As a superhero in the gambling universe, I have no idea why I always end up saving dogs. It sure seems that every time there is a person for me to save there is also a dog that needs my help. Not always, but my sidekick, Patty Ledgerwood, aka Front Desk Girl, thought it funny because it happens so often. And as she said, “It’s kinda sweet.”
Sometimes the person who needs the help has the dog, other times the dog is not related in any way to the person I’m trying to help. I asked my boss, Stan the God of Poker, about it once and he just thought I was kidding. It seems that animals have their own gods that take care of them.
Stan told me that over the years there has been very little reason for the Gambling Gods to associate with the Gods of Animals and Reptiles. That made sense to me considering animals are not known for placing bets.
But sometimes the lines between the different branches of gods is not as clear as some people make them out to be.
It was New Year’s Eve, or more accurately two in the morning on New Year’s Day. One of my favorite things to do on New Year’s Eve was to play a tournament at the MGM Grand on the strip in Vegas. Granted, that is a long ways from my double-wide mobile home near a large Indian casino in Oregon, but Patty lives and works in Vegas, so I look for any reason to visit her as often as I can.
I must confess that Patty and I have a relationship. Sometimes that isn’t smart between superhero and sidekick. But she’s actually a superhero as well working under the God of Hospitality. And we aren’t serious enough yet for me to move from Oregon to Vegas. We have talked about it, sure, just not there yet.
By Vegas standards the New Year’s Eve tournament wasn’t a big event, not like others around town, but for the past ten years I had made the little tournament at the MGM Grand on New Year’s Eve a tradition and I like tradition. And since half the people playing in the tournament were drunk tourists and most of the professional poker players were at the bigger tournaments at other casinos, it made getting into the money fairly easy. In fact, I had made the final table and the money every year.
And besides, I love the sounds of a casino alive with people laughing and talking and machine bells going off and on New Year’s Eve, all that seemed to be more in focus, sharper, and if possible, louder.
The money was always nice as well, since the MGM Grand also kicked in a few grand added money. I have nothing against making some money in a decent poker game. After all, superheroes have to make a living to pay for chasing after the bad guys. Most people thought the gods paid for the superheroes working for them, but they sure don’t. We are just expected to make a living and solve everyone’s problems at the same time.
Considering that I made my living playing poker, I’m not complaining.
But Patty had to work tonight on her new job at the front desk of the MGM Grand and she wouldn’t be off until 3 a.m., at which time we would head to her wonderful apartment and enjoy the first day of the New Year together.
So I still had an hour and had made the final table of the tournament. In fact, I was chip leader and planned on using my chip advantage over the other eight players at the table to eventually take all their chips. In less than an hour I hoped.
Suddenly, the dealer froze in the middle of her deal, the card suspended in midair, her nose scrunched up in concentration. All the loud noise of the casino and the laughing and talking cut off like I had been transported to an empty desert without any wind.
Around the table the players’ faces were frozen in the moment. I had learned over the years that when you freeze a person in a moment they seldom look good. A person’s looks are dependent on movement. If you don’t believe me, just randomly stop your DVD player with an attractive person on screen. Chances are their eyes will be rolled into their head slightly, their mouths open in a doofy fashion, and their expression twisted. The eight other players at the table and the dealer were no exceptions to the “frozen uglies” as I liked to call what they looked like.
Someone had taken me out of time and I only knew of a few people beside me that had that power, so I glanced around. Stan the God of Poker was winding his way through the frozen-in-time players clearly headed my way. He had another silver-haired man walking a few steps behind him.
The guy had large and slanted dark eyes set far enough apart that for a second I wondered if he could see in two directions at once. He was dressed in a dark silk suit and matching tie that shouted money and power. He moved so smoothly behind Stan I wasn’t sure he was even walking.
“Poker Boy,” Stan said as I stood and stepped toward them, “meet The Smoke.”
The Smoke just nodded and didn’t bother to step close enough to shake my hand, so I didn’t offer. I had a very odd feeling about the guy, but couldn’t place it, which made me even more uncomfortable. As a poker player, my greatest strength was easily summing up a person and figuring them out. This guy would be tough across a poker table.
Now understand I didn’t dislike the guy. I just couldn’t get a read on him.
“I’m assuming there’s a problem,” I said to Stan, adjusting my superhero costume, which consisted of a black leather coat and black Fedora-like hat. My six-foot height made me about five inches taller than the compact frame of The Smoke. For some reason that pleased me.
“Let’s walk,” Stan said. “We need to meet Patty.”
If Stan was putting both of us on a case, something really important had gone wrong.
Really important.
I pointed at my stack of tournament chips on the table. “Release the room and I’ll tell them to blind me off and I’ll follow you in a moment.”
Blinding off a stack meant that a player in a tournament still had to pay the blinds every round, even if they weren’t in the chair. So my chip stack would dwindle slowly until gone and all my other hands would be folded.
Stan nodded and turned to leave. I sat back down just as he released the freeze and let me drop back into normal time. The sounds of the casino came crashing back in like a hammer and every face around the table returned to normal.
I quickly stood again and nodded to the dealer. “Blind me off until I get back.”
She nodded and I turned and headed out of the poker room. Unless I got back quickly, I wouldn’t win the tournament, but with the size of my stack, just being blinded off slowly might get me third or fourth as other players knocked themselves out. Still a decent payday for my New Year’s tradition.
I was about halfway to the lobby of the casino when everything around me froze again and the noise vanished once again. Stan and Patty and The Smoke were standing in the middle of the wide aisle near the huge, open hotel lobby, talking.
Patty Ledgerwood, aka Front Desk Girl, looked better than ever. I had first met her five years back when she worked at the Horseshoe downtown, the last year the World Series of Poker was held there. Tonight the white blouse and dark pants accented her perfectly trim body in a way I very much liked. Her long brown hair was tied back and up, giving her a serious look.
I know it sounds corny, but every time I saw her my heart sort of raced, and this time was no exception even though I had talked to her just an hour ago on one of the tournament breaks.
Patty glanced over at me with her large brown eyes and smiled a smile that could melt anyone into a puddle on the ornate tile floor. “You winning?”
“Of course,” I said, laughing. “Chip leader. Final table just got started.”
“Sorry,” Stan said.
I just shrugged. “Work needs to come first. So what’s the problem?”
Stan glanced at The Smoke, then said simply, “About two hours ago someone placed a number of very large bets with a number of bookmakers around town that all the dogs in North America would be killed at exactly twelve noon on the first day of the year Vegas time.”
Patty gasped and I tried to understand what Stan had just said. “All the dogs? Why?”
“No one knows,” Stan said.
“That’s just sick,” Patty said.
The Smoke seemed to be showing no emotion at all. He just stood there, his thin, dark wide-set eyes seeming to observe everything around him.
The silence of the frozen casino seemed to grow as Patty and I tried to take in what we had been told.
I turned to face The Smoke directly. “I assume you work for the Animal Gods.”
The Smoke nodded. “We are aware of your ability to save dogs,” he said, his voice deep and low. “Since this involves a bet, my boss went to Laverne and we asked for your help.”
Laverne was Lady Luck herself. I hoped she had a lot more than me and Patty and Stan on this problem.
I nodded and turned to Stan. “I assume you are looking for the guy who placed the bet.”
“Oh, we know who it was. He has nothing to do with the coming deaths. He’s just trying to make some huge money on it to rebuild his house.”
“The Bookkeeper!” both Patty and I said at the same time.
Stan nodded and we all went back to being silent. Three months ago the Bookkeeper, while trying to prove the world that there was no luck, had mathematically trapped Lady Luck herself. Patty and I and Screamer, the third member of my team, had barely rescued her in time. But in the process the Bookkeeper’s home had been completely destroyed along with all of his super computers and about three bedrooms and a living room full of very smelly trash.
The Bookkeeper had an uncanny ability to predict future events with just math.
“We’ll need to talk to him,” I said.
Stan nodded. “I’ll bring him to you. Where?”
“Does he still smell?” Patty asked about a half-second before I did.
“He smells like a field of lilacs now,” Stan said. “Something one of his bosses did to him.”
“A small field I hope,” I said.
Stan shook his head. “Not so small.”
“Oh, wonderful,” Patty said.
“Our normal place in fifteen minutes,” I told Stan.
Stan nodded.
Our normal place was a small restaurant open 24 hours a day called The Diner. It pretended to be an old sixties diner and was tucked into a hole on a side street near the old Horseshoe Casino downtown. When the team of Patty and Screamer and I first formed, that’s where we met and it’s become our normal meeting site for any case we were working together.
Besides, it had great milkshakes and right now I could use one.
Stan released the “out of time bubble” on us and Patty and I headed across the lobby toward the exit to the parking area out back, with her explaining how she managed to get off an hour early on her shift tonight. We were most of the way across the hotel lobby when I realized that The Shadow was following us about five feet back, walking as silently as anyone I had ever met.
“Where’s Stan?” I asked, turning to him.
“He said I was to go and help you,” The Shadow said, again his voice low and rough and at the same time very smooth. “He said he had a few other leads to check out and would catch up.”
I nodded and said, “Sounds fine. More help the better.”
I turned back to Patty, who handed me her cell phone as we walked with The Shadow following a few feet behind us. When I put it to my ear the phone was already ringing.
“Patty,” Screamer said as he answered, clearly seeing his caller id. “What’s up?” His voice was chipper and I could hear music and laughter behind him.
“Sorry to bother you tonight,” I said, “We’ve got a pretty nasty one.”
“Hey, Poker Boy. Great hearing your voice again. When?”
“Fifteen minutes,” I said.
“I’ll be there,” he said and hung up.
I handed Patty back her phone, then said. “The old gang is back together again. I just hope we can pull off another miracle.”
“So do I,” The Smoke said softly behind us.
# # #
It took us exactly sixteen minutes to get to The Diner downtown from the MGM Grand on the Strip. Screamer was already there and he was sitting in our normal booth, but I indicated we should move to the big table in the corner. The idea of sitting next to the Bookkeeper in a tight booth was nightmarish at best.
Madge, the slightly overweight waitress with far, far too-tight slacks walked up, popped her gum, and said, “Well, looks like the Weird Bunch is back in town. And with a new member as well.”
“Great seeing you again, Madge,” I said. I didn’t blame her for being sort of curt with us. Over the years some strange things had happened in this restaurant around us, and we had left unfinished more meals than we had eaten here.
“Milkshakes around?” Madge asked, her gum popping again.
Screamer, Patty and I nodded. The Smoke simply said, “Water. Hamburger very rare, no onion or pickles or anything green on it. Hold the mustard and any other sauce.”
Madge took it all down and glanced at The Smoke. “You fit right in with this group. Anyone else?”
We all shook our heads and after Madge left, I introduced The Smoke to Screamer. They didn’t shake hands, just nodded at each other.
“I’ve heard of you,” Screamer said, sitting back in his chair. You’ve rescued more animals than Poker Boy here, and that’s going some.”
“And I’ve heard of your ability to get inside someone’s head,” The Smoke said, nodding in respect. “It is a pleasure to meet you.”
The Smoke was talking about Screamer’s superpower. He could transfer what one person was thinking to another or read their minds just by a touch. He got his nickname by making a serial killer scream in horror to get him to confess by digging up his worst fears and making him see and live them. His methods never would stand up in court, but it gets the really bad guys off the streets.
Screamer turned to me. “I assume we’re dealing with a problem with animals if The Smoke is joining us.”
I nodded and quickly outlined what we already knew. I had just finished when the sounds of the restaurant vanished and Stan and The Bookkeeper appeared.
Across the small restaurant Madge was frozen bending over to pick something off the floor near the cash register. Luckily for all of us she was slightly behind the counter so we didn’t have to see frozen all that her tight outfit exposed.
Suddenly a wave of purple smell hit us. Intensely purple lilac smell.
The Smoke got up and moved quickly to the other side of the table away from Stan and The Bookkeeper while the three of us instantly covered our noses. I wasn’t sure which was worse, the intense smell of rotting food and trash The Bookkeeper used to smell like or this intense perfume smell of lilacs so thick I wasn’t sure I would ever taste anything but purple again.
“Hey, Poker Boy, Patty, Screamer,” the Bookkeeper said. “I never did get to thank you for saving my ass with Lady Luck.”
“No problem,” I said, then started to say something else and choked on the smell and couldn’t speak.
“We’ll make this quick,” Stan said. “Screamer, would you touch the Bookkeeper and then connect him with Poker Boy.” He glanced at Patty and The Smoke. “You two touch Poker Boy so you all get what he knows exactly.”
I’d been inside the Bookkeeper’s mind once before and I wasn’t looking forward to doing it again. I could tell that neither was Patty and Screamer. I had no idea what The Smoke was feeling.
Stan faced the Bookkeeper. “Focus on everything you know about the coming death of the dogs, including how you worked it out.”
The Bookkeeper nodded and Screamer touched his shoulder and then my arm as Patty and The Smoke both touched my shoulders, one on each side.
Like a movie run in fast forward, I could instantly see the Bookkeeper sitting at a computer, his fingers flying as he worked out some sort of equation that I didn’t understand. I tried to focus on what facts he was plugging into the equations, but none of it made any sense to me.
At the same time I could sense Patty’s mind and Screamers. Both of them I was used to, but The Smoke was like a dark place in the connection, his mind not really part of the group for some reason or another.
Screamer broke the connection and I shuddered, glad to be out of the Bookkeeper’s head once again.
The Bookkeeper looked at Screamer. “That’s just so weird.”
“Come on,” Stan said, and an instant later he and the Bookkeeper were gone and the noise of the restaurant and the street outside flooded back into the silence.
I took a napkin and blew my nose, trying to clear some of the smell without success. I could taste lilacs, and it felt like my skin was coated in the smell, like someone had dumped an entire bottle of cheap perfume over me.
“Anyone get anything out of that?” I asked, “Besides the need for a shower?”
The Smoke came back around the table and sat down again as we all tried to piece the thing we had seen in fast motion from the Bookkeeper’s mind.
“He seemed to only be working with probability equations,” Screamer said.
Patty nodded.
“So what in the world made him even start on those equations?” I asked. “A person like the Bookkeeper just doesn’t come up with all dogs dying out of the blue.”
We all sat in silence trying to dig back through the wave of information we had all gotten from the connection with the Bookkeeper’s mind. It was like trying to sort through a library of information. The closer you looked, if in the wrong spot, the deeper you got into the wrong details.
Like rewinding a DVD, I ran back over the Bookkeeper working on the problem until the moment he first sat down at a computer with the idea. Then I slowed down what I was seeing, still in reverse, until I finally got to the trigger point.
“Oh, no,” The Smoke said softly.
He must have gotten to the same point I had managed to get to in the information in our minds.
“How is that possible?” I asked The Smoke.
“What possible?” Patty and Screamer asked at the same moment.
“Please,” Patty said. “I don’t want to play around in that guy’s mind anymore than I have to.”
“Basically,” I said, glancing at The Smoke, “At noon today all dogs are going to become human. Sort of.”
He nodded. “That’s what it looks like.”
Before I could ask him the dozen questions I had for him, Marge said, “What’s that smell?”
She was waving her hand in front of her face while carrying a tray of milkshakes with the other.
“Sorry,” I said. “A little perfume bottle accident.”
She half-dropped the milkshakes and tray on our table. “Smells more like a perfume factory disaster,” she said, heading for the door at full speed. She opened it and blocked it open, then headed for the back room. “Got to get a cross-breeze in here.”
I glanced at the milkshake in front of me, but had no desire to drink it at the moment. Not only would it just taste like purple lilacs, but with what we had discovered by putting all the pieces together, the Bookkeeper was going to win his bets.
“Is it possible for a dog to become human?” Screamer asked. “Isn’t that something like being a werewolf?”
“Wolves become human, yes,” The Smoke said. “I am a werewolf, actually.”
I was so startled, I just opened my mouth and then closed it again with no words coming out.
Patty just stared at him.
“Full moon stuff and all?” Screamer asked.
The Smoke, smiled, sort of, without showing his teeth. “No, I can turn at will and have complete control over both forms.”
“So is that what’s going to happen to all the dogs?” Patty asked. “Are they suddenly going to have your power?”
The Smoke shook his head sadly. “I was a human first before my power came about. Dogs have much smaller brains and would not understand their new form or how to live as humans. They would still have the minds and actions of dogs.”
“This is a disaster,” Screamer said. “Millions of new humans are suddenly going to appear. Humans that need help and can’t take care of themselves as humans. This is going to crash our entire economy.”
“So what’s causing this?” Patty asked. “Or who? And why?”
“Back to what triggered the Bookkeeper to figure it out,” Screamer said.
“No one is causing this. We have no villains,” I said and The Smoke nodded.
“Radiation spike,” I said. I could see clearly how the Bookkeeper had read a study on a coming short, intense burst of radiation from a radiation cloud in space that the Earth would pass through. The focus of the hit would be the North American continent and it would only last for a fraction of a second exactly at noon Vegas time. Scientists believed it would be harmless and were just planning on studying the coming burst. But when the Bookkeeper learned of the exact frequency of the burst, he started to work the probability equations.
The Smoke just nodded. “The Bookkeeper somehow knew a very closely guarded secret among the animal gods on how to turn an animal human.”
“Are more than just dogs going to be changed?” Screamer said. “I’m having a hard time imaging mouse-sized humans running around.”
“Luckily, no,” The Smoke said. “If the Bookkeeper is correct on the information he has on the frequency and duration of the burst, it will be only dogs. All dogs.”
“So what are we going to do?” Patty asked.
I knew exactly what needed to be done. I didn’t think it was possible, but I sure hoped it would be.
“We’re going to call in the big guns,” I said, smiling, remembering what had happened outside of the Bookkeeper’s home when it blew up.
“Big Guns?” Screamer asked, looking at me with puzzlement.
I turned to The Smoke. “What level are you over in your world of deities?”
“I’m a superhero like you three,” he said. “I can change my shape at will into a dozen different animals, pass through walls like a ghost, and hear and smell things from a great distance.”
“And your bosses?” I asked. “What can they do?”
The Smoke made a poor imitation of a shrug in his expensive suit. “I do not know. They are gods, they can do about anything as far as I know.”
“And they are working on this as well?” I asked.
“They are,” he said.
I nodded, then turned to Patty and Screamer. “Seems we need a God Summit to fix this problem.”
“A what?” Screamer asked.
Patty just laughed. “You’re not thinking what I think you are thinking, are you?”
I smiled. “I am.” Then I turned and shouted into the lilac-smelling air, “Stan!”
# # #
One hour later the four of us with Stan were standing in front of Lady Luck’s huge oak desk. As best as I could tell from the faint light starting to fill the winter sky over Vegas, her office was floating a few thousand feet in the air. It looked like any other corporate president’s office except for the large pair of white dice sitting on the corner of her desk, and the fact that the windows were on all four sides of the room and there was no building under us.
Lady Luck was dressed in a business power-suit of dark silk, with a white blouse under the vest. Today her hair was brown and pulled back tightly, giving her a serious look that would scare just about anyone, since her features were classic Greek with the sharp, pointed nose and high cheekbones.
I hated standing or even being around Lady Luck. As a professional poker player, if she got mad at me I could go on a very long and very dry spell of bad cards. Sure, poker was a game of skill, but without a little luck at times, losing would happen much more often.
I had just gotten finished explaining to her what we had found and my suggestion to stop the problem. She was just staring at me with the best poker face I had ever seen.
I just stared back, keeping my poker face in complete control as well.
“This will take a lot of power to cover the entire continent with a shield like you are suggesting,” Laverne said. “I do not have that much power. In fact, all of the Gods under my control don’t have that kind of power, even for the fraction of a second it will need to be in place.”
“I was afraid of that,” I said. “But if you combined forces with the animal gods and some of the others, as many others as would be possible, then there might be enough. Right?”
I honestly had no idea if I was correct or not, but I sure hoped I was. Otherwise the world was in for a very tough time with millions of more humans showing up suddenly, all in need of care just as dogs had needed.
I couldn’t even imagine just the toilet training issues alone.
She stared at me and then laughed. Having Lady Luck herself laugh at you is not something I had ever imagined happening. Her laugh was sharp and high and it cut.
“You are suggesting something that has never been done before,” she said. “All the gods working together. We’ve never even been in the same time zone or area of the planet at the same time before, let alone work together on anything.”
I nodded and said nothing.
Lady Luck walked to the window of her office and stared down at the lights of the Strip below. Then she said “Burt!”
The round, red-faced God of Casino operations and second in command of all the gambling universe under Laverne appeared beside Stan and close to Laverne.
“What do you think of what Poker Boy and his crew are suggesting?” Laverne asked Burt.
“We might get enough of the Gods to help if we called in a few chits and asked for a few favors,” Burt said. He turned to The Smoke. “What about your bosses?”
“I have already conferred with them and they will follow whatever decision Laverne makes on this. Only a few of them have the power of the shield that will be needed, but they will add what they can.”
I didn’t say anything, but it was just another example of how Laverne had grown in power over the centuries to become one of the most powerful gods of them all. She only answered to the Fates, and I doubted she even talked to them much these days.
She nodded. “The gods that will help will meet back here in one hour. We have a lot of invitations to send out and little time to do it.”
Laverne then nodded to me. “Be prepared to state your case in one hour.”
I was about to ask just what she meant by that when the four of us found ourselves back at our normal booth in The Diner.
The front door was still open and the place smelled much better. None of us had eaten our milkshakes or The Smoke hadn’t even gotten his hamburger when we had vanished from the place an hour before. We had left Madge more than enough money to cover everything before Stan jumped us away to Laverne’s office.
“The Weird Bunch is back again,” Madge said, coming out from the back room. “What would you like to order this time that you won’t eat?”
I was too stunned at what Laverne had said before we jumped back here to even order, so Patty had Madge bring me a vanilla milkshake again. I doubted I would drink it.
What did Lady Luck mean that I needed to be prepared to state my case? After I sat for a moment with that question going over and over through my mind, I turned to Patty.
“What did Laverne mean by me stating the case?”
Patty smiled, but it was the smile I had seen her use on me a number of times when she was humoring me.
Screamer laughed an uneasy laugh. “Laverne is going to pull in as many Gods from around the planet as she can and have you explain to them what everyone needs to do.”
I opened my mouth, then shut it. I had enough trouble talking to just Stan and Laverne and Burt. How in the world was I going to talk to dozens of different gods all at once? And with so much at stake?
I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t. Very shortly the average IQ of the human race was going to drop dramatically.
# # #
After a half hour of talking with my friends, I was starting to calm down. Finally, with Patty’s hand resting on my arm to give me strength, I started to focus on the real problem. If I could get past the stage fright, I had to have an exact plan.
I sipped my vanilla milkshake and then turned to The Smoke. “Do you have the exact frequency needed to change dogs into humans?”
“I do,” he said.
“So, are there other frequencies of radiation we need to worry about that change other animals into humans or frogs into cats or things like that?”
He nodded. “There are a few. But the frequency that is due to hit here is exact, and harmless for the most part except for this problem we are facing. All we have to do is block it exactly and we will be fine.”
“Better,” I said. I turned to the air and shouted “Stan!”
A moment later the restaurant froze with Madge behind the cash register ringing up the money we had giver her for our current batch of food and drinks.
“Need a little help,” I said to the Poker God now pulling up a chair on the end of the booth. “When you and Burt stopped that explosion at the Bookkeeper’s house from spreading anywhere but upward, what kind of field was that? And how did you generate it?”
“You all have one form or another of the same power,” Stan said. He looked directly at me. “When you take people out of time, as I have done here now, you simply imagine them slipping between the molecules, right?”
I had to admit he was right. I did it that way. I nodded.
Stan turned to Patty. “When you are working with an upset customer, how do you calm them?”
She nodded. “I change some hormone molecules in their minds to a calming substance that makes them feel good and happy.”
Stan turned to The Smoke, who was already nodding. “When I go through walls, I simply imagine the molecules very wide apart so that I can slip through them, like turning the structure of the wall into a gas for an instant.”
“Exactly,” Stan said, turning back to face me. “All Burt and I did was harden the air around the explosion so nothing could get through for the brief moment of the explosion.”
“And that’s exactly what we need to do,” I said, “for the few seconds the radiation is hitting North America. We need to harden the air enough to block an exact frequency.”
“It will work,” Stan said. “If we have enough power to generate the hardening field for long enough and at the right time.”
“So how many Gods are coming to help?” I asked.
Stan stared up at the ceiling for a moment, clearly somewhere else, then said, “Six hundred and twelve.”
“There are six hundred and twelve gods?” Screamer asked as I sat back, stunned.
Stan smiled. “Oh, there are more than that. But only six hundred and twelve have accepted Laverne’s invitation to help.”
“How in the world is she going to coordinate all of them?” Screamer asked.
“She’s not,” I said, closing my eyes and trying not to panic. “That’s what she wants us to do.”
“I’m afraid so,” Stan said. “I’ll be back in a half hour. She’s got a mess with the seating chart that needs all of us working on it. Us Gods, you know, have egos.”
Suddenly the noise of the café and the street outside flooded back in and all I could do was lean back in the booth and try not to panic.
Unsuccessfully.
# # #
After about five minutes, with Patty’s gentle touch on my arm, I was calm enough again to work on the problem.
We all four talked for a few minutes, then Screamer said exactly the conclusion I had been coming to. “There’s just no way to get over six hundred gods with different levels of powers to cover everywhere completely.”
I nodded. “To do that would take years of math and someone like the Bookkeeper to figure it out, and that’s if we knew exactly the level of every God’s powers. And we don’t and never will.”
“So how do we do this?” Patty asked. “Are we going to be happy with saving only some dogs and not all?”
I hated that thought. I hated it every time I couldn’t save a single dog.
“No,” I said, “we need all the power to go through one source and out over the entire continent, to form a complete dome of hardened air for a second or two.”
“And who’s going to do that?” The Smoke said.
“We are,” I said. “All four of us together, linked.”
Screamer opened his mouth, then shut it again. Patty just shook her head slowly. The Smoke seemed frozen.
But for the first time in a couple of hours I was starting to feel more confident.
“With the four of us linked, The Smoke can form the dome and make sure we are blocking the right frequency, Screamer can hold us together and add energy, and Patty and I can control and funnel the energy to the shield that The Smoke forms.”
“That’s going to be a lot of power,” Screamer said.
“I don’t think we’ll survive it,” Patty said. “We’re not gods.”
“And that’s why we can do it,” I said. “We’re the workers, the superheroes who get our hands dirty every day saving lives. We don’t need to touch the power, just like a fireman with a powerful hose of water doesn’t touch the water. We just aim it.”
“I hope you’re right, Poker Boy,” The Smoke said.
“If I’m not,” I said, “we’ll be dead and a lot of dogs will be human.”
I glanced at the clock on the wall. “We only have a few minutes. We need to practice this a few times.”
Screamer nodded for The Smoke to touch his shoulder and then reached for Patty and my hands.
It took us a moment, but then we each settled into our spots in the bigger mind we had created with Screamer’s connection.
I thought directly at The Smoke that he should imagine hardening the air over the booth next to ours in a way that would only block a certain frequency.
He did, and then Patty and I formed an imaginary hose and connected it to the shield to power it. We ran through it twice, then Screamer let us go.
“I want to practice that with Stan feeding us some light energy just before we go.”
Everyone nodded, so once again I called for Stan.
“Almost time,” he said as he appeared at the same moment as taking us out of time.
“One quick practice session,” I said. I quickly explained what we were doing. Stan nodded. “Might just work.”
For Stan that was as encouraging as he ever got.
Screamer linked the four of us up and we could hear Stan ask, “Ready?”
“Ready,” we said as one out of four mouths.
He started a slight flow of energy toward us and Patty and I captured it easily into the mouth of the imaginary hose we had formed in our minds and sent it directly to the shield.
Expand the shield, I thought to The Smoke, so that it covers as much as you can with the energy coming to you.
He expanded the shield as Stan increased the energy until the shield covered all of the Las Vegas area. As more energy came in Patty and I let the natural flow expand the size of the hose protecting all of our minds. It worked easily for one god’s worth of energy. Could we hold the containment for over six hundred gods’ energy, all directed at the same spot?
If not, there would be four very dead superheroes.
# # #
Stan jumped the four of us back to the front of what looked like a large auditorium floating high over Las Vegas. We were suddenly standing on a stage facing six hundred very powerful gods who stared at us like we were a bad stage act that was bombing.
The colors and styles of clothing in the room seem to not only cover every possible color in the rainbow, but almost every age of man. I didn’t recognize more than one or two of them. I could see the Bookkeeper’s bosses, the Gods of Mathmatics, in their heavy sweaters and large glasses, but beyond that I had no idea who the rest of the gods were. I was pretty certain I didn’t want to know.
Laverne, dressed still in her business suit and white blouse stepped up beside the four of us and started speaking to the crowd. “We have very little time if we are to avert a disaster of epic proportions. We have four superheroes here who need all of our help in solving this problem.”
She introduced the four of us and which area of the deities we each worked, then said, “Poker Boy, please tell us how we can help your team solve this problem.”
I took a deep breath, dug down deep into my calming poker face and manner that had gotten me through many a stressful tournament, and then with Patty’s hand barely touching my arm for support, I explained what we needed and why.
Around the room I could see heads nodding, clearly thinking our plan would work. Others sat perfectly still, expressionless.
When I finished Laverne stepped forward. “I will help focus the power and contain it as it moves through the four of them so that they will not die from the extreme energy being poured through them.”
I was very, very happy to hear Laverne say that.
She turned to me again. “Poker Boy, how long will we need to hold the shield?”
“Two seconds,” I said, “but it will take a few seconds for us to power up the shield as well, so if the energy can be brought up over the first three seconds, then held for two seconds, it should solve the problem.”
Lady Luck nodded, her expression deadly serious, then turned to the audience. “Thank you all for your help. Please be ready.”
Burt appeared next to Laverne and said, “Twenty seconds.”
“Screamer,” I said and he nodded. He stepped between me and Patty and The Smoke moved in behind him. Then The Smoke put both hands on Screamer’s shoulder while Patty and I took each of his hands.
Suddenly we were all together again.
Sure hope this works, the Screamer thought clearly.
Just hold us together no matter what happens, I thought back.
Burt and Laverne stepped in front of us and then turned sideways to the audience facing each other, leaving an opening between them from us to the audience.
“Ten seconds,” Burt said.
Screamer’s grip on my hand tightened.
Form the hose, I thought at Patty and we formed a very thick, very expandable imaginary hose.
“Five seconds,” Burt said.
“Start easy for the first second, then increase the energy,” Laverne said to the gods.
Not a sound could be heard in the huge room as every god sat forward, clearly focused on the task at hand.
Everything ounce of energy we have to keep this hose together, I thought to Patty. Keep the shield on frequency, I thought at The Smoke.
“Two, one, Now!” Burt said.
The impact of the first energy staggered both Laverne and Burt, but they both adjusted and the energy hit us, caught by the now-seemingly-huge imaginary hose in our minds.
Even though Patty and I were focusing all our energy on the hose and holding it in place against the flood of energy, I could see the shield expanding as the energy increased and increased.
Time seemed to slow down as the energy increased. As far as I was concerned, it felt like the hose was the size of a ten-lane interstate and growing, all inside our group minds.
I could feel Patty starting to weaken, so I dug as deep as I could and held. Then I felt her also dig deep and strengthen as well. She was the strongest human I had ever met.
Somehow we held that imaginary hose in our minds together, even as it continued to grow. Just one leak from that stream of energy and we would all be dead. And I wasn’t going to allow anything to happen to Patty.
I could sense a thought from The Smoke that the shield was full and holding.
I could feel energy coming from Screamer trying to help me and Patty as much as possible without losing the contact between us he was struggling to hold.
Time stretched and stretched and stretched.
I could feel myself and Patty starting to slip on our hold on the imaginary hose.
The strain was too much.
I couldn’t hold this much longer.
It wasn’t possible.
It’s done! The faint thought came from The Smoke. The radiation is blocked.
“Stop,” I said, hoping that was my out-loud voice.
The energy shut off instantly and all four of us slumped to the stage as one.
Screamer let our hands go and I had the sudden feeling of being alone.
Both Lady Luck and Burt staggered backward as well, then worked to catch their breath.
Slowly a sound filled the air and I looked at Patty, who was coming around and looking at me. It took me a moment to realize what the sound was, then I looked out at the mass of gods. They were all standing and applauding.
We were getting a standing ovation from a room full of gods! What a way to start a new year.
And then after a moment the sound stopped and they all vanished, leaving an empty room with only Stan and Laverne and Burt and the four of us.
Stan helped me to my feet and I helped Patty up. Screamer and The Smoke staggered up as well. My knees felt like they were held together by rubber bands, thin ones, but darned if I was going to fall down again in front of Lady Luck, so I braced my legs and Patty leaned against me and we held each other up somehow.
Laverne and Burt both looked tired as well, and there was actually a little sweat on her forehead that vanished after a moment.
Lady Luck actually could sweat. Who knew.
She thanked each of us for the great work, then looked directly at me. “Once again, Poker Boy, you and your team have saved us. All I can say is thank you yet again.”
She and Burt vanished, leaving a tired-looking-but-smiling Stan, the God of Poker. “How about we all go get something to eat? On me.”
“I’m not sure if Madge can handle us three times in one day,” I said. “Especially on the first day of the year.”
“I was thinking more about the buffet at the MGM Grand. Don’t you have some winnings to pick up?”
“I do,” I said, smiling, remembering how my year had actually started with my tradition.
Everyone was nodding at the idea so I said, “Perfect. And besides, I wanted to talk to The Smoke here, see if he might be interested in joining us on a few cases down the road?”
The Smoke smiled, again without showing his teeth, then said, “I would be honored.” Then he turned to Stan. “I hear the buffet at the MGM Grand has some great meet. Not cooked too much I hope.”
Stan laughed. “You know, you’re as weird as the rest of this bunch. You fit perfectly.”
“That he does,” I said smiling at the werewolf named The Smoke, the newest member of the team.
A moment later the five of us were standing in line for the Buffet. Even a god and four superheroes had to stand in line. Even after saving a lot of dogs.
---
This is the first publication of “The Smoke That Doesn’t Bark: A Poker Boy Story.”
Dean Wesley Smith is the international bestseller of over ninety novels and hundreds of short stories. He had also published a number of Poker Boy short stories and in the spring of 2011 WMG Publishing will bring out the first full Poker Boy novel The Slots of Saturn. You can find out more about Dean Wesley Smith at deanwesleysmith.com.
If you liked this story, you might also like these other Poker Boy stories:
The Old Girlfriend of Doom
Sighed the Snake
Luck Be a Lady
Dead Even.