George R.R. Martin - [Wild Cards 18] (54 page)

“Please tell me you’re going to Berlin,” Cohen said.

“I’m going the other way, actually.”

“You can’t do that, DB. You can’t cancel this concert at the last minute. Forget that it violates your contract, it’s not fair to the rest of Joker Plague. It’s not fair to your fans.” A pause. “It’s not fair to me.”

“This is more important right now. To me.”

Cohen’s exasperation rasped the phone’s speaker. “What? What’s more important? You think you’re fucking Bono, off to save the goddamn world?”

“Wow, KA. Didn’t mean to touch a nerve.”

“Fuck!” The blast of fury made Michael lift the phone away from his ear. “DB, you blow off this tour and Joker Plague is finished. The label won’t touch you again. Your career—and everyone else’s—gets flushed down the toilet.”

“Bullshit,” Michael spat back. “Let’s cut the crap. You’re
just worried about your own ass, KA. The label still has a best-selling CD, and they’re not going to flush that. It’s all about the money, Grady, and we both know it. You’ll be getting plenty of publicity to sell CDs and concert tickets by the time I get back. I promise you that.”

“When? When are you coming back?” Another pause, and a long sigh. “Look, maybe I can do something with Berlin, even London if I have to. But when are you getting back here? By New York? Tell me it will be by New York.”

“Talk to you later, KA.”

“DB! Goddamn it—”

Michael closed the cover. With his middle hand, he sidearmed the phone at the concrete wall of the terminal. It shattered. He strode quickly toward the open door of the plane and hauled himself inside. The pilot was checking off instruments. He glanced back at Michael as he strapped into the nearest seat.

“Let’s get the hell out of here before I change my mind,” he told the pilot.

The long road from the Aswan airport was drifted with sand, and the air above the asphalt wavered and rippled. The wind through the open windows of the taxi only seemed to stir the heat. “It has not rained here in six years,” the driver said, glancing over his shoulder to where Michael was crammed uncomfortably into the rear seat. His eyes widened slightly, and Michael figured he must look like a large spider stuffed into a too-small box. “When our people weep, we save the tears.”

The car seemed ready to shed side panels like a snake’s discarded skin with every pothole and bump. The vehicle shuddered from badly out-of-alignment tires, every inch of the interior was coated with a fine layer of sand, and the driver—“Ahmed,” he said. “It is like ‘Bob’ in your language. A common name, but I am a man of uncommon talent”—used his horn at every possible opportunity, or simply as punctuation. Ahmed spoke English well enough, but he also spoke it constantly. “The Living Gods, they say ’Ah, we will
take us back to the old ways, the right ways, the way it should be for us.’ Egypt, she is ancient and that’s why she likes them, but these Ikhlas al-Din and the Caliph …” He shook his head and swerved violently around a slower car, horn blaring, as Michael’s head banged first against the roof, then the side.

“Ta’ala musso!”
Ahmed shouted from the window. Michael assumed it was a curse. Ahmed wrestled the car back into its lane and continued his monologue. Michael wished that Ahmed would look more at the road and less at him. “You are what they call a ‘joker,’ yes? Myself, I have many friends who are jokers and a few even in my family, so I am not offended to look at you. Here, so many with the virus take on the shapes of the old gods—it is the very land that does this. Their forms are in the sand and the stones and the air. The waters of the Nile flow with it. You, in your United States, you take on whatever shape you wish, like you with your many arms to make much noise, but
here
—here the old gods use the virus to allow their shapes to return to their ancient home. These Ikhlas al-Din, they believe that Allah has cursed the deformed ones for their sins, but even though I am Muslim I am not so certain. I wonder if the Old Ones aren’t truly attempting to return. When you go see the temples and the places of the gods here, you’ll wonder, too. Go to Philae, or even to Sehel; I will take you.”

Michael grunted, his head slamming against the roof of the car with every bump, his legs folded up against his chest, his several hands clutching at any hold he could find. The heat made him sweat, which made the sand stick to his bare skin, and he could taste the gritty stuff in his mouth. They drove rapidly east, through a village where people watched the taxi from open doorways or behind shuttered windows. The market they passed was closed and deserted; Michael suspected that most of the inhabitants had already fled the area. The driver turned onto a four-lane highway, and Michael saw ahead the curve of the massive dam that held Lake Nasser. “Sadd el Aali,” Ahmed said, pointing through the sandblasted windshield. “The High Dam. And there, that is our memorial, celebrating the cooperation of Egypt and the Soviet Union which allowed us to build such a wonderful dam.”

The memorial was monumentally ugly to Michael’s eyes: five huge pillars like the petals of a concrete flower holding up a concrete ring at the summit. There were tents erected in the open space around the memorial. As they approached, guards with automatic weapons waved the taxi to the side of the road. AH of the guards appeared to be jokers. Ahmed honked at the men and appeared prepared to run them down, but Michael reached over the seat with a muscular top hand and pulled the wheel hard to the right. “This is my stop,” he said, and Ahmed shrugged and braked. Michael opened one of the rear doors and managed to unfold himself from the car without quite falling down. He rummaged in a pocket and tossed several bills onto the passenger seat of the taxi.
“Salam alekum,”
he said.

“Wa alekum es salam,”
Ahmed replied, glancing at the bills—that he didn’t bother to haggle told Michael he’d drastically overpaid. “Though I doubt that you will find much peace here,” Ahmed said solemnly. “Here, my number if you need me again.” Michael took the crumpled business card as the guards approached, their weapons trained on his bare chest. He put down his duffel bag and raised his many hands.

“Hey, Drummer Boy!” one of them said in Arabic-accented English. He lifted an iPod from the breast pocket of his fatigues, and Michael saw the white cord of headphones running up to a hairless head that looked more like a skull, the buds stuffed into earless holes. “Joker Plague—love your music. I have all your CDs.”

They slung their weapons over their shoulders and Michael lowered his hands. Ten minutes later, he knew the joker fan’s name was Masud, the other guard had taken their picture together, and Michael picked up his duffel bag again. “I’m looking for Lohengrin or John Fortune,” he said.

“I’ll take you to them,” Masud said. He inclined his head toward the monument. “This way. Would you mind giving me an autograph, too?”

There was a rusting and decrepit motorcycle parked outside the tent. Fortune was inside, standing alongside a table with
maps spread out and held down by rocks against the furnace-like wind off the desert. The armpits of his white shirt were stained a pale yellow and his normal
café au lait
skin was tanned darkly; his blond, curly hair was bleached by the sun, so that the contrast between skin and hair was stark. Lohengrin—looking more like a pudgy, badly sunburned college student than a warrior without the white armor—stood next to him, along with Jonathan Hive. Three of the Living Gods were gazing at the maps as well; the one called Sobek, who bore the head of a crocodile, the hippopotamus god Taweret, and a dark-haired teenaged girl Michael remembered from her brief stint on
American Hero:
Aliyah Malik, also known as Simoon.

He’d never been to bed with her. Not that he probably wouldn’t have tried, if she’d stayed in the game long enough.

Fortune touched a finger to the jewel of Sekhmet embedded in his forehead, as if trying to massage it. The lump was far too prominent for Michael’s comfort. “What’s left of the Egyptian army has pulled back north of Aswan, but all the reports we’re hearing say that Ikhlas al-Din and the army of the caliphate are advancing southward along the road from Daraw and Kôm Ombo—the Djinn’s with them, and so is the Caliph. Some are coming by rail, some in vehicles. They have C-130 transport planes, too. That means that taking out the airport is a priority, to keep them on the east side of the river and away from Sehel Island and Syrene. They’re moving quickly. It’ll be the same tactical situation we had with the Egyptians: they’re on the east side, and will be looking to cross the Nile at the British dam, or maybe here at the High Dam where the road is wider. We don’t know where they’ll make their initial attack, or how.… ”

Fortune lifted up his head as Michael stepped under the shadow of the open-sided tent. He grimaced and his voice changed slightly. “Well, the Little Drummer Boy shows up,” he said. “What are you doing here? Your tour cancelled already?”

Michael held back the anger that surged through him at the hated nickname. “I figured you could use more help.”

Fortune snorted. “You know what? This isn’t a goddamn
television show and I’m not your Captain Cruller anymore. We don’t need a guest star appearance, especially from someone who’s only here for publicity. You just want to see your face on CNN so you can sell a few more CDs. This is serious. People are
dying
here.” His face twisted, and for a moment Michael wondered who was talking, Fortune or Sekhmet. “We just buried King Cobalt. The Caliph intends to wipe out all the rest of us, along with the Living Gods and all their followers. This is war, and it’s real. I—we—don’t need dilettantes strolling in at the last minute.”

A wasp shrilled by Michael’s ear. He ignored it. “That’s what I figured you’d say. But you ain’t the only one here. What would Kate say? Or you, Lohengrin? Bugsy? You know what I got to offer.”

Lohengrin neither smiled nor frowned. Sweat beaded on his forehead, but evaporated before it could slide down his pale, doughy features. “He’s strong enough,
ja?
We shouldn’t turn down allies, John. We need every ace.”

“I’m a joker, not an ace,” Michael told him.

Lohengrin shrugged. Bugsy only stared. Sobek and Taweret were conferring sibilantly with Ali in Arabic, and she said something quietly to Fortune. Michael waited.

Finally Fortune looked down at the map again. “Fine. I don’t give a damn one way or the other. Just stay the hell away from me.”

“Not a problem,” Michael said. He waited a beat. “Where’s Kate?” he asked.

That brought Fortune’s head up again. “You’ll leave her alone.”

“I’ll let her tell me that.” Michael glanced at the map. “When you figure out where I can help you, let me know.” He turned to leave the tent. “No, you ain’t Captain Cruller no more,” he muttered. “You’re fucking Beetle Boy.”

He didn’t particularly care if Fortune or his companions heard him. He was tapping at his chest as he left, and the sound of drums echoed from the low hills around Lake Nasser.

“Ana! Earth Witch! Hey, I heard you saved the day with the dam.”

The woman, wearing a wide-brimmed straw hat, glanced over her shoulder at him. Her eyes widened as she recognized him, then narrowed tightly. “I thought I was ‘Earth Bitch’ to you.”