Travnicek laughed. “More fool you, slug boy.”
“I’ll go,” Zelda said.
Bloat shook his head. “As much as I’d like to, I need you up here in case they start shelling again…” He stopped.
Teddy (or was he Bloat? The Outcast? He was confused) had caught the thought from Dylan, even though the man didn’t speak.
Herne could do it…
“Herne —” Bloat echoed. Softly.
“Y’know, Your Corpulence, I don’t want to mention this while you’re making all these quick, incisive policy decisions and all, but a whole shitload of innocent people died the last time Herne rode off, and he didn’t get the one guy he was after.” The penguin opened its wide mouth to grin at Dylan. “Just an observation.”
Bloat said nothing. He closed his eyes.
“So far you’re the only one who’s taking mostly defensive moves,” the penguin continued. “Seems like all the rest of these people do things like blow up destroyers and take down national landmarks. Y’know — the spectacular stuff with nice pyrotechnics. I’ll bet the nats in the caves have stuff for all kinds of pretty fireworks. What happens if they decide to nuke the Gabriel Hounds?”
When there was still no reply, the penguin skated to a dead stop below the tiny head and shoulders of Bloat, standing atop the moraine of bloatblack. “Hello? Anyone home?”
“Leave me alone.” Teddy’s voice. A cracking, adolescent rasp.
“I’d love to, but you conjured me up and now I’m part of you. I’m made, and once you make a thing, you can’t unmake it easily. It’s a burden I have to bear.”
Bloat sighed. "No,” Bloat said, looking at the jokers below him. “Not the Hunt.”
“Wait, I think sending the Hunt’s a good idea, Governor,” Kafka said. “It’ll be dark soon. We’ll send Herne after these creeps.”
Dylan shrugged, and the Manchesterian voice in his head echoed the cultured British accent that came from his mouth. “The hounds will find them, no matter where they are.”
“Send him, Governor,” bodysnatcher said. “Give him a chance after the last fiasco. I hate to agree with the roach, but that sounds like the best plan.”
“No.” Bloat sighed. So many jokers dead because of all this. Because of me. "I'll do it myself.”
“Oh, that’s a great idea,” bodysnatcher howled. “You’re a worse fuckup than Herne. You had us dig out Detroit Steel and Snotman when the mothers were buried and out of it. Now the Iron Keep’s a shell and they’re gone; Mistral too. Another great decision.”
“Shut up,” Bloat said. “I know all that. You can send the Hunt if you haven’t heard from me by sundown. Until then, wait. I’ll deal with it. I can take care of them.”
He hoped he was right.
Somewhere over Staten Island, surrounded by fog, Tom realized he was never going to make it back to Manhattan.
Two more screens had gone dead. The air in the cabin was still and hot. Circuits overheating somewhere in the walls. Any moment now, he could have a full-fledged fire on his hands. He was flying half-blind as it was, and his headache was a chain saw in his skull. He’d never felt this bad before.
And Danny was in worse shape. Once the adrenaline rush had worn off, the pain from her broken leg had hit hard. The aspirin Tom gave her wasn’t nearly enough. She was hanging on gamely, but he could see her fighting not to scream.
She had to get medical help, but the Jokertown Clinic was a long way off. Bayonne was much closer. He altered course. “I’m taking you to Bayonne Hospital,” he told her as he veered across Port Richmond.
Danny forced a grin through the pain. “Von Herzenhagen will be pissed again.”
“Fuck him,” Tom said. “Is your sister still at Zappa’s headquarters? The pregnant one?”
She nodded. “I’m still there.”
“Good. Tell them I quit.”
“Again?”
“This time for keeps,” Tom said. “The shell’s a wreck. It’s going to take me weeks to repair all the damage.”
“You’re not in such great shape yourself. When we get to the hospital, you’d better have them take a look at you too.”
“I’m fine,” Tom said. “A little headache, that’s all.”
Danny reached up, touched his face, just above his mouth. Her finger came away red with blood. “You’re bleeding.”
“The glass,” Tom said. “When you crashed through the TV. I must have been cut.” He’d never even felt it.
“That’s not it,” Danny said. “You’re bleeding heavily from both nostrils.”
He glimpsed the green, choppy waters of the Kill Van Kull below them on one of the screens that was still functional. “We’re almost there,” he told her.
“Let them take some X rays,” Danny urged.
“For what? A fucking nosebleed? Leave me alone, okay?”
Danny smiled, touched his hair. “Never,” she said softly.
Tom stared down at her. “Excuse me?”
“You have a real name, Mr. Turtle Sir?” Danny asked.
“Tom,” he told her. He forced himself to look away from her, back at his screens. He was twice as old as she was, for chrissakes. They’d reached Bayonne. He sailed silently over Brady’s dock and the First Street projects where he had grown up.
“Where do you live?” Danny asked.
Tom looked at her again. “I can’t tell you that.”
“Why not?”
He glanced at his screens just as another one went black. “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he said. His head was pounding. He looked back at Danny. “It doesn’t matter where I live. You’re in no condition to be making social calls.”
"So?” she said lightly. “My… sister… is already on the way from New York. Where do you live, Tom?”
Tom looked at her for a long, long time.
Then he told her.
Bloat let himself sink into dreams.
For a moment Bloat drifted like an obscene Macy’s Parade balloon just above the waves in the middle of some sunlit, choppy bay. The unspoiled shoreline was covered by trees. The whole scene had a nagging sense of familiarity to it, but he couldn’t quite place what prompted the feeling. A woman clad in a multihued sari was walking across the water toward him, her feet not quite touching the tops of the waves. “Abomination!” she hissed, and raised her hands as if to strike.
Teddy fell. The Bloat-body hit the water in a world-class belly flop. He gulped briny foam and the coldness made him gasp even through the tonnage of Bloat. His tiny, useless arms flailed desperately toward the woman, but she watched his floundering with utter dispassion. “Die,” she told him “Die and let it end.”
“No!” Teddy howled.
Bloat did not float. Teddy was sinking down in frigid darkness, pulled down by the anchor of Bloat’s mass. He closed his mouth desperately, his lungs burning as he searched for the mind-threads of power, as he tried to shake off the weariness and bring back the Outcast.
He couldn’t hold his breath any longer. Reflex forced the inhalation. Teddy waited for salty water to flood his lungs.
He gasped air instead.
He was holding his staff. A guttering torch in a wall sconce illuminated earthen and limestone walls. A corridor stretched ahead of him.
“Rough transition, fat boy,” commented the penguin, skating in from a side corridor. “But then I can swim.”
“Where?” Teddy managed to grate out. He sagged down, kneeling on the ground in exhaustion. The Outcast’s cloak rippled around him; there were muscular thighs under the brown leggings he wore. The Outcast.
"We’re under the Rox, maybe a hundred yards or so out from the shore. And our sneaky little friends are just down that way.” The penguin pointed to the corridor from which it’d come. “They don’t look real happy, either.”