“No. No!” She was screaming, and she did not care. “This is wickedness! This is no fair Judgment! This is murder!” She fell to her knees beside Shaykh Rustaam’s now lifeless body.
Shaykh Saif knelt next to her and spoke softly. “Be still, child. It’s out of our hands now. This is why we have the Judgment. The Lodge must shed its diseased limbs so that the body does not die.” He knew that Shaykh Rustaam had been poisoned. But even this wouldn’t cause him to act against Zaad. Layla saw it in his eyes. A united Lodge of God. He placed a hand on Layla’s shoulder.
She jerked away from his touch and stood. “Zaad is the diseased limb!” she screamed, “A user-of-poisons, as disgraced in the Traditions as the blasphemer—you all see this, yet you say nothing!” A last bit of something careful and thoughtful in Layla seemed to burn and blow away like ash. She turned to Zaad.
“Poisoner! Son of a whore! God piss on you, murderer!” They were the words of caravan guards, and Hakum snarled at them, but Zaad restrained his pupil with a raised hand and smiled.
“I forgive your angry words. You are a girl, taught by a heretic and a soft old man. You cannot be blamed. But an influence such as your cannot be allowed to remain—”
Zaad would not strike her. He did not need to. He would simply cast her out of his Lodge coinless, friendless, and dishonored. Her grand-uncle and Shaykh Rustaam were dead. Their enemy had won.
She could not let it be this way.
She focused on her breathing, her blade, the mocking Shaykh across from her. Zaad had killed Shaykh Rustaam, who had shown Layla how strong she might be. But if her teacher could look on now, he would see her strength. Her sword appeared suddenly in her hand. She flew at Zaad.
Before the Shaykh or his pupils even got their weapons up, Layla’s sword made three deep cuts at Zaad’s neck and shoulders. He gurgled as he fell. Then he stopped moving.
The assembly rang with men’s shouts and the drawing of swords. Shaykh Saif bellowed her name. Hands clutched at her. Her blade bit into flesh again and again. Hakum fell before her, clutched at his bleeding gut. Her sword flashed. She heard screams, watched a man’s severed fingers arc through the air.
Whether her power came from God or from the Traitorous Angel, Layla was faster than any man at the Lodge. She bolted through the stunned assembly, out the great double doors, and into the cool night air.
Layla ran down the rocky path that led away from the Lodge. The shouts slowly grew more distant behind her. She headed off the path and down into the stony hills. Picking her way among the rocks, she ran for an hour before stopping beside a great gray boulder. She held her breath and listened for sounds of pursuit, but heard none. She allowed herself a few huffing breaths and put her hand to her swordhilt.
Merciful God, please, no! This can’t be!
But it was. Brushing against her scabbard, her fingers touched only leather. No scrap of silk was wound there. During the Judgment, or when she’d killed Zaad, or perhaps when she’d fought through the assembly—somewhere she had lost her mother’s scarf.
Her grand-uncle. Shaykh Rustaam. Her home in the Lodge of God. Her oath to her mother. All lost. And what did she have? Revenge? Shaykh Zaad’s death meant little enough, when she thought on it. How she had burned to kill him! But now his allies—men who called God’s name as they took what they wanted—would run the Lodge, even if Shaykh Saif became High Shaykh in name.
Her life in the Order was over. She would never become a Shaykh as she’d once dreamed. And she had maimed and killed men. Other Dervishes. She’d done it simply by reaction. It wasn’t as hard as the Shaykhs had made her believe. She felt no shame thinking on Hakum and…Yusef, had it been? Mahmet? Others whose names she’d never retained had gotten in the way as well.
Her eyes stung and her stomach clenched, but she felt no shame. What had she become, she wondered, that she could kill others of the order and feel no shame?
Layla inspected herself. Bruised and cut. Her blue silks tattered and stained with blood. She could not continue to wear them, and not only because they were ruined. She was no longer a Dervish.
She thought of the map on her grand-uncle’s wall and all the cites listed there. She quickened her pace through the hills.
Saints starve, robbers roast lamb. More caravan guards’ words she shouldn’t have heard. Layla weighed them heavily now, her hand on her sword. She could never be a saint now. God would not forgive what she had done, nor would the order. They might even send men to hunt her.
Let them, she decided, looking about the barren hills. She realized that had become something new in those moments after Shaykh Rustaam’s death. Something disappointing to God, perhaps, but terrifying to wicked men like Zaad. She would do what she had to.
Saints starve, robbers roast lamb. She had to go somewhere. And three days’ walk from the Lodge of God was a soft city full of rich men—a whole new world, full of bolts of red silk waiting to be taken.
Doctor Diablo Goes Through the Motions
So here I am again, sitting at a twelve-person steel table, going through the motions. The Society of Supercriminals’ new headquarters is impressive but not comfortable. You’d think that Overlord, with his ill-gotten dictator-industrialist billions, could afford some padding for these damn chairs. But as my Tío Cesar would say, assholes never shit flowers.
We’ve been at the table a long time, Overlord assigning minor miscreantish jobs to the Society’s members. He’s clearly building to some criminal crescendo, and I wish he’d just get to it. I squirm audibly in my seat and I can practically hear him frown behind that grotesque silver mask. There’s a longstanding if covert debate among my associates as to whether the big O wears the mask because he’s horribly scarred or whether he just has a kink for such things. Either way, over the course of a meeting, dude’s heavy breathing goes from annoying to gut-deep creepy.
My attention is drifting. I force myself to focus on our self-appointed leader’s metal-echoed words.
“…on other fronts, there is a new so-called hero that has been disrupting the profitable activities of one of the larger illicit organizations that pay us tribute. Doctor Diablo, this assignment will fall to you. The foolish do-gooder calls himself Steelfist. His powers include a great proficiency with all forms of martial arts and—”
“Let me guess—he’s white, right?” I interrupt, tired of the rambling. Overlord always goes on like this when all he really has to do is slap down a dossier with This guy needs his ass handed to him stamped on the cover. I’m just cutting to the chase.
Behind that mask, bloodshot eyes register confusion, then irritation with my question. Around me, I hear mumbles and shifting chairs. The Society of Supercriminals hates it when I bring up race.
“How could the ethnicity of this self-righteous fool possibly matter to—”
“I’m just sayin’,” I interrupt, gauging carefully how far I can push my smart-aleckry. Overlord has a tendency to vaporize guys who disagree with him in meetings. “I’m just sayin’ you don’t need to go through all of this. I can guess his goddamn origin: Disaffected rich kid. Fled America and trained with mystical Eastern warriors. Soon became the best—one year at ninja camp is always enough time for a gringo to get better than any native. He defeated the jealous Eastern ex-best warrior. Screwed the prettiest Eastern girl. Earned the respect of her dad, some old guy with a white mustache who’s been waiting all his life for a white boy to come to his school. Came home and decided to fight crime. Am I right?”
For the first time in a half-dozen of these meetings, Overlord looks at me with something like real respect. “Impressive intelligence gathering, Diablo. Your sources are—”
“It was a guess. Anyway, yeah, he sounds about my speed. I’ll handle him.” Taking out a new, minor-league hero. Chump work. But it could be worse—Overlord doled out a goddamn bank robbery to Jaguara. An insult to homegirl’s skills, but better her than me.
“Very well,” says the madman in the silver mask.
“Our last task falls to Planhatcher.”
Planhatcher, the World’s Greatest Schemer, stands up. His costume always struck me as preposterous—the monocle, the image on his chest that looks like Rube Goldberg got drunk and drew on his shirt.
Still, he’s one of the few folks in the Society that I can stand. One of the few that ever talks about anything other than taking over the world or putting this or that nemesis in a death trap. Early on, I tried to make buddies with Black Thunder, on the brown-black solidarity tip. Going through the motions. But dude’s too obsessed with his archenemy Weatherlord, who’s been beating his ass since the ’70s. Now, I know living under the white man’s thumb can fuck with your head, but the shit got depressing. Cheering on a pathetically pumped Black Thunder when he aced Weatherlord’s little green-skinned sidekick. Like I say, depressing.
Planhatcher strokes his goatee and says, “My task is to free the inmates of Centropolis Prison.”
Beside me a blue-skinned fist the size of a Thanksgiving turkey pounds the steel table enthusiastically, leaving a dent. “MASHER LOVE JAILBREAKS!” booms the biggest Supercriminal present.
Planhatcher sniffs, his disdain evident to everyone except Masher, which is probably for the best. “I am speaking of more than a jailbreak, my friends. This is something much more…thorough.”
Mister Munitions, who was half-asleep a second ago, suddenly lights up at this. “We’re gonna blow up Centropolis Prison!”
The look of disappointment on Planhatcher’s face is profound. “This is not about destroying the physical prison, either. My plan is to destroy the need for the prison. Now, most of those imprisoned in Centropolis are nonviolent drug offenders—useless to us as henchmen, but what if…”
Planhatcher spins his word-web. His scheme involves super-powered inmates, corrupt officials and a shadily acquired prison construction company.
The details are sort of lost on me, especially when he starts jotting down some sort of equation on a napkin. Despite calling myself Doctor Diablo, I only have a bachelor’s degree. It’s more than most kids from the barrio manage, but it wasn’t enough to keep me out of trouble. Anyway, the man with the monocle goes on about stealing Moodshifter’s emotion ray, then there’s something about a remote-controlled clone of the governor.
The guy’s nuts, straight up and down. But then, I go to work in a flame-painted bodysuit.
And, as the implications of Planhatcher’s scheme become clear to me, I have to admit that he might be nuts, but he’s also a genius. Prisoners painlessly reformed and reintegrated into society. Their former victims granted a sense of deep healing that the courts could never provide. The best part is, the results will inevitably draw attention and encourage similar efforts elsewhere.
My God. This is the seed of something truly amazing, and for once I’m happy to have shown up for a Society meeting. My cousin Carlos—a good kid who’s caught a whole lot of shitty breaks—is in Centropolis Prison. Rotting away and reduced to an animal’s existence for making essentially the same stupid decisions every frat boy on campus made back in college. This plan would give him another—better to say a first—chance at life.
I can’t help gushing. “Planhatcher! This is fucking brilliant!”
Overlord, on the other hand is clearly impatient and irritated. “An intriguingly baroque scheme, Planhatcher. Still, this and the other tasks I have assigned you are merely distractions. For now we come to my own part.” Those bloodshot eyes are smiling. “While the Legion of Justice is dealing with the baffling distractions the rest of you provide, I will be using my skill with robotics to reprogram the Legion’s most faithful servant. Those crusading buffoons think he is at ARMOR headquarters for his annual maintenance, but behold!”
Overlord gestures with a mailed hand at the wall behind him. The wall slides up to reveal a man-shaped robot writhing in manacles and berating us Supercriminals in a posh English accent.
Arthur the android butler. The idiot kidnapped Arthur! For an evil genius, Overlord is a moron. As the rest of the Society cackles in a great forethoughtless gloat, Planhatcher and I exchange worried looks. Inevitably Captain Patriot or Ultiman or whoever’s in charge of the Legion of Justice this year is going to stage a rescue. Which means we won’t get time to implement Planhatcher’s “distraction.” A thousand hapless cholos like my cousin, whom we could have helped, will get chewed up even further by the system.
As if on cue, a thunderous rumbling shakes the building. Then another. The sound of our impenetrable fortress wall being broken open. The Legion is here.
“Impossible!” shouts Overlord. What a jackass.
A voice like a lightning strike echoes from a nearby room. “Think ye to hide, cowering villains!? Verily, my axe doth rend these walls as though steel were mere paper!! Fear not, friend Arthur, for the Legion of Justice hath come to free thee!!”
A knot forms in my stomach. I turn to Planhatcher. “They brought The Berserker with them? I thought he was trapped in the Middle Ages!”
Planhatcher shrugs and rolls up the tube of blueprint paper he had spread on the table. I sigh and think of Carlos. Chances are pretty good I’ll be joining him soon.
The Legion wants a fight. So I charge up my infernal internal dynamo, watching the orange glow begin to shimmer off of my arms. Every time I do it I think about falling into that volcano and waking up…changed. It’s a hell of a thing, being a changed man in the same old world.
Planhatcher pulls something small and gun-shaped from his belt and turns a dial on it. I see the prison rehab plan die in his eyes. Beside me, Masher picks up the great steel meeting table like a club.
We didn’t make this world, but we survive it by going through the motions.
General Akmed’s Revenge?
“Today we destrrroy Amerrrica.”
Muhammad Mattawa twisted his face into a melange of rage and barbaric triumph. He was rallying a bloodthirsty crowd. He needed to be more forceful. He raised his voice, tried again.
“Today we destrrroy Amerrrica! TODAY WE DESTRRROY AMERRRICA!!” Muhammad shook his fist at the American air, held his conqueror’s scowl for one long moment more. It slipped into a clowning smile when he looked at his friend Ali, who sat on their apartment’s ratty couch, watching Muhammad practice. “Well, what do you think?” he asked Ali in Arabic.
“I think you’ve got it down, dude.” Ali said in English. Smug, American-born Ali with his effortless slang. “I also think,” he began, switching to Arabic, “this is the stupidest fucking movie script ever written. And racist! I mean, the fact that they’re still making stereotypical shit like this…” Ali ran a hand through his spiky black hair. “How many times you going to practice that one line, anyway? Let’s get high.”
Muhammad shrugged in surrender. He hurled the script at his best friend’s head. Ali was right, of course. Desert Rangers II was the worst script Muhammad had ever read, in Arabic or English. The movie certainly qualified as “Public Insult to Islam”—a punishable crime in his homeland. Worse, his role was tiny. But “General Akmed” was the only part he’d landed in the year since he’d played “Terrorist #3” and been shot in the head onscreen by an Austrian body builder-turned-action star. There wasn’t a lot of work out there for Muhammad. In a stroke of luck two years ago, he’d played a Cuban drug dealer’s henchman. Mostly, though, it was sleazy oil sheiks and men who cackled as they blew up children. Then again, Muhammad reflected, the fact that he had shown up to his last two auditions late due to car trouble and reeking due to long nights of hashish and video games probably hadn’t helped his career.
An hour later that same sweet reek filled the apartment, leavened with the fried onion-and-cumin smells of Ali’s cooking. Muhammad’s half-eaten plate sat before him. A video game controller was in his hand.
“Alright, motherfucker,” Ali said in English, “Keep an eye on that score!” Super Mario Brothers © 1986 Nintendo Entertainment Corporation flashed on the screen in white light-letters.
1
986. Some part of Muhammad knew it was an arbitrary, European number. According to the Islamic calendar the year was 1406. But living in this country it was hard not to feel that it was 1406 only for old men like his uncle, a hearer-of-voices who had told Muhammad many times that an unseen jinn protected the Mattawa family. This jinn had not saved his uncle from being tortured and crippled by the Internal Security Police back home, though the fact that one of the thugs had suffered a heart attack during his uncle’s public trial had once inspired credulous notions in Muhammad. Still, when he’d crossed the ocean to America, Muhammad thought, he had moved away from such superstition and into the future.
According to the Desert Rangers II script, General Akmed was the terrorists’ supreme commander. But the part had little screen time. Muhammad’s lines consisted mostly of the direction [screams in Arabic]. His main lines in English were “Die, Deserrrt Rrrangerrrs!” and “Today we destrrroy Amerrrica!” The triple r’s were there in the script. Eric Williams, the director, had explained that Muhammad was to roll his tongue.
Eric was a bony, sadistic man. Back home, Muhammad had often been warned about the Jews of America. But his agent Sol, a mostly-former actor who also had a part in the film, was kind and helpful—almost fatherly. Eric, on the other hand, was neither Jewish nor a kind man. Muhammad wasn’t sure Eric was a man at all. He did not believe in ghuls, but when Muhammad looked at the director he did wonder. Eric was also co-producer and co-writer of the script, in which Lieutenant Snake and his Desert Rangers battle a mad Middle Eastern dictator who’s uncovered an ancient magical artifact.
Muhammad picked his way across the set. Someone tugged at his sleeve.
“Watch out, Mo. Director dickface is in a choice mood today.” Muhammad smiled at egg-bald Sol, who was playing Lieutenant Snake’s hard-nosed commander. Sol could make the huge vein in his forehead throb powerfully on command, and Eric made much use of this talent. Muhammad envied Sol’s role, with its exasperated lines like “If you’re gonna screw me, Snake, you could at least give me a reacharound!”