THREE

 

 

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 there were windows on all four sides of the room and 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 near 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 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 own 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 drunk our milkshakes, and The Smoke hadn’t even gotten his hamburger when we had vanished from the place an hour before. But 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. And that meant that very shortly the average IQ of the human race was going to drop dramatically.