy smiled, scratched her bald head. “Nike probably thinks he’s Big Mac. But I created Big Mac; I set it up with the Snow Angels.”
“Wait a second,” I said. “I don’t get it. The God Weirders had you.”
“Yeah, and they handed me over to the Snow Angels, who were supposed to take me to the Bear Baiters.”
“Which they did,” I said.
“Which they did,” she acknowledged. “But along the way I made a deal. I created this Big Mac character who would be looking to buy blimpers. I figured Nike would eat it up, catch on.”
“How’s that?” I asked. Something nagged me.
“Big Mac is also a code name we have for a little project.”
“A little project?” I asked. “What do you mean?” Now where had I heard of Big Mac before Ship Creek? I asked myself. And it hit me: Khim’s message in Kachemak. “From the Great Mountain / Big Mac offers you great riches / If you will seek him,” she had said. Had Lucy planted that message as well?
Lucy reached out, patted my cheek. “Don’t you worry your little head. Anyway, it was my way of making sure I found you again, and got you back to the Wonderblimp up here. It worked, didn’t it?”
“Yeah,” I had to admit. “But why?”
“Figure it out, dumb cluck.”
I thought about it a moment. Okay, so Lucy used this person Big Mac to get us to liberate her, find the Wonderblimp, and come up to Sue City. Why? The scam had more holes in it than a mosquito screen, but I had to admit that it had worked. We were here. But I still didn’t understand why she needed me at Sue City. I didn’t want to find out, either, but I had this creepy feeling all would be revealed shortly.
After the Zap Page 20