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.