Нил Шустерман - Scorpion Shards

“Shards!” he exclaimed, laughing with glee. “Shards of a shattered star!” He peered at them as if they were sub­jects he planned to study. The slight hunch of his back made him resemble a vulture.

“I’ve written about this sort of thing,” he said pacing a short, sharp path, “but never dared to publish it—but now I can present you as proof!” He looked at them with such awe, it made Winston roll his eyes. “Do you have any idea how special—how luminous you are? Why, the rest of us are mere smithereens compared to you!”

“Yeah?” said Michael. “So if we got these fantastic kick-ass souls, how come we’re so screwed up?”

His words stopped Bayless in mid-pace. “I don’t know,” he said. “By my estimation you should be living lives like no others—glorious lives with—"

“Shut up,” shouted Winston. Hearing what his life should have been made it all seem even worse. He started to stomp around like a small child, and Tory put her hand on his head to calm him down. It only made him angrier.

“We don’t need ought-a-be’s,” said Tory. “We need some why-nots.”

Bayless looked at them and sighed. The answers they needed were clearly not easy to come by. Bayless pon­dered his inoperable telescope for a moment, then turned back to them decisively.

“Science can’t help you,” said Bayless. “Not unless you want to wait and see what they find in your autopsies.”

The thought made Winston shiver, and he swore he could feel himself shrink a fraction of an inch.

“Then what do you suggest?” said Michael, his breath­ing heavier, his voice even more impatient than it had been an hour ago.

Bayless thought about it, sighed in resignation, and reached into his bottom drawer, pulling out an old deck of cards that looked like they hadn’t been used in ages.

“When I was very young, my mother made me read cards for rich old women. I once told a woman she was going to die before the sun went down. She stormed out of the tent in a huff and was promptly trampled by the fair’s elephant.”

Michael stood engulfed in his own growing frustration. “We need real help and real answers, can’t you see that? We didn’t come all this way to read dumb old tarot cards!”

“And I didn’t get degrees in biology and astrophysics to read dumb old tarot cards, but here we are, aren’t we?”

Michael, his breathing helplessly heavy, his body un­controllably tense, his pants unrelentingly tight, looked to the others. “Are you going to sit here for this garbage?” Clearly his frustration had little to do with tarot cards—so Lourdes gently took his hand.

“Just relax,” she told him. “Take deep breaths. What you’re feeling will go away.”

“No it won’t,” he said. “You know it won’t.”

He shook off Lourdes’s hand and stormed along the arrow on the floor, until he crashed out of the observa­tory, into the night.

“Don’t mind him,” Winston told Bayless. “He’s just pointing north.”

Tory was about to go after him, but Lourdes stopped her. “He just needs some air,” she said. “He’ll be all right.”

When the echo of Michael’s exit had faded, Bayless re­turned to shuffling the cards.

“Does it have to be tarot cards?” asked Winston. “Where I come from only ignorant folk use ’em. They’re hard to believe in.”

Bayless continued to shuffle. “It’s not the cards you need to believe in, it’s the skill of the dealer,” he said. He pulled out a card and handed it to Winston. “It’s like play­ing poker. Any idiot can deal cards—but how many peo­ple can deal a straight-flush every time?”

Winston looked at his card. A small boy on a golden ram, racing out of control through the sky. In one hand the boy held a torch that fought to survive a brutal wind. To Winston the boy seemed terrified.

“The Page of Wands,” noted Bayless. “Unless I’ve lost my touch, that card is you.”

Winston studied the card. He didn’t quite know what it meant, but he did have a sense of identification—as if he truly could be this boy clinging helplessly to the back of the wild wooly ram.

“If I wanted to,” said Bayless, “I could tell your fortune with baseball cards and the result would be exactly the same.”

Winston cast his eyes down.

“All right, then,” said Tory. “Deal us a fortune.”

Bayless smiled. “Yes—let’s desecrate the halls of sci­ence, shall we?” And with that, he dealt seven cards, face down—six formed a triangle, and the seventh he placed in the triangle’s center.

He reached toward the two cards at the bottom. “If I remember correctly, these cards will show us the pre­sent.” He flipped the first one, revealing a cloaked figure in a small boat, navigating a troubled sea.

“Death?” asked Lourdes.

“No, the Six of Swords,” Bayless replied. Winston looked more closely at the card to see a cargo of six swords resting in the keel of the ship. “Six souls on a restless journey.”

“Then there are six of us!” said Tory. “Now we have proof!”

“If you can call this proof,” mumbled Winston.

Bayless flipped the second card. A chariot being torn apart by a black horse and a white horse. Bayless looked at the card, and began to sweat just a bit.

“Death?” asked Lourdes.

“The Charioteer,” said Bayless. “It’s making me uncom­fortable, but I don’t know why . . . See, the horses that pull this chariot are very powerful. They have to be stopped or the chariot will be destroyed.”

“So what does that mean?” asked Winston.

“Not sure yet.”

Bayless went to the next two cards. “These cards will show where your journey must take you.”

He anxiously flipped the first to reveal an image of a tower being destroyed by lightning.

“The Tower. Does the tower mean anything to you?”

The three kids shook their head.

Bayless nodded. “It will soon.”

He flipped the next card. It showed a dark figure cov­ered in shrouds, in the midst of desolation.

“Death?” asked Lourdes.

“No— The Hermit.” Bayless’s voice was becoming shaky, filled with both fear and wonder. “This is someone you must face . . . if you get that far.”

“What’s wrong?” asked Lourdes, as Bayless began to wring his fingers.

“He frightens me.” Bayless said, confused. “The Hermit shouldn’t frighten me. . . .”

His eyes darted between the three kids, and he re­turned to the cards. “Well, we’ve begun, we have to finish it,” he said. Now Winston was beginning to feel as if he didn’t want to see the rest.

“This is what you will find at journey’s end,” Bayless said. “These two cards are your destiny.”

He reached for the first card, hesitated for a moment, then flipped both cards simultaneously.

Winston looked at the first, and his heart missed a beat. Lourdes didn’t have to say it this time. The masked figure of darkness was unmistakable.

“Death,” said Bayless. “And the Five of Wands.” The sec­ond card showed a man and woman with five glowing torches doing battle with a dragon. “Death will surround you. And those who survive will face a greater challenge.”

“What sort of challenge?” whispered Winston.

“If I knew I would tell you.” Bayless quickly flipped the cards back over so he didn’t have to see them. “I forgot how much I hated telling fortunes.”

“What about the last card?” asked Tory.

Bayless cleared his throat.

“The central card. It binds your past, present and fu­ture. History and destiny.” He didn’t even reach for it. “Maybe you don’t want to see this card.”