“You didn’t volunteer.”
“Nor did Pulse. I’ve worked alongside Pulse before — he’s a good man. Married, children, worked for the city. He didn’t want to be a hero, but if he was called he did a job. Now he’s a slave, like me. A psychopathic killer is living in his body, and who knows where his mind is?”
She bit her lip. “How can we get out?”
“Who is to say who lives and dies? People like Bloat? People like the lunatic that’s inside Pulse?”
“Dying? I’m talking about escape.”
“What do you do when you don’t want the governor to listen to your thoughts?”
Patchwork looked startled. “I told you. I think dirty thoughts. It embarrasses him.”
“A lot of people seem attracted to dirty thoughts. How do you know Bloat isn’t a secret voyeur? What else do you do?”
“I could think about reciting the Pledge of Allegiance or something. Just let the back of my mind float while I work hard on doing something else, something unimportant. Concentrate on the task at hand.”
He turned to her, took her other hand. “Try it.”
“Urn.” She thought for a moment, then began to sing in a tuneless contralto. “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.”
“I have to obey my creator. I have to look after his welfare. I don’t have any choice in that.”
“He’s trampling out the thing, the whatever where the grapes of wrath are stored.”
He tightened his grip on her hands. “I’m terribly concerned about him. About what might happen to him when I’m not there to protect him.”
Patchwork knit her brows, trying to remember the lyrics. “He has loosed the fateful lightning of his terrible swift sword. His truth goes marching on.”
“If the bombardments get bad, he goes into his tower and bolts the door. That’s a fairly safe place.”
“Glory, glory hallelujah. Glory, glory hallelujah. His truth goes marching on.”
“But there’s one thing that really concerns me. One weakness.”
“I don’t remember the fucking lyrics. Oh, shit.” She took a breath, started again. “Glory, glory hallelujah.”
“There are air shafts in the tower that lead up to the outside. They’re too small for a shell to go down, of course”
“Glory, glory hallelujah. His truth goes marching on.”
“But a small explosive — a grenade, say, like those over in the corner, or a series of grenades. They could be rolled down the shafts and result in terrible danger to my creator.”
“Glory hallelujah. Hallelujah, hallelujah.”
“Of course I would be bound to prevent anyone from endangering my creator that way.”
“I can’t remember.” She thought for a moment. then shifted tracks. “To be or not to be. That is the fucking question.”
“And of course whoever did such a thing would be risking a great deal from shellfire, because Dr. Travnicek is only in his tower when the shellfire is too much for the defenders to handle.”
“Whether it’s nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Or by opposing…”
“But still I’m very concerned. Perhaps you’ll be good enough to help me.” He looked intently into Patchwork’s eyes. “You’ll help take care of my creator, won’t you?”
“By opposing,” she repeated, “end them.” Holding his eyes, she nodded.
“I’m very relieved.” he said.
“I don’t know the rest of the speech.”
“Don’t think.”
“I’ll try.”
"Concentrate on the task at hand.”
He kissed her.
The kiss went on for a long while.
“You kiss just like a human,” she said.
“Thank you. I’ve had no complaints.”
She smiled up at him. “What else do you do like a human?”
“We could find out.”
He wondered for a moment whether he had just made himself another Bloat, another tyrant deciding who lived and died. If he was manipulating Patchwork in ways that were not acceptable, just because he wanted to live.
In a way, he comforted himself, he was doing what Travnicek wanted.
He was becoming a shooter.
Wyungare, the black cat, and the three erstwhile prisoners found the alligator on the beach. It was as though Jack had been waiting for the others to find their way out of the tumbled maze that huge sections of the castle had become. He had apparently found something to eat; something torn to pieces by high explosive. Whatever it was, it had worn some sort of uniform.
And there was the alligator hissing on the sand. Evidently Jack didn’t want to share his meal.
Wyungare realized what needed to be done now. “The three of you are leaving,” he said “It will be the adventure of a lifetime.” He motioned toward Jack.
The bigger, older man, Detroit Steel, said, “You gotta be kidding.”
Reflector said, “I’m staying, man. I got some scores to even. Asses to kick. Mikey Detroit, here, can take care of the girl. Shouldn’t take much doing; she’s so far into shock, she might as well be in a coma.”
“Chill,” said Detroit Steel. “So what are you gonna do, Snotty? Just abandon her?”
“Maybe for a little while. Hell, you can stay with her. All right? Me, I need to go kill some of the dickheads that put us here and then kept us. And don’t call me Snotty.”
“I’d suggest you get off the island,” said Wyungare. “All of you. I mean that.”
“I’m going to stay,” said Reflector obdurately. “No question about it.”
“If you wish to be heroic,” said Wyungare, “the best thing you could do would be to save this woman’s life. She is going to die without care.”
“Isn’t the same thing,” said Reflector.
The Aborigine shook his head. “Yes, it is.” He put all the personal power he could muster into those syllables. And when the psychic smoke had cleared, the prisoners sat astraddle Jack, resembling an ill-matched bobsled team. As large and buoyant as the gator was, he now rode fairly low in the water. The black cat took his accustomed spot on top of Jack’s head and meowed back at Wyungare.
Wyungare waved and the alligator majestically moved out into the bay, and struck out for the Manhattan shore.
The sky continued to fill with deadly fireworks.
Wyungare prayed they would make it.
“This whole setup is so strange,” Danny said to Ray as they traced their way back through Bloat’s caverns. “I mean, here we are wandering through these tunnels, running into orcs from Tolkien, scenes from Monty Python movies. Sure, things have been dangerous, but why haven’t we met with any really deadly traps? So far it’s been like some adolescent fantasy game.”
“Game,” Ray repeated. That was the second time she’d compared their situation to a game. It set Ray’s mind working again, and he stopped, snapped his fingers, and said, “That’s it! Christ, you’re right!”
“What are you talking about?” Battle called from the rear.
Ray stopped, turned, and said to him. “This whole thing is a dungeon — you know, like a kid’s role-playing game.”
Battle frowned. “What do you know about those degenerate fantasy games?”
Ray thought back to when the Secret Service had raided the game company out on Long Island, Jack Stevenson Games. He’d read the piles of crap they’d confiscated, looking for something that could be considered remotely illegal and therefore justification for the raid.
“More than I want to,” Ray muttered. “But Danny’s right. We’ve gone through real role-playing stuff. I mean, just about the only thing the fucker’s missed so far is a treasure trove guarded by a dragon.”