The lead emissary frowned him up and down. “We’re here —”
“I’m Moonchild’s personal representative. Ask anybody here.”
The young joker looked mulish. “We have our orders —”
“Let’s just plow these fools under,” Belew said harshly. At the tone of his voice the Khmer Rouge brought up their Kalashnikovs with a multiple clack of safeties. “We have places to go and promises to keep.”
“— but, hey, we’re not slaves,” the joker leader finished. “I guess we can give the message to you.”
Fighting to stifle a grin, Mark said, “Okay. Let’s hear it.”
“The Colonel wants a meet.” He said Colonel without notable affection. “He wants to kiss and make up.”
“He thinks Moonchild will betray her cause.”
“Moonchild’s a wild card.” The joker studied Belew, who as always looked creased and cool despite exertion in the midday heat. “So’re you, I’m guessing — you’re the one they call the Mechanic, aren’t you?”
Belew performed a mock bow. “I have that honor.”
“If you say so. We got briefed on you.” He looked to Mark. “We’re all wild cards. Like it or not, that’s our cause. Colonel thinks we should be together.”
“We’re on our way to pull down the government of the Socialist Republic,” Belew said. “I can’t see your Colonel wanting to get together with us on that.”
The joker boy shrugged. “Fuckin’ Viets think Cambodians are black,” he said. “How much are they ever gonna love us jokers?”
Mark felt his heart jump. The young joker grinned. “Things aren’t like we thought they were when we signed up. Colonel might be closer to your way of thinking than you imagine.”
“I’m willing to concede you were right last time, son,” Belew said. “Don’t press your luck.”
Mark stood looking into the darkness. This was hilly country, forested, not yet flattening out into paddies. The insects were raising their avant-garde orchestration on the soundtrack.
“Wild cards shouldn’t fight each other,” he said.
“It’s a trap,” Belew said.
“I’m going as Moonchild. She can take care of herself.”
“She’s not Golden Boy. She’s not bulletproof. And even if she were the Golden Weenie — no amount of meta-human power can save you forever if enough people want you bad enough.”
Mark shrugged. “If there’s even a chance. Don’t you see? I came out here for a dream — the dream behind the New Joker Brigade. The dream’s still valid, man.”
“Didn’t you hear what your pal Brewer said? Didn’t you see those yahoos today? The dream’s become a nightmare.”
“Maybe it can come back. I — I have to believe that.”
“You have to believe in the Tooth Fairy too.” He turned, walked a few paces away. “It’s Sobel, isn’t it? Your search for an all-knowing Father God figure who can tell you everything’s okay.”
Mark felt his cheeks go hot. “What, are you jealous because you don’t get the role?”
Belew laughed. “Okay. You got me again. Although maybe, just maybe, this is a little too serious for us to be scoring points off each other …”
“Since it’s so serious,” Mark said, “I suppose it’s too serious for me to point out that you started it.”
Belew walked away three steps, walked back. He raised his hands in the air. It wasn’t like him to waste so much motion; Mark had never seen him this agitated.
Unless, of course, he was playing a role.
Belew let his hands drop to his side. “I can’t stop you, can I?”
Mark held up a vial. Inside, it was silver and black. “Not unless your KRs can see in the infrared.”
Belew drew a deep breath through the flared nostrils of his sometime-broken but still-aristocratic nose. “Nobody’s indispensable,” he said, “but some of us are less dispensable than others. I wish you’d reconsider.”
“It’s something I have to do.”
J. Bob arched a brow and looked at him closely. “Is there something here you’re not telling me”
With a faint pop Croyd appeared beside them. “And of course there’s always me, if things go wrong.”
They looked at him. “I beg your pardon?” Belew said.
“I overheard your little discussion. Mark wants to go and meet Colonel Sobel. I just thought I’d pop in and set your minds at ease: I can keep an eye on him. An ear, anyway.”
“How’d you know what we were talking about?” Mark demanded.
“Oh. A new talent I just discovered I had. Clairaudience. And, uh —”
“Teleportation,” Mark said.
“Teleportation. Yeah.” He held his hands out. “So don’t worry Nothing can go wrong.”
It was a temple in the forest, small, with plaster walls and sweeping wood-beam pagoda roof. By decree it had been neglected for years. The wood was weathered, swollen with water and faded by the sun.
Moonchild stood poised before the entryway, hands by her sides, every sense stretched as far as it would go. As agreed, she had come alone.
Nothing. Her night vision was excellent, catlike, but otherwise her senses were no more acute than a nat’s. Her powers of concentration augmented their range. They picked nothing unusual out of the synesthetic forest background noise, the smells and sounds, the movements windblown and movements furtive.
It didn’t mean there was nothing there. She would have to have faith. Either in Colonel Sobel and his dream … or in herself She went inside.
By the light of a pair of candles she could see that the iconoclastic communists had stripped the temple. All that was left was the meter-high statue of the Buddha himself, sitting potbellied and serene with the candles by his knees, and before him a scatter of offerings: bits of candy, flowers, Vietnamese dong notes with petitions and prayers scribbled on them in the modified Roman characters Vietnam had adopted in the seventeenth century, dropped by the faithful and hopeful, undeterred by official disapproval.
“Good of you to join us, Ms. Moon,” said the tall man standing on the Buddha’s right hand.
“Thank you, Colonel,” she said. “I’m willing to do anything I can if it will help us work together instead of against each other.”
A second man stepped from the darkness at Buddha’s left. The light did fascinating things in the folds of his face. “I’m glad to hear you say that, hon.”
She looked at him. Her hands knotted to fists, slowly unfolded. It was what she had hoped for. It was also what she feared.
“Eric,” she said.
He stepped forward, embraced her, kissed her. She gave him her cheek.
“What’s this? Too good to kiss an ugly joker now?”
“Eric, don’t. I —”
He stepped back. He was grinning at her. “Or are you just ashamed?”
“I have done nothing to be ashamed of.”
He looked at her. She dropped her eyes.
“I have tried to do the right thing,” she said. “It is not always so easy to know what is right.”
“Yes it is.” The Colonel’s voice was low and compelling and rich with overtone. “In this case it is. Come back to us, Isis.”
The tip of her tongue protruded briefly between her lips. “Are you willing to forsake the government’s side, then?”
A low laugh, smooth and rich as melted chocolate. “Not on your life. World revolution’s the only hope any of us wild cards has. Real revolution, the socialist, Marxist, Leninist, Maoist revolution, not this phony fascist reaction your little friends are trying to push off as revolution.”
She backed up an unconscious step, shaking her head in confusion. “I don’t understand. Your emissaries said”
“That the Colonel might be closer to your way of thinking than you imagine,” Eric said. “Right? Because that’s what they were told to say.”