Dealer's Choice

by George R. R. Martin

  “Ackroyd,” Ray said, but there was no response. He took two steps into the tiny room, which put him right in front of the desk, and rapped twice on the desktop next to Ackroyd’s crossed ankles.

  The P.I. looked up, startled, almost dropping his magazine. The alarmed look in Ackroyd’s eyes vanished, replaced by one of polite questioning. He uncrossed his ankles and took his feet off the desk. “Yes?” he asked in the too-loud voice of those wearing headphones.

  Ray grimly tapped his right ear, and Ackroyd nodded. “Oh, right.” He took the headphones off. “What can I do for you?”

  Ray choked back a snarl. This had to be another one of Ackroyd’s asshole flights of comedy. The two had crossed paths more than once. Ray knew that his face had been messed up badly by Mackie Messer, but there was no way that Ackroyd didn’t recognize him.

  “It’s Ray,” he said sarcastically. “Or do I have to show you my ID?”

  “Um, no,” Ackroyd said, putting his magazine down on the desk. It was the latest issue of Aces. “How’ve you been?”

  “How’ve I been?” Ray repeated, outraged. I’ve been in the hospital for eight goddamn months, you asshole, he wanted to shout. But he knew that Ackroyd was only trying to set him off. “Fine,” he said between gritted teeth. “Just fucking fine.” "Great,” Ackroyd said without conviction, staring at the ruin of Ray’s face. “Why don’t you sit down?”

  “No thanks,” Ray spit out. “This isn’t a social call.”

  “Business?”

  “Business.” He paused to gather his self-control. “Listen, gumshoe, this isn’t my idea, but the man I’m working for thinks he needs you for a job.”

  “What kind of job?” Ackroyd asked eagerly.

  Now he goes into his eager-beaver act, Ray thought. He leaned forward, put his hands palm down on Ackroyd’s desktop. Ray was not one to dissemble. He gave it to him straight. “He’s leading a covert assault team onto Ellis Island.”

  “Ellis Island?” Ackroyd repeated. He shook his head. “You must be from Battle. I’ve already told him that this isn’t my kind of thing.”

  “You don’t get it,” Ray said coldly. “I’m not asking your opinion. You’ve been drafted.”

  “Drafted? I’m too old.”

  “None of your fucking wisecracks,” Ray exploded. “Battle wants you on the team. You’re going.”

  “I’m a private citizen” Ackroyd protested.

  “Look,” Ray said, “I’m just a messenger. As far as I’m concerned, we need you like I need a pimple on my ass, but if the man wants you, you’re going. And he’s connected. Heavily. You decide you don’t want to go on this jaunt and we’ll have your ticket pulled faster than you can say ’unemployment line.’ You got me?”

  “You can’t be serious,” Ackroyd protested. “You can’t take away my license.”

  “Try me,” Ray said.

  He glared at Ackroyd, who glared back. The standoff might have held for eternity except for the quiet knock on the open door to Ackroyd’s inner office.

  Both men turned, stared, and barked out, “What?”

  It was an old woman in a domestic’s outfit. She looked startled. “All right if I clean now, Mr. Ackroyd? I can come back later if you want.”

  “It’s okay, Consuela,” Ackroyd said, still glaring. “Ray here was just leaving. He’s got to go polish his medals.” "Polish my medals. Christ, you’re slipping, Ackroyd.” Ray reached into his pocket, pulled out a card, and dropped it onto the P.I.’s desk. “Be at that address, tomorrow, at six A.M. Or be ready to find a real job.”

  He waited a moment for Ackroyd’s rebuttal, but none came. He left the office muttering to himself and shaking his head.

  This time the rite was safe from interruption. Troll stood outside the door, arms folded, daring any intern to attempt to enter Jack Robicheaux’s room. He looked like his namesake. Nine feet tall and green-skinned, his appearance was not such that even Dr. Bob would try to move him. Which was good, because he had said things that suggested the blood between Troll and Dr. Bob was bad indeed.

  In fact, Dr. Bob Mengele had indeed rushed up to the room when he had somehow found out that Wyungare and Cordelia planned to do something unorthodox with Jack Robicheaux.

  “Relax, Doctor,” Wyungare said. “It’s only a trip the little missy and I are taking. I will perform no unauthorized therapy. All right?” Then he had firmly shut the door on Dr. Bob’s dumbfounded face.

  He repeated the minor ritual he had set up earlier and alone. Wyungare set the single candle on the head of the bed-table. He changed into his waistcloth.

  “Should I undress?” said Cordelia.

  “It would just distract me,” said Wyungare. “Actually, you can wear whatever will make you the most comfortable.”

  Cordelia took off her shoes.

  Wyungare hunkered over the skin drum and began to tap out a steady rhythm.

  “What do I do?” said Cordelia, hovering close to him.

  “Listen to the drum. Watch the candle. Concentrate on your uncle. Remember him as you love him.”

  Cordelia looked uncertain as she stared at the wavering

  candle flame. “Le boa temps. she whispered. And then, somewhere in the middle of what she was saying to herself, both Wyungare and she were somewhere else. She stared around them both at the rough stone pillars reaching toward a slate sky.

  “Where are we? Are we in Jack’s head?”

  “We are in the middle world,” said Wyungare. “This time we have to climb. Good healthy exercise.”

  “Wonderful,” Cordelia muttered. “I wish I could have dreamed myself a fitter body.”

  “I think it’s plenty fit enough,” said her lover.

  Cordelia smiled. “You’re sweet.”

  The pair clambered up an increasingly steep slope.

  “Can’t you dream us a giant eagle to act as a magic elevator and get us up the mountainside?”

  Whatever he was about to answer was lost as the reality fabric tore across like ripping silk. The noise echoed in her head, traveled in directly to the core of her bones, started to feel as though someone were scraping the marrow out with a dull metal blade. Cordelia saw something that looked like the squiggle lines when a TV’s not on cable and the reception keeps going in and out.

  She squinted, concentrated. The picture got a little better, but not much. A buzz-saw whine assaulted her ears and started to cut an entry directly into her brain.

  Wyungare knew what she was feeling and thinking. He took her hand. “Come on,” he said.

  “What is it?” Her voice rose a little. “What’s going on?”

  “It’s like interference,” he said. “The signal’s scrambling.”

  She stumbled on the path, her ankle turning as her foot came down on a stone she had somehow not seen. She involuntarily whimpered with the abrupt pain.

  “Are you hurt?”

  “No!” she said. “Just tripped. Clumsy.”

  The skies cleared. The metallic whine diminished and then dissipated.

  “Better than it sometimes is,” said Wyungare. “Let’s make time, just in case it returns.”

  “It?” "Him,” said Wyungare. “He. The boy.”

  “I don’t like what he does.” Cordelia still limped.

  “This is a minor manifestation.”

  “What’s major?”

  “I don’t think you truly wish to know,” said Wyungare.

  “Don’t be so sure. Tell me.”

  They had somehow climbed much farther than the apparent elapsed time could allow for. The two of them were close to the top of the climb. More trees, soft green shade, lush grass awaited as they reached the summit.

  “It’s paradise,” said Cordelia. Their surroundings flickered, somehow rearranged themselves, settled into permanence. Cordelia and Wyungare walked under a thick canopy of twisted tree branches. They skirted a brackish pool. Something surfaced in the center of the water, then went down as fast as it had come up.

 
; The air stifled. It was hot and filled with moisture. Heavy. Wyungare felt like he was trying to breathe underwater without any gear.

  “This is Louisiana,” said Cordelia, apparently revising her first judgment. “It feels like our parish down south.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised,” said Wyungare, “considering the nature of our host.”

  They crossed through more thick trees and came upon the sun-grayed frame house. “We used to live here,” Cordelia said wonderingly. “Uncle Jack’s folks had it before us.” She reached out, almost fearfully, and touched her fingertips to the mold-burred wood.

  Wyungare listened attentively to something. “Around the corner,” he said. “Someone’s waiting for us.”

  They rounded the end of the house. Wyungare saw what he had encountered on the previous trip. He glanced at Cordelia. The young woman obviously was sharing the same construction.

  Ahead of them, the young boy struggled weakly with the staked-down screen door pressed tightly over him.

  “Move it,” Cordelia said, reaching toward the door. “We need to free him.”

  “Don’t be too hasty,” said Wyungare. But Cordelia had already bent to one of the steel spikes and had started to prise it loose from the soft earth.

  “Well? Don’t just stand there,” said Cordelia, waving the spike triumphantly. “Dig in. There’s plenty for everyone.”

  Indeed there was. Wyungare pushed and pulled a spike until the head was covered with blood from the Aborigine’s abraded fingertips. But finally the spikes were all removed, and together, the pair pulled the screen door loose.

  The young boy — perhaps eight — glanced up at them. His eyes were dark and very serious. He shook his head and tried to sit up. At first his arms would not support him. He took a deep breath and started over. Finally he was upright. He toed the somewhat battered screen door.

  “Uncle… Jack?” said Cordelia. “Are you okay? I mean, is there anything we can get for you?”

  The very young Jack Robicheaux said nothing. He cast his vision down, looked up at them from beneath unkempt curly hair.

  “Do you recognize me?”

  He apparently did not.

  “Will you come with us?” said Wyungare.

  The boy stared at him for a long time. Then, hesitantly, he reached toward the Aborigine’s hand.

  But he still said nothing.

  Cordelia stared down at him, a trace of tears moistening the skin beneath her eyes.

  And that’s when the chainsaw howl started to disembowel the world.

  Modular Man caught occasional glimpses of the gray towers of the Rox as he flashed above the sweating streets of Jersey City. He increased speed, popped up above street level at the last second as the curtain wall and the bastions of the Jersey Gate came up like an anvil trying to squash him.

  He soared up above the bastion and emptied one of his two bags of leaflets at the top of his climb. The wind scattered them like a bomb burst as the android dropped down over Liberty Park, then flew at wave-top level for the Mad Ludwig spires of the Rox.

  The Bradley fighting vehicles were still in place, he noted. So was the Vulcan. He had observed the barrel of one of the fifties thrust from a cross-shaped slit on the northernmost tower of the Jersey Gate bastion.

  A mile-long bridge arched between a huge gatehouse and the mainland. Armored knights, riding flying fish, floated overhead as a kind of combat air patrol. Modular Man crossed under the bridge to help conceal his approach and then popped up again.

  A few jokers gaped upward at him, but the rest seemed unaware of his presence. The fish-knights seemed now to be observing him, and they were turning their steeds into slow turns. The android opened his second pack of leaflets.

  “I come in peace!” he yelled, and flung a handful of leaflets to the wind. “I’m carrying a message!”

  No one seemed to be listening.

  Bloat was pissed.

  “Damn it, can’t anyone shoot him down?” he raged at Kafka. “I want him in little tiny pieces, do you hear me!”

  The appearance of Modular Man in the sky above the Rox and the rain of leaflets he’d released had stirred Bloat’s kingdom like a stick poked into a mound of fire ants. The mindvoices buzzed with it…

  …can’t be jumped. It ain’t no ace, just a machine… fucking Bloat can’t keep Modular Man out…

  …what if those were goddamn bombs and not just pieces of paper? We’d be dead every last one of us…

  …Shit, I’m calling that damn number…

  Bloat could see Modular Man through the walls of the castle, leaflets fluttering in his wake.

  “Governor, we’ve tried everything. The Vulcans can’t seem to track him. He’s too fast and too well armored for small-arms fire.” Kafka was shaking with fury. His chitinous plates rattled like crockery in an earthquake. Around the room, Bloat’s joker guards were clutching automatic weapons at ready, nervous. “Every minute he’s here he does more harm to the morale of the Rox than a dozen rumors about the coming attack.”

  “I know that. I’m hearing it, believe me.” Bloat watched Modular Man appear over a pair of delicate minarets and then glide behind the thorny spires of the transformed hospital. He glared, listening again to the Rox and knowing that Kafka was right. “Must I always do everything myself?” he sighed. “All right. I’ll take care of him.”

  He hoped that he could.

  One of the armored knights sped at Modular Man couching a swordfish as a lance. The android added a little lateral impulse, sidestepped the thrust, and stuck a leaflet on the end of the lance as the knight passed by. A gust of foul air, like a million dead fish, followed in the fish-man’s wake.

  “Don’t shoot!” he yelled as a Vulcan mounted on the keep began to track toward him. “I’m not attacking!” He flung more leaflets to the breeze.

  The 60-mm mortars, he observed, were emplaced inside the inner bailey.

  There was a rush of flame and a hissing noise as a shoulder-fired antiaircraft rocket lanced upward from the ground.

  “Don’t shoot!” Modular Man screamed. He added another burst of lateral energy and sidestepped the rocket. The rocket weaved for a moment, the reacquired one of the fish-men and blew it out of the sky in a surprisingly violent burst of smoke and flame.

  “Now look what you’ve done!” The Vulcan seemed to be getting a bead on him. Modular Man swung down into the outer bailey, where the 20-mms couldn’t track, and dumped another bunch of leaflets.

  The fish-men began diving on him in a complex pattern that required a lot of twisting flight before he could avoid them. Bursts of small-arms fire crackled out. One of them splashed another fish-man. More fish-men appeared overhead, quite literally out of nowhere. The defenses seemed to be getting much better coordinated. Nobody seemed to be reading the leaflets.

  Maybe it was time to go.

  Bloat closed his eyes. He brought back the image of Bosch’s Temptation of St. Anthony, of the writhing, martial deformities that had been on the now-destroyed panels of the triptych, and he reached into that part of him where he dreamed. He opened his eyes again, looking out from the transparent walls to the sky, searching for Modular Man. He found him, a speck racing across the sky, moving closer to the castle and still releasing his propaganda.

  “I have you,” Bloat whispered.

  He brought them forth.

  They appeared in the air alongside Modular Man: a squadron of mermen soldiers riding flying fishes. What the android did then startled Bloat. Modular Man performed an astonishing bank and dive, turning acrobatically left and below. The move would have been impossible for a human — the G-forces must have been incredible. The turn would have ripped the wings from a plane.

  Bloat, cursing and tracking Modular Man with his eyes, made his dream creatures dart after the android. For several seconds there was a wild aerial dogfight, then Modular Man came to a sudden halt like someone had turned off a motion picture projector; Bloat’s gaze went helplessly past for a second,
then back. Laser fire raked Bloat’s creatures. Several of the fish-mounted knights plummeted to the earth, vanishing before they hit. Then Modular Man streaked off again, scattering more leaflets.

  “Damn it,” Bloat said. “If I can’t catch him, I’ll just ram the bastard.”

  Bloat materialized another merman directly in front of Modular Man. The android was moving far too fast to evade. From the Great Hall, they could all see the tremendous midair collision. Modular Man tumbled and fell end over end, slamming into one of the stone walls of the towers in a cascade of granite chips. The android caromed out of sight; it didn’t appear that it was still functioning.

  Kafka let out a shout. All around the Great Hall, jokers cheered. The mindvoices of the Rox cried in victory. Bloat grinned.

  “We’ve won another skirmish,” he exulted. “You see, Kafka? They can’t touch us. They ain’t ever going to touch us.,,

  The android dived down into the inner bailey. The last of the leaflets trailed behind him. He shot across the courtyard, leaving baffled fish-knights in his wake, then climbed again.

  One of the fish-men materialized out of thin air right in front of him. Modular Man was going 150 miles per hour and there was no way to avoid a collision.

  There was an alloy-twisting crash. Jarred circuits staggered. The knight, the fish, and the android tumbled. The knight’s armor was crushed: the limp body vanished in a puff of brimstone before it hit the pavement.

  Modular Man slammed into the castle wall, but managed to avoid sliding to the pavement below. Stunned circuits were bypassed or came back on line. The world swayed, then stabilized. Modular Man took off again, popped over the outer wall, then dropped to wave-top level again.

  Three fingers on his right hand were twisted into spiral ruin. It was clearly time to leave.

  He had accelerated to over 600 miles per hour by the time he reached Manhattan.

  He’d talk to Travnicek again.

  If he showed Travnicek that he was damaged, perhaps Travnicek would order him to stay out of trouble.

  A slim hope, perhaps, but the only one he had.

  “I got a real bad feeling about this,” Molly Bolt said. She was a slender girl, shaggy hair streaked in a half-dozen colors, inverted cross dangling from one ear.