The portcullis was blown away with a series of shots that put a man-sized hole in it. Modular Man flew back into the outer bailey from the gatehouse roof, trailing wire behind him. Anxiety flickered through him as he peered anxiously at the gatehouse tunnel.
The silhouette of Snotman, carrying Detroit Steel, appeared in the tunnel, and Modular Man pushed the detonator.
The walls of the gatehouse blew outward, and through the gouting flame and dust and flying rubble, the android could see the roof and upper stories falling downward.
He withdrew to the roof of the gatehouse leading to the middle bailey. The cloud of dust rolled over him.
When it cleared he’d know whether he was a shooter or a shootee.
What he hoped he’d done was to envelop Snotman in tons of mattresses — stone mattresses. If the idea worked, Snotman would have absorbed, from the rock falling on him, less energy than he would need to dig himself out.
The dust slowly settled. A few Bosch creatures flew tentatively overhead. The revealed gatehouse was a sloped pile of rubble sitting between scarred walls.
Nothing moved.
Modular Man waited until he was certain that Snotman and Detroit Steel were well and truly buried, then he flew out over the causeway again until he found Danny Shepherd.
She was watching while some army engineers were trying to drop bridging equipment over the first gap in the causeway. Nervous marines crouched over their weapons in the roadway behind.
Modular Man dropped from the sky, snatched up the young woman, and lurched up into the sky. She kicked and yelled. Marines stared, pointed weapons, disappeared into the mist below.
“Stop fighting,” the android said. “I’m here to tell you something.”
Danny struggled for another few seconds, then gave up. “Okay,” she said.
“Snotman and Detroit Steel failed,” he said. “You need to tell Zappa to evacuate his people from the perimeter and the causeway.”
“Bullshit.”
“If they don’t leave,” Modular Man lied, “Governor Bloat is going to turn all their weapons and armor into very large monsters. Then he’ll unleash another wave of hell creatures and everyone will die.”
Danny thought about that. Wind blew her blond hair around her face.
“I’m not really on their side,” Modular Man said. “I’m being compelled to do this.”
“No one’s going to believe that.”
“If I were on their side, you’d be dead. And all those soldiers on the causeway.”
He spiraled downward until Liberty Park stretched below them. He dropped Danny onto the scorched green grass and took off before anyone could respond.
Below him, the shootees lay unmoving.
The Outcast — no, the entire Rox, the whole massed chorus of head-voices — thought that it was over. The Turtle had retreated from the Manhattan Gate; Elephant Girl had moved off into the fog away from the Rox; Modular Man had won the battle of the Jersey Gate, burying Detroit Steel and Snotman and leaving behind scores of dead both from the Rox and the nats. Teddy had fought too, directing the battalions of the demons; trying to keep them between the jokers and the nats; throwing his mind-creatures in suicidal attacks at the strength of the assault; listening to the head-voices of his people and responding, trying his best to be in twenty places at once.
The retreat had happened suddenly, the order relayed through someone — someone plural? the mindvoices weren’t clear on that point — called Danny. All the attacking forces had all moved back into the shroud of fog, away from the wounded and broken ramparts of the Wall and out of the Outcast’s hearing.
“Oh, thank God,” Kafka said. His body shivered with a faint rattling. His walkie-talkie sputtered static-ridden words. “Governor, they’re gone. Everywhere. They’ve left.”
“Maybe… “ Teddy whispered to Kafka wearily. From his vantage point in Croyd’s room, he surveyed the broken buildings around them, the tumbling walls of brick and the shattered timber supports. Only the great crystalline ramparts of the castle were still standing, untouched — he had repaired them even as the glass had crumpled under the impact of the barrage. Around the Rox, jokers and jumpers alike were coming from shelter. In the foggy landscape below him, there was a mass exodus outward from the caverns. “I’m going out to see.” he told Kafka and the penguin. “Keep trying to wake him up.”
Teddy slammed the end of the staff on the ground and willed himself to be at the Jersey Gate, but the expected transition was strange. The insistent, angry voices of the dreamtime shouted at him, and the fragile connections of power were hard to hold on to. He tried to pull in the energy, but his mind was exhausted. For a moment his vision cleared and he found himself looking down at the Great Hall of the castle, bound down with the immense weight of Bloat. Big Bird, one of the joker guards, noticed him immediately.
“Governor,” she said, her feathered face contorted with concern. Plaster dust shaken from the roof by the impact of bombs coated her high shoulders and a three-fingered, clawed hand was clenching and unclenching the grip of her AK-47 nervously. There were dead jokers here, five of them that he could see, still lying on the tiles of the Great Hall. The sight made Teddy ill; bloatblack spilled out in response.
The burden was almost too much. It would have been easy to remain in Bloat’s body. Teddy struggled, trying to find the power within him to leave Bloat once again. The voices of the dreamtime yammered and howled, angry at his continuing intrusion.
Wyungare gave you our offer. Leave us alone.
You will die, powerful fool. You will die and you will take us down with you. You don’t know what you’re doing.
“Shut up!” Bloat shouted back.
“Governor?” Big Bird said.
Bloat tried to smile at the joker. “Nothing. It’s nothing. Just some ghosts in my head.”
Teddy closed his eyes, searching for the dreams, searching for the path to the dreamtime’s power and finding them. There, the channels are there, running through Bloat and away… Teddy followed the path back, back, until he could feel the wind of the dreamtime tousling his hair. Bright forms of energy were spiraling in front of him, and they blocked the path, damming the flow. “Get away,” Teddy told them.
“You throw your weapons at us,” they cried. “You send us your demons; you create chaos, you drain our power. We can’t allow this.”
“You can’t stop it.”
One of the forms came closer; he recognized the leering face of Viracocha as the shaman or godling or whatever he was snorted. “You delude yourself. You’re weary. The power will burn you and scar you forever if you continue.”
“Tired or not, you’re not strong enough to stop me,” Teddy said. “Wyungare told me that.” He pursed his lips, blowing against the wind from his dream, and the energy forms screamed and cried as they fell away. The path was open once more. He could feel the energy, brilliant and invigorating, and he took it into himself, wrapping himself once more in the body of the Outcast.
The Outcast materialized himself on the ramparts of the Jersey Gate. The demons clustered around their master like bats wheeling about a cave mouth; the jokers looked at him expectantly. The damage here was far worse than on Ellis itself. His Wall had been breached, the massive gates facing the city had been torn from their hinges by the brute force of Snotman and Detroit Steel. Most of the gun emplacements were gone, the stones where they had been blackened and broken, and what Teddy saw there sickened him. Death was not pretty — even the swirling, diffuse view through the fog couldn’t soften it. There was a smell too: a sickly, sweet odor that made his stomach turn over. He brought a wind to take it away from the Rox, streamers of low gray clouds riding the gale outward.