Daniel Abraham - Inside Straight

“No,” he whispered.

But Isra knew his mind, and knew that he was really saying yes.

She opened her memories to him, and they slammed into him like an express train. The agony of birth. The ecstasy of holding her baby for the first time. Their lives, difficult and hard, their trials and sorrows, all compressed into a millisecond of time that bit into his brain like a knife. A child dying in her arms, carried to its grave wrapped up in an insufficient cloth shroud. Put in a coffinless grave, the hard clods of dirt raining down upon the tiny corpse.

Fortune was too stunned, too overwhelmed to cry.

Isra’s voice hardened.

Fortune knew he couldn’t, either. And it wasn’t Isra. It was him thinking it.

He put his last quarters into the machine, and for the first time relinquished control willingly. Their hand pulled the handle together, the wheels spun, and five ankhs in a row came up. Sirens started to wail.

Isra was bemused by the flashing lights and the loud sounds the coins made clattering down the shoot and spilling out and onto the carpet, but she knew the flash of silver when she saw it, and she realized what it meant. She grabbed a handful of large plastic cups that were stacked on a nearby counter and filled them with coins.

Behind them, a voice said, smooth as silk, “You’re very lucky.”

It was a woman. She was lithe and sinewy without tautness. Her simple black dress clung to every line of her body like a second skin, her long black hair swept down her back, past her waist, like a living wave. Her face was elfin, but not mischievous. It was queenly, full of a beauty that Isra could have only dreamt of. Her eyes were startling. They were silver, with odd flecks in them, gleaming like stars.

“Yes,” Isra told her. “I am.”

The woman smiled. Her smile was dazzling and promising at the same time. Her strange eyes fastened on Fortune’s and looked deep, as if she were more interested in him, in what he thought, in what he desired, than anything else in the world. She stood so close that their bodies nearly brushed. Isra set down her plastic cups full of coins. The woman smelled like a tropical night. Like languid flowers, musk, and heat.

“What do you plan on doing with your winnings?” the woman asked.

“I plan on putting them to good use.”

“I’m glad to hear it. There are many worthy charities.” She paused. “Just one question. You’re not John Fortune, are you?”

“What makes you say that?” Isra didn’t like this woman. Under her own scent was another, a man’s smell. The woman had been with one, and recently. But there was something else.…

The woman said, “You’re not a man.”

“You read minds?” Isra asked, defensively.

“No. I read men. And you’re not one.” Another smile—warm, seductive. “I am interested in aces. And I find fire-breathing lions fascinating. Lionesses, that is.” Her sensual lips pursed. “I can see that my curiosity is not going to be satisfied.”

“Why should it be?”

“No reason,” she admitted. She turned to go and paused for a final word over a finely turned shoulder. “Take care of yourself.”

Isra watched her go, her snarl unheard amid the buzz of the casino’s background noise.

Isra took a cab to the airport, and paid the driver with coins taken from one of her cups. The Pan American counter was fairly quiet, until she dumped her winnings out all over it.

“Is this enough for a ticket to Cairo?” she asked. “One way.”

The ticket agent, used to the eccentricities of Vegas life, counted out the coins as quickly as he could, but ended up shaking his head. “Sorry. You’re short a couple of hundred.”

She growled her frustration, which alarmed the agent somewhat. Fortune said.

The agent watched, somewhat mystified, as his customer began to talk to himself. “All right,” the young man finally decided. “Wallah. It is in the hands of the Gods.” Then he reached into the pocket of his jacket, pulling out a passport and black Amex card, the kind without a credit limit. “Charge it to this, please. First class.”

A bad day in Cairo

Las Vegas: the world capital of massive overstimulation. Ever since they’d arrived, Jonathan had been feeling the contact high of the city. Every time they left a casino, men and women waited to press advertisements into his hand. Other gambling establishments or sex shops or invitations to warehouse parties or the kinds of phone lines where a girl with a husky voice would describe what exactly she’d be doing to you if she was there. And, for the right price, she could be.

The air itself in the timeless elf world of the casinos was different. Jonathan had heard that they pumped extra oxygen into the atmosphere, just to keep the rollers rolling and the little, wizened women at the nickel slots pulling on the levers and pressing the buttons and moving on to the next machine. And always, everything was bright and buzzing and ringing, half-naked and fast and exciting and maybe, just maybe, the key to the one jackpot that would make everything, always be worthwhile. It was like swimming in a fever dream.

It might not help that they were very, very drunk.

“Fortune has a beetle in his head,” Jonathan said. “That’s not an accepted recipe for clear thinking.”

“Your head turns into bugs,” Lohengrin replied. Somehow that seemed to be a refutation.

“Wasps,” Jonathan said, and gave a little belch. “Not beetles. Wasps. Anyway, what does John need us for? Isis said he’ll have the power of Ra. Ra, Ra, sis-boom-bah. You got Ra on your side, you don’t need bugs. Did I tell you about my system for blackjack?”

They had been playing Stump the Barman. Lohengrin had never known that so many drinks were served in pineapples and coconuts, and his amazement pushed Jonathan to think of more and more obscure drinks, just for the expression on his face. Some were garnished with cherries and slices of pineapple, some with olives, some with onions. One had a shrimp in it. Their table was covered with paper parasols and tiny plastic swords. After a Slimer, a Sledgehammer, a Blue Motherfucker, a Purple People Eater, and a Sloe Screw on the Beach, Lohengrin started talking about the day at Neuschwanstein when he walked into the castle to face the terrorists. “The gate was sealed, but I cut through it with my sword. They shot at me, but they could not hurt me. There were five of them.”

“You’re not talking five wingnuts down in Egypt. You’re not talking the Bavarian Freedom Front. Millions of pissed-off Muslims, that’s what we’re talking here. We could be killed. I don’t have the power of Ra. Did I mention that?”

“You are an ace. A warrior.”

“You may be a warrior, Mein Herr . I turn into bugs.”

“Many, many, many bugs,” said Lohengrin. “Too many for anyone to kill them all, nein? Why do you have this power, do you think?”

“There was this virus. Maybe you heard about it. There were aliens and a guy with a blimp and some dude called Jet-boy. The guy with the blimp might have been German, come to think of it, but I won’t hold that against you. I try to be well-mannered. I haven’t mentioned Hitler once in all the time I’ve known you.”

“God,” said Klaus. “God made the world. All the worlds. The aliens, the germs, he made them, too. Jetboy.”