| |
The Broken Wheel was doing a gold rush business. Men crowded the bar, telling tales at full volume, with exuberant profanity and flailing hands. The bartender, McKenzie, topped off shot glasses with fluid speed. I caught the man’s attention and gestured for a bottle, then Krawczyk and I found a table in the corner, away from the action.
McKenzie hustled over and plonked a bottle and two glasses down. He gave Krawczyk a hairy stare, obviously started to say something, but decided against it. He pocketed the coin I handed him and left with a nod.
“Tactically unsound,” I said to the blue-haired woman. “You being here, in a saloon. In this day and age, decent women didn’t come into saloons.”
“Neither did people of color. So there you go.” She arched an eyebrow and directed a meaningful look at the faro table. For a Magical, obtaining cash was rarely a problem, as long as there was gambling available. A little tip of the wheel or a nudge on the dice was all it took to gain a road stake. Cheating at gambling was perfectly acceptable to the Administrators, as was lifting cash from drug cartels and committing other fiscal felonies, including tax evasion. Even petty larceny was overlooked. In fact, assuming a Magical avoided big, splashy crimes that brought unwanted scrutiny or harmed civilians, pretty much anything was fair game.
“What are you humming?” Kat asked.
“Hmm?”
“Just now. You were humming a tune. It sounded familiar.”
“I was?”
Krawczyk held her empty glass out for a fill. “Under your breath, kind of.”
I paused in the middle of pouring. I honestly couldn’t remember—“Ahh... The Who. ‘Boris the Spider.’”
“Nope. I was wrong. Never heard of it.”
“From the album A Quick One. 1966.” I knocked back my shot and poured another while molten lava cauterized my throat.
“What do you think about Birnbaum?” Krawczyk asked.
I cocked an eyebrow in a silent question.
“Dustin Birnbaum, Wacky Wizard of Ohio.” She sipped her drink, pulled a face. “Gah. That’s disgusting. I need a mojito. You said maybe some stuff of his came back. You think maybe he sent the Gollums.”
I shrugged and sipped my next shot with greater care, checking out the rest of the saloon. Krawczyk studied me with her dark-eyed gypsy stare.
“No, I don’t. But I don’t remember much,” I said after deciding she wouldn’t be put off, “about the... trip through time.” I rested my elbows on the table, and my chair squeaked when I shifted weight. My glass was empty—small glass. “Images, mostly. In none of those... flashes... do I see what Birnbaum did. Can’t describe it, but he felt like a long when away.”
“But you don’t think these things are his, right? Birnbaum didn’t make ’em? I mean, who else but a nerd from our time thinks of a Lord of the Rings character, for the Goddess’s sake? And those elves and fake movie creatures you mentioned? Think about it: why else would all this caca be hitting the propeller now if it wasn’t connected to you and me? And probably more you than me.”
“Caca?”
“Or you know, he could be sending gifts from the future, dropping a little torment back in the past to keep us busy. Pour me some more of that shit, would you? It kinda grows on you. But hey, listen. We need to be sure, right? We should probably go up into the mountains and look for the little sonofabitch. Make sure he’s not around, making more creepy-crawlies for fun and amusement. Put a... ah, put a stop to him. You know”—she made a helpless gesture—“bring him to justice and all that. Do that thing you do.”
“‘That Thing You Do.’ The Wonders, 1996. A fictional band for a movie of the same name.”
“Huh?”
“Never mind.” I leaned back in my chair. “But no. The answer is no.”
“Why not?”
“Time.”
“So?” Krawczyk shrugged. “We’re stuck here, in this time, unless you can remember the way to get back home. We shouldn’t leave these people with monsters on account of how we’re in a rush to get back. I mean, we brought ’em, right? The Gollums?”
“Again, I don’t think so. More importantly, not our job.”
“Not our job? Are you kidding me? What the hell, Mr. Magical Judge? Aren’t you all about hunting down Magicals gone wrong and murdering or terminating them with extreme prejudice or whatever it is you do? That is what you do, correct? Assuming we can’t find them a safe place to relocate, we need to somehow stop the Gollums from hurting people. As reluctant as I am to kill, even I see that as a distinct possibility. How can keeping people safe not be your job?”
I flicked a glance at her and refilled my shot glass. “No proof.”
“What?”
“No proof the Gollums are Birnbaum’s. I think they’re actually pygmies.”
“So what if they’re not?” Krawczyk scrunched her face, evidently dismayed by my lack of emotion. Wow, like I’ve never seen that before. “You—”
“Judge Chivers!” Esmeralda cried out from the top of the stairs. She bounded down the staircase, agile even on one leg, and rushed through the room in a sensuous wiggle of satin and lace.
I put up a stop signal with an open palm. Esmeralda clutched my extended hand and pulled it between her breasts, overacting an expression of relieved distress. “Oh, Judge Chivers, I’m so glad you have came—”
“I wouldn’t count on him coming, dearest,” Krawczyk snarled. “Coming would take too much time.”
“I had such a dream of you,” Esmeralda said, ignoring the interruption. “It was dark, and I was all alone, surrounded by the biggest wolves I have ever seen! And then you came with your big pistola and shooted the wolves all dead.” Esmeralda crooked a forearm over her brow, as though about to swoon. “It was horrible. I was so ascared. Then you picked me up in your strong arms and carried me away, and I was all safe again.” She tugged my hand tighter into her bosom, treating me to the sensation of a firm breast under my palm. Esmeralda blinked coal-dark, liquid eyes. “What do you think it means, mi hermano?”
Krawczyk’s jaw fell open. “Is she for real?”
Getting my hand away was like pulling off a wet glove. “She’s whatever you want, for a price.”
“Little sister,” Krawczyk implored, “you shouldn’t have to sell your body to make a living. You’re more than a tool to be used and thrown away like a disposable washrag. We are all sexual beings, and there’s nothing wrong with seeking pleasure, but it should be for pleasure, not commerce.”
Esmeralda’s brows knitted together in a frown. She swiveled her eyes back to me. “What is this woman saying?”
“You don’t have to fuck for money, if you don’t want to.”
“But... I like fucking for money.”
“Hey.” I pointed at Krawczyk as if I’d just remembered something. “Didn’t you just tell me I should get laid?”
“Not with a... a victim of sex traffickers!”
I stood and tossed back the last of my whiskey. “Come on, Esmie. Come show me how to play faro. I need to win some money.”
“And then?” the Latino woman asked with a hopeful inflection.
“And then you get to bang the Judge’s gavel, I bet.” Krawczyk spoke through clenched teeth, her neck blotchy red. “I’ll be at the hotel.” Her eyes flared at the way Esmeralda rubbed against me like a cat marking her scent. “You and I are going to have a talk about women’s rights, Esmeralda.”
The tiny woman stalked away, stiff-legged, her borrowed pants rolled up at the cuffs and her farmer’s boots clumping the floor.
“I heard that woman is a witch,” Esmeralda said. “Is true?”
“Yes. Just not how you imagine.”
#
The faro table at the Broken Wheel played a low-stakes game, and I took care to win only a little above average. As a consequence, I was up only by forty dollars after three solid hours of playing. Might have been fifty but for Esmeralda, who sat next to me and squealed when I won and moaned when I lost. Every time a grimy miner or a dusty vaquero sidled up to the one-legged woman, I slipped her a dollar, paying her to stay with me rather than go off and earn a living the old-fashioned way. She stuck on me tighter than a rusted jar lid.
I cut a look at Esmeralda, her body so close I could tell she had an innie and not an outie. “How’d you lose your foot?”
“A bear trap,” she said without blinking an eye.
“A bear trap?”
“Si.” Esmeralda demonstrated by clawing her fingers together. “Is a steel trap, to catch the bear.”
“Ah. You shouldn’t step in those.” It was the fourth time I’d asked her how she lost her foot, and the bear trap was her fourth different answer. First, wolves. Then a mountain lion had eaten it. A horse spooked with her foot caught in the stirrup. And now, bear trap.
I yawned, and my eyelids drooped. I needed a bed, and I would honestly have considered inflicting grave bodily injury on the entire offensive line of the Detroit Lions for a long, hot shower. My skin itched and felt greasy and gritty. I laughed at my own fussiness. When did you become such a priss? In the army, I had gone days, sometimes weeks, without a proper bath, but in the years since, as a Magical and a Judge, it had been much different. Showers every day, sometimes twice. Deodorant. Safety razors, ten in a package, all nested together with plastic guards over the blades.
Esmeralda’s fingers tickled my neck, jerking me back to reality. “Wass wrong, mi hermano?”
“Nothing. Sorry, just tired. I’m calling it a night.”
“Ah yes, let’s go upstairs.” Esmeralda jumped up, eager as a puppy. “I’ve been waiting soooo long.”
I stood and stretched. Joints popped. I pocketed my winnings and peeled the young woman from my side. “Not tonight. Here’s another dollar. Go to bed and get some sleep.”
“But my bed is so cold and lonely.” She pouted her full, red lips. “I need you to keep me warm at night.”
“How old are you, really?”
“I’m... nineteen,” she said while watching me through her eyelashes.
If Esmeralda was over eighteen, I’d eat Misery raw, without salt. I had no illusions that she would go to bed and sleep. The night—by a prostitute’s clock—was still very young, and given the high count of randy men in the saloon, she would have customers lined up before I reached the hotel.
You’re not a social worker, big fella.
No, that was true. I’d done what I could. It wasn’t my job to uphold the woman’s virtue—or anyone else’s, for that matter.
I touched the brim of my hat. “G’night, ma’am,” I said in my best John Wayne voice. Lookit me, Ma. I’m a cowboy! By the next day, I’d probably be walking bowlegged, punching cattle, and riding the purple sage with a big iron on my hip.
You have to get out of this place, Calico.
Yeah? No shit.
#
I returned to the Bannerworth, nodding to the desk man on the way to my room. He looked up from his paper and nodded right back at me. The lobby was empty, the only sound the ticking of a grandfather clock against the wall next to the cut-through to the restaurant. Krawczyk was nowhere to be seen, and I didn’t bother looking for her. She told me Merilee Soames had invited her to stay in her personal suite, in a spare bedroom, which she thought was mighty generous and I thought was mighty suspicious.
“You’re judging people by your own paradigm,” she had scolded me. “People of this era are more generous and neighborly than in our time.”
“Not to people of color, lesbians, or supposed witches,” I had fired back.
That had shut her up. Score one for Team Shivers.
I was just as happy to leave her be. Weariness dragged at me, and I trudged up the stairs, looking forward to my narrow little lumpy mattress. My eyeballs grated as if sand coated the sockets, my left eye worse than the right, due to Weeks having sucker punched me there.
Though even as I thought of the pain, I realized it had diminished somewhat since I last noticed it. I felt only the memory of pain, not the reality of it. Same for my other aches and ouches. Maybe there was some natural analgesic in the rotgut served at the Broken Wheel.
The room had cooled somewhat, and a nice breeze stirred the curtains. I locked the door behind me and started the process of disarming. When I undressed, I recoiled from the smell wafting from my armpits, so I poured water into the basin and washed up as best I could. With a towel around my waist and slightly damp, I felt almost chilly, so I turned out the lamp and flopped into bed, drawing the covers over me with a feeling akin to bliss.
Sleep, however, filed a restraining order and refused to come near me.
Though feeling much better, my eye still ached a bit, my thighs were rubbery from horseback riding, and the ankle I had sprained during the mall fight pinged me with little daggers of annoyance whenever I turned my foot the wrong way.
I needed an ibuprofen, modern fucking medicine. Some Magicals, like Krawczyk, were healers. Magicals with that skill could manipulate the body’s energy to speed healing and ease pain, sensing the damaged areas in a body through their magic and intuiting how to repair them. I wasn’t a healer—not even close. If I tried something like that, I’d blow out an artery or turn my eyeball to jelly, which is what was so frustrating about my sister’s situation. I knew there were people who could heal her, but the damn Admins refused to break the Codex and allow it.
You could go see Kat. Maybe she’d heal you.
I snorted. Yeah, sure. Probably chant a mantra and burn some aloe vera over me. God, I hate New Agers.
You hate everyone.
They typically hate me first. Now go away, brain, and let me sleep.
The curtains belled inward, and the scent of sage drifted on the breeze, overlaid with a tang of manure. Geyser Falls was a mining town, and the saloons would be packed by now, but this end of town was quieter and more upscale, and the streets rolled up early. Sounds were muted, distant.
My head had sunk into an overheated pit in the down-filled pillow. I punched it up and rolled over.
Birnbaum. Dead Wizard Walking. I kept coming back to that.
By now, Jurgens would know I had failed and had probably dispatched more Judges to take care of the problem—hopefully several, given how tightly dug in Birnbaum was, behind his circus of homegrown freaks. Would Jurgens take the time to figure out what happened to me and Krawczyk and maybe convince the Admins to set up a rescue op?
Ha. He was more likely to wear a fruit salad hat and dance the merengue.
No, the Admins were, at their core, giant pricks—ego-driven, self-appointed rulers of the Magical community. They would protect humanity from the rogue wizard who flagrantly disobeyed the law and brought attention to himself, not out of altruism but from a strong sense of self-preservation. Magicals who flaunted their power could prod the mundane humans to notice us and take action. They say you never heard the cruise missile that killed you, and Admins didn’t want to live in a constant state of fear and paranoia.
They would sacrifice the life of a sixteen-year-old girl to protect the secret of magic from the general population. The Admins would easily write off the loss of a Judge and a Magical from Ohio—especially one as contentious as I—without raising an eyebrow.
It was late. After midnight. I grew too warm under the covers and tossed aside everything except a thin cotton sheet. Perspiration soaked my scalp. A five-thousand BTU window unit would have done nicely. I would have set that baby on frigid and chilled the room until icicles formed on the bed frame.
The Old West sucked. The Westerns I had eaten up like pudding had left out a lot of reality—the smell, for one. No plumbing. Rare bathing. Wood or coal for fuel. The streets stank, the animal dung stank, and the outhouses were places only a maggot could love. Krawczyk had a rosy-eyed view of the people of that era, whereas I had a totally different take on them as being suspicious, ignorant and bigoted.
Truth be told, staying there would deeply and voraciously have sucked donkey balls.
I missed three-ply, downy-soft toilet paper, moist cotton wipes, minty-fresh toothpaste, and multilayer soft-bristle toothbrushes.
Tooth decay. Jesus. What if you have to go to a dentist?
Well. Shit. Who can sleep now? Thanks.
But what if...
If I wanted, I could have rewritten a shitload of history. I could have traveled to Austria and thwarted the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, assuming I could remember where and when it would take place. Sarajevo? 1914? I’d dozed through history class.
Oh, I know. While in Austria, I could have tracked down a skinny kid born to Alois Hitler and Something German Schicklgruber. Maybe convinced the little shit to move to Iceland or Tahiti or to take up farming. I didn’t need to kill Hitler, just divert the kid to a path other than megalomania and genocide.
Think bigger. Krawczyk was a healer. With her willing help—and I could recognize a born do-gooder from a mile away—we could start a hospital and “invent” modern medical techniques. Maybe we could develop a flu vaccine by 1918 that would mitigate the Spanish Flu, thereby saving the lives of forty million people.
I could even bypass the rule about Magicals healing regular people. Wouldn’t that have been a kick? It had to have been easier to avoid Admins in that day and age, before cell phones and the internet.
What if... I ran for president? Could I exert enough influence on Wall Street to stop the margin buying of stocks and prevent the Great Depression? Lay the groundwork for defeating communism before the Cold War? Avert a couple of World Wars and maybe put off the development of nuclear weapons for another dozen years or so?
Exactly how much history could I fuck up? Or is the butterfly effect real? Would I, by screwing around with the cosmos, eliminate my birth from ever happening? Would I vanish the instant I stepped on a cockroach? Alter history so much that my parents never met? I had always avoided reading fiction, especially science fiction—“Stop wasting your time with those trashy books, son! Focus on your math.”—but I knew a paradox was not something one wore to keep their feet warm. From what I recalled, time paradox implied that if it didn’t happen, the time traveler didn’t do it. Or something like that.
So, taken to its logical conclusion, I never altered and could never alter my personal history because, tah-dah! There I was, stuck in 18-fucking-87.
Yes, I get it. Poor you. Can’t find your way home. Awww, cry me a river. Quit whining and go to sleep.
For once, I tried to take my brain’s advice.