Kill him, you idiots! What are you waiting for?
Teddy had no power left at all to stop them. He let the Outcast dissolve as he fell into dreamtime. Automatic weapons fire gouged the wall behind where he’d been standing.
The Outcast swayed as though he were about to fall. Wyungare put an arm around the man’s shoulders, steadying him. There was pain in his eyes, pain in his face. His body radiated anguish and exhaustion. "Up there,” said the Outcast, attempting to point. “It’s all like that out there now.” He looked like he wanted to cry, but couldn’t quite spare the energy for tears. “We’re all dying up there.”
The gentle southern skies looked like they were shot through with blood and pus and smoke. In the middle distance, Wyungare and the Outcast could hear a sound like the wind blowing hard enough to bend adult trees to the ground.
“I’ve got to tell you something before it’s too late,” said the Outcast. “I think probably I fucked up and it may be too late to fix things.”
Wyungare squinted. He’d thought there was something different about the hero’s face. The Outcast looked much the same as he always had, except that the smooth, distended, baby-fat surface was gone. The Outcast no longer looked quite so much like a hyperannuated boy. His features were more like a man’s features. Not just any man’s — someone who had embarked on a journey through hell. There were new lines deepening around mouth and eyes.
“Wyungare?”
Wyungare blinked. “Go ahead, my friend.”
“I’m scared shitless. All those people trusted me, and they’re going down like the action figure soldiers I used to trash when I was a” — the Outcast swallowed on a dry-throat cough — “when I was a kid.” He looked like he almost smiled. “A younger kid.” His eyes were bleak and pained. “Thing is, it’s not a game. Not like computers or video. Joker heads get taken off by shrapnel, their brains stay smeared over the wall.”
“It’s a hard lesson,” said Wyungare. “There are many who will never deal with it. They will simply run, whether inside their head or in the world.”
“There’s no reason you have to do this. After the New Jersey’s shells destroyed your cell, you could have split. No one would have wondered.”
The wind roared closer. It sounded out of control, a primal force that would know no restraints.
“I am trying to help a brother,” said Wyungare.
“I’ll remember that.”
The Aborigine set his hand lightly on the Outcast’s shoulder. “Then here is something else to remember.” He looked into the man’s aging eyes. “Someone needs help.”
“I need help,” said the Outcast.
Wyungare smiled.
They stood outside the cabin in which they had watched the boy Jack being raped. The house was even more ramshackle than before, as though it had started to decay and no one living there had the heart to attempt repair. A boy walked slowly out the front door and looked around. He did not appear to see either Wyungare or the Outcast. Or if he did, he didn’t react. It was Jack. He held a faded, worn, soft-sided suitcase that looked like it was finished in some hideous carpet design. His hand grasped a handle made from several loops of cotton clothesline.
Then, as though the suitcase were too heavy to hold, as though it were an anvil grasped in his hand, Jack set it down. He fell to his knees beside it and stared into … nothingness. There was no focus in his eyes.
He made a keening sound like an animal crying.
The Outcast and Wyungare exchanged looks.
“What…” the Outcast started to say. He swallowed. “What can I do?” His voice trembled.
Wyungare turned back to Jack. “You know the weight he bears. You saw.”
The Outcast hesitated, as though still waiting for direction. Wyungare gazed back at him. He very nearly could, the Aborigine thought, hear the neurons popping and sizzling in the man/boy’s brain.
Then the Outcast crossed the clearing to where the boy still crouched beside the faded carpetbag. At first hesitant, then surer, he strode until he reached Jack.
For just a moment he looked back beseechingly at Wyungare. Then the Outcast sank to his own knees beside the boy. He put his arm around the boy’s shoulders and began to speak.
Wyungare could overhear it.
“Listen… friend, I, I’ve sort of been through some of this too, you know?” At first the words stumbled. But Jack looked back at his older companion and his eyes widened as though a less tangible, more articulate message was coming through. You are not alone, said the Outcast. I understand something of what you feel. Talk to me. Maybe I can help. “I know,” said the Outcast. “I’ll help you if I can. I want to.”
The boy slowly tilted his face to meet the Outcast’s eyes.
You are not alone. That was the communication that crossed each direction.
This is courage, thought Wyungare, and then he glanced up at the tops of the trees, past them toward the onrushing storm.
“I care,” said the Outcast. At first tentative, then sure; the two men, one very young, the other barely older, embraced. Strength, reassurance, healing power, all flowed first in a trickle, then a rushing river.
Now you are a hero. The Outcast could never articulate that for himself. But the Aborigine shaman could do it for him.
Wyungare felt as though he were an observer at an exorcism. Ghosts of smoke and shadows swirled up. And dust. Then all fled.
It took a few seconds to shake off the memory of the dreamtime.
The Outcast blinked, disoriented and exhausted. As always, he quickly scanned the minds of the Rox, checking the familiar minds as a sailor might check the stars. Kafka, Croyd (still sleeping), Travnicek, bodysnatcher, Molly --
“Governor?” Kafka asked. “Glad you’re back. I —”
“Shhh…” Teddy said.
…’Twas brillig and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe…
The passage was an anomaly in the matrix of the Rox. Patchwork was throwing up words like a fog, clouding the interior thoughts.
…All mimsy were the borogoves, and the momes raths outgrabe…
Behind the screening words, Teddy could sense anger and determination. And a name.
“Travnicek,” he said.
“Governor?”
“Gotta go, Kafka. Hold down the fort.”
The Outcast called on his power and moved. It was much, much harder than it should have been.
“Interesting,” Travnicek said. “I could feel it, just a second before you showed up. A shifting in the energy fields, a blurring.…” Travnicek, his neck lei erect and quivering. Teddy’s surroundings were coming into focus now. He was in Travnicek’s tower, in the room buried under tons of reinforced concrete and battle armor. It seemed a very dim and uninviting place. Travnicek was observing him like a bug under a microscope. All the flowers of the growth around his head were facing his direction.
In the middle of Travnicek’s speech, there had been a faint plonk from the opening to the air shaft. Travnicek hadn’t noticed it. Behind the art-deco grillwork, Teddy could see an eye empty of its socket, like a hardboiled egg with a brown yolk.
“Something very unusual happens when you do things, slug,” Travnicek was saying. “I think that if I could figure it out” A second, much louder noise came from the shaft. This time Travnicek turned. They both saw the hand, clutching a large grenade. The pin had been pulled; the fingers held the triggering lever in place, but only barely.
Shit! The governor’s there.