George Martin - Suicide Kings

He looked at Niobe who smiled at him, but there was a serious look in her green eyes.

“I love you,” Noel said.

She didn’t give the usual response. Instead she asked, “Are you home now?”

“Yes.” And he added, “Now, and forever.”

“Good.”

United Nations

Manhattan, New York

Lohengrin’s office never changed. The phones were always ringing. The little chiming noise that meant new e-mail had come through was still on its way to nervous collapse. Klaus himself was a little more worn, a little more tired. But he also had the small cut-in laugh lines that came from winning a few. So that was all right.

Lohengrin leaned back in his chair. His smile was softer than Bugsy had expected. His voice was gentle. “You look good, my friend.”

“You make a boy blush,” Bugsy said. “You’re looking pretty spiffy yourself. The eye patch works for you. Very Dread Pirate Odin.”

Klaus didn’t even look pained. That fact alone told Bugsy just how rough he seemed. He thought he’d been hiding it better. “I’m sorry. For what happened,” Lohengrin said.

“Don’t be,” Bugsy said. “We all knew the risks.”

There was a pause. It was the invitation to spill it all out. Bugsy thought about telling him what it had been like, going back to Ellen’s apartment to get his things and seeing everything still there. The accumulated artifacts of maybe a hundred ended lives. All the last chances were gone now. All the voices silenced. The dead were dead again.

He let the silence speak for itself.

Lohengrin nodded. “What are you going to do now?”

Bugsy raised his eyebrows in feigned confusion. “Well,” he said. “I was thinking lunch. And there’s an entomology conference going on at NYU. I was thinking I’d maybe go hang out at the bars and seem interesting. It’s Lyme disease mostly, but I can hope for a cute grad student who’s into wasps.”

Lohengrin did look just a little pained that time. So that was good. “You don’t always have to make a joke of it, Jonathan.”

“Oh, but I do,” Bugsy said with a grin. “Oh, yes, I do.”

“I meant, will you remain with the Committee?” Lohengrin said.

“Will I keep putting myself in a position to get killed or watch my friends suffer and die while the whole fucking prospect slowly sinks into the permanent cesspool of bureaucracy?”

“Yes,” Lohengrin said.

“I don’t know,” Bugsy said. Then a moment later, “I will if you will. Or we could strike out on our own. Roam the earth meting out justice, overthrowing bad guys according to our own personal values, making time with the cute girls.”

The phone rang. Lohengrin let it. “You make it sound tempting,” he said with a grin.

“Yeah, until you remember that was the Radical’s job description, too. Didn’t work out too well.”

“It could have been worse,” Lohengrin said.

“Words to live by.”

The Jerusha Carter Childhood

Development Institute

Jokertown, Manhattan, New York

“Any pain when I do this?” Dr. Finn asked. He pulled Wally’s arm straight ahead, then gently raised it.

“Nope. Not at all, Doc.” The dull ache throbbed through Wally’s shoulder. “Uh, maybe a little.”

Finn released Wally’s arm. “That bullet did a great deal of damage when it shattered inside your shoulder. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t shocked that you didn’t suffer permanent loss of function in this arm.” He marked something on Wally’s chart. “You’re lucky you didn’t lose your leg, too,” he added absently.

“Which one?”

Finn peered at him over his eyeglasses. “After getting attacked by a crocodile? Both of them.” His tone was stern, but his eyes gleamed. “You can button your shirt now.”

Wally hopped down, gingerly, from the exam table. The bullet wound in his leg had become badly infected during the long trek across the Congo; Finn had said something about river parasites, too. They had it under control now, but after six months of antibiotic treatments, his leg still wasn’t back to full strength.

His other leg, the one the croc had chomped, still had teeth marks in it. Finn speculated it probably always would, though he readily admitted he knew very little about healing processes in iron.

Wally’s side still ached, too, from where they’d opened him up to fix his broken ribs. They’d removed a big chunk of iron to do that. Most of his skin had grown back, thick and heavy as ever, but he still had tender spots.

Finn jotted something on a prescription pad. He tore off the sheet and handed it to Wally. “One last set of treatments. After this you’ll be in the clear.”

“Thanks.” Wally tucked the prescription into the breast pocket of his overalls. “Let’s go check on the kids,” he said.

Finn led him down the corridor and through a sheet of construction plastic draped over the doorway where his clinic abutted the new school. The hallways here stank of fresh paint. Finn’s hooves left little dimples in the linoleum; the carpet layers weren’t finished. And judging by the rolls of carpeting stacked everywhere-all in bright, kid-friendly colors-they wouldn’t be for a while.

The Jerusha Carter Childhood Development Institute-or the “Carter School,” as people had already begun to call it-was built around a large interior courtyard. A baobab tree grew in the center of the space, shading the playground where Ghost played alongside the dozens of children Jerusha had rescued from Nyunzu. A few of the children had already been adopted; most would need years of counseling.

Wally and Finn strolled along one of the cloisters lining the courtyard. Ghost saw them. (Her name was Yerodin, but Wally still thought of her as Ghost; he probably always would.) She waved, grinning widely.

“Wallywally!” she called. “Come play!” That’s what she called him. Wallywally.

Wally waved back. He recognized her playmates: Cesar, the little boy who had translated for him and Jerusha back at the Nyunzu lab, and the joker girl covered with extra fingers. It made him feel good, somehow, that Ghost had made friends with somebody who had known Lucien.

The trio started up a little chant. “Wallywally play! Wallywally play!”

Wally wiped his eyes and grinned. “I’ll be there in a sec, you guys.”

Finn nodded toward the children. “How is she?”

Wally sighed. “She still has the nightmares. Bad nights, once in a while. Sometimes I wake up and find her standing over me.” He shrugged. “But you know what, Doc? Sometimes I think she’s stronger than I am. Honest.”

Finn gave him a funny look. He turned his attention back to the children on the playground. “Don’t sell yourself short, Wally.” They stood, watching the kids, in amicable silence for a minute or two. “Well,” said Finn, looking at his watch, “I need to do my rounds.”

“See ya, Doc.”

Finn trotted back to his clinic.

Wally tromped across the sandbox, to where Ghost and Cesar were digging a hole with a yellow plastic pail. He sat cross-legged in the sand. Ghost climbed on his lap.

“So. What do you want for lunch today, kiddo?”

“PBM,” she said. That was their special shorthand: peanut butter and mango.

Wally glanced up at the baobab. Sunlight shone through the boughs. He imagined Gardener listening to this, imagined her laughing, imagined her tucking a lock of hair behind her ear. He gathered up Ghost, and smiled.

“Yeah. Me, too.”

White Sands National Monument

White Sands, New Mexico

“What the fuck,” said Jay Ackroyd, biting into an apple, “is that?”

That was a baby triceratops, its colors mottled but otherwise indecipherable in the moonlight that silvered the great white dunes, which stood behind Sprout Meadows in a red Flexible Flyer mired to its hubs in soft sand.