“Thank you, Caesar.”
“You’ve been making mistakes lately, Mycroft. You’re worried about something. Is it this Seven-Ten list?”
“No, it … May I ask a question, Caesar?” I had not intended to whisper, but his face often drives the voicing from my words.
“What?”
“If you had something, something so wonderful that it seemed that it might … that, given the chance, it would make a better world, for everyone, forever, so much better, but first there was a danger, a terrible, terrible danger that it could rip everything we have apart … would you destroy that better world to save this one?”
The wine fell as both MASON’s hands, black-sleeved and gray, seized me by the rough weave of my habit and hurled me to the floor. “Get out of my sight.”
“What? Caesar, I—”
“Never speak Apollo’s words again. Get out!”
CHAPTER THE THIRTY-FIRST
Dominant Predator
“Mycroft!” Hear now Bridger’s sobbing scream rise through the dawn-streaked flower trench. “Where are you, Mycroft? Mycroft!” He had been reduced to old clothes, a green striped wrap which was almost more holes than fabric, and socks, no shoes, their threadbare toes ripping open as grass and rough dirt scraped his rushing feet.
I freely confess, reader, that this chapter is half imagination, for I was still a prisoner at Madame’s.
“Bridger! Slow down there, kiddo. What’s wrong?”
It was a stranger’s voice, and the boy turned, brandishing a plastic ray-gun. “Keep away!”
“Whoa!” The stranger put his hands up as he stepped from the cover of the trash mine, chuckling, perhaps, at Boo who bristled at Bridger’s side, his sweet blue face not designed to bare teeth. “Mycroft sent me.”
“Do you know where Mycroft is?” the boy half-shrieked.
“Nope. I’m looking for them too, but their tracker’s been off all day.”
“Turn around, put your hands up on the wall!” Bridger braced the toy weapon well in both hands—do you think the Major would not have taught him that?
“If I turn around you won’t be able to see me.”
It was the truth, for a Utopian Coat enveloped the stranger in invisibility. Overlong sleeves swallowed his fingers, a hood his hair, so only his face and hints of legs and torso showed through the coat’s open front, a sliver of a person, like an otherworldly voyager halfway out of the rift.
The boy cocked his head. “Are you dressed as Apollo Mojave?”
The smiling stranger pushed the vizor up away from his eyes and onto his gold-blond wig. “Yes, I am. Mycroft showed you pictures of Apollo, didn’t they?”
“Mm-hm.”
A fanged smile. “I’m a ghost, you see. It’s easiest if I look like someone it’s not surprising to see a ghost of.” The stranger’s eyes measured the boy’s limbs, how long his stride, how fast one would have to sprint to catch him; even a common housecat toying with a mouse calculates how far it can let its plaything limp and still keep escape impossible.
“Who are you?” Bridger asked.
“I’m Mycroft’s oldest and most trusted friend.” The stranger slid down into a crouch, offering his hand for Boo to sniff. “Mycroft asked me to take care of you if things got bad.”
“What’s your name?”
Saladin offered as kind a smile as his snake-smooth face can muster. “Only Mycroft gets to know my name. And you can’t tell anybody about me, okay, Bridger? I’m a secret.” He held a finger to his lips. “Just like you.”
The tension in Bridger’s stance began to ease as he saw Boo wag, seduced by my scent on Saladin. “How come you don’t have any eyebrows?” he asked.
Saladin laughed. “When I was a kid I was in a terrible accident and all my skin burned off. See, no hair, either.” He lifted the corner of his wig above the temple.
“That must’ve hurt!”
“Yes, yes it did, but Mycroft grew me new skin in the meatmaker and patched me up with that. I think they did a good job.” He traced the back of one hand with the other’s fingers, following a seam between two patches, now only detectible to we who know that body perfectly.
“Was that the same accident that hurt Mycroft?”
“Yup, almost killed us both. Well, officially it did kill me.” Though he still played with the dog, Saladin’s eyes were ranging the trench, the light and shadow, the texture of the walls, where best to climb, to hide, to trap. How do I know he did this, reader? My Saladin always surveys his surrounding thus, as wild dogs do, and soldiers learn again to do when civilization’s rose-tinted daydream breaks.
Bridger frowned. “Couldn’t you get new eyebrows and hair if you want? Doctors can do that.”
“I could, but hair has DNA in it that the police can find. I’d rather opt out.”
“Yeah, hair’s hard.” The child’s voice was soft after tears. “Mycroft makes me use special clumpy shampoo that’s supposed to make my hair not shed except when I comb it.”
“And special soap that makes loose skin flakes dissolve, right? I use it too. Smells terrible, doesn’t it?” As wild a thing as Saladin has never learned to make his chuckle friendly. “But look, I can have eyebrows if I want, see?” He lowered the vizor back over his eyes, and the projection filled in brows and lashes faithfully. Not his face. A different face, the cheek bones higher, skin a Northern European pale, the eyes like sky. He lifted it and lowered it again. “See? Eyebrows, no eyebrows, eyebrows, no eyebrows.” The game failed to coax a smile from the boy. “What happened, Bridger?” Saladin asked. “Why were you running just now?”
A fast sob made the ray-gun fall slack at last. “They killed Redder.”
“Who’s Redder?”
“My friend.” Bridger hugged to himself the bag, old army green, which hung at his shoulder, and perhaps a strand of perfect doll’s hair peeked from the flap. “They pulled Redder’s guts out and strung them all around the cave.”
“Who did?”
“The person who’s been watching me. They broke into my cave before and stole my backpack, and the No-No Box, and dropped a big bookshelf on Mommadoll, and now they came back and killed Redder!”
Bridger’s shudder left him vulnerable, and Saladin pounced in an instant, wrapping the boy in a hug, and in that Utopian Coat, as thick and safe as when, in childhood, even the scariest closet monster was thwarted by the magic of the covers. “Hey, it’s okay,” he soothed. “Relax. No one else can hurt you while I’m here.”
Sobs come quickly once it feels okay to cry. “They’ve … been … wa … tching me. I took my clothes off to take a shower and they stole them while I was inside. Aimer and Pointer and Nostand were in my pockets and they … they’re gone and everybody’s … scared and Mycroft’s missing and I can’t go to Thisbe be … because Thisbe’s bash’ is being scary.”
Bridger tried to break free of the hug enough to look up at Saladin, but the hug locked tight. Animals may hunt by speed, by trap, by disguise, by ambush, but name for me another besides mankind that hunts by trust. “Shhh. It’s okay.” Saladin lifted the boy in his strong arms and started to carry him back along the trampled path to the cave. “Come, show me where your friend is.”
“No!” Bridger tried to wiggle free. “I can’t go back there!”
Saladin’s practiced fingers locked around the child. “They might still be alive, and need help.”
“They aren’t.”
“You’d be amazed how long a body can stay alive, even after the most astounding things are done to it.”
Bridger shook his head. “Redder’s not alive, they’re imaginary.”
“Imaginary?”