What the hell? Michelle thinks. I’m the Amazing Bubbles. I don’t lie in a pit crying because some damn leopards are looking at me like I’m lunch. They can’t do anything to me.
And she tries to bubble, but she can’t. No hands, she thinks. If I had hands, I could bubble.
“You’re not so fucking special, Michelle,” Joey says. “And zombies are not disgusting.”
Michelle looks down at herself. She’s turned a greyish color and her clothes are in tatters. Black mold is growing on her skin. She holds her hand up in front of her face. At least now she has a hand. Bones peek out between the rotted parts of her fingers.
“This is so wrong,” she says.
Barataria Basin
New Orleans, Louisiana
Jerusha Carter gazed Out over a mile-wide expanse of open water. White egrets floated overhead like quick, noisy clouds; blue herons waded in the nearby shallows, and an alligator’s tail sluiced through the brackish water not far from her boat.
The scene wasn’t entirely idyllic; the sun was merciless, drawing wet circles under her armpits and beading her forehead. Midges, mosquitoes, and huge black flies tormented her. The muck had managed to overtop her high boots and slither down both legs. A storm front was coming in from the Gulf: thunderheads white above and slate grey below piled on the horizon, and the mutter of distant thunder grumbled in the afternoon heat.
The Barataria Basin was a marsh south of the city of New Orleans, one of the several such natural buffers for the city and St. Bernard Parish in the event of a hurricane. It was Jerusha’s job to help restore it. Once, she’d been told, before the levees had been built, this entire area had been marshland, not a lake. Since the 1930s, the area around New Orleans had lost two thousand square miles of coastal wetlands. According to the experts who had briefed Jerusha, for every 2.7 miles of wetland, hurricane storm surge could be reduced by one foot. Therefore, to protect the city from future disasters, it was vital that the wetlands be restored.
That was backbreaking, hard work. Silt had to be hauled in to be dumped in the open water to make it shallow enough to allow the plants that had once flourished here to grow again. Jerusha’s part came when the silt had been dumped and the margins of the lake were ready to be replanted. There, her wild card gift could make short work of what would otherwise take months or years.
Yesterday, it had been bulwhip; today Jerusha was spreading cordgrass—Spartina spartinae, specifically, Gulf cordgrass, with its ability to grow rapidly and to thrive in water of varying salinity. Without Jerusha, teams of volunteers would have been brought in to plant mats of seedlings in the mud and silt, which in time would grow into dense, tough plants high enough to hide a person entirely.
Today was also Thanksgiving. There were no teams out here today. Jerusha was working alone. Everyone else had somewhere to go, somewhere to be: with family, with friends. She tried not to think about that, tried to forget the frozen Swanson turkey dinner waiting for her back at the empty apartment or the call to her parents she’d make while she was eating, listening to their voices and their good wishes and the laughter of their friends in the background, which would only make her feel more alone. Jerusha’s seed belt was full of cordgrass seed, and it needed to be planted. Today.
She stepped out into the knee-deep muck of newly dumped silt, her boots squelching loudly as the mud sucked at them. She plunged her hand into one of the pouches on her belt and tossed handfuls of the tiny seeds onto the ground in a wide arc in front of her. She closed her eyes momentarily: she could feel the seeds and the pulsing of nascent life within them. She drew on the wild card power within her, Gardener’s power, funneling it from her mind into the seeds. She could feel them responding: growing and bursting, tiny coils of green springing from them, roots digging into the soft mud, tender shoots reaching for the sun. She led the cordgrass, feeding the power slowly and carefully.
She was the cordgrass, taking in the nutrients of sun and water and earth and using it, her cells bursting and growing at an impossible rate, forming and re-forming, new shoots birthing every second. She could see the grass rising in front of her, writhing and twisting, a year’s growth taking place in a few moments. As the grass lifted higher, Jerusha laughed, a throaty sound that held a deep, strange satisfaction. There were a few people who might recognize that laugh—it was the same laugh she sometimes gave, involuntarily, in the midst of sex: a vocal, joyous call that came from her core.
Gardening as orgasm.
The cordgrass lifted, writhing and twisting—and atop a cluster of stalks a few feet away something floppy and brown was snagged, bending the grass under its weight.
She let the power fall from her. She felt her shoulders sag: using the ability the wild card had given her always tired her. Usually, after a day out here, she would go back to her apartment and just fall into bed to sleep twelve hours or more. That was most of her days: wake up early, come out here and spread seeds to restore the marshland until near sundown, then back to the city for a quick bite in a restaurant or in her apartment (but alone, always alone), then sleep. Rinse and repeat. Over and over.
Jerusha waded through the mud to the new cordgrass. She pulled the sopping wet piece of felt from the stalks. It took a moment for Jerusha to unfold it and see that it was a hat—a battered, moldy, and filthy fedora, the lining torn and mostly missing, the band gone entirely. A mussel shell clung stubbornly to the fabric; it reeked of the swamp.
She shook her head: Another fedora. We’ve sent Cameo at least a dozen hats we’ve found out here, hoping it was the one she lost. The only way to know for certain was to send this one to her also: a Thanksgiving present. She’d do that when she got back.
Jerusha sighed, glancing at the sun and the clouds. The storm was rolling in. It was time to head back unless she wanted to be caught in the weather, which would only make an already miserable Thanksgiving more miserable.
Holding the sodden hat by the brim, she made her way back to where she’d tied up her boat.
The Winslow Household
Boston, Massachusetts
“Son of a Bitch! I can’t believe he dropped that pass!”
Noel Matthews was jerked back to his surroundings by the shout from his father-in-law. He couldn’t believe he was sitting in front of an entertainment center that looked like it should be the command deck of an aircraft carrier while his American in-laws watched football and shouted at the big-screen television.
Of course it wasn’t really football. It was that turgidly slow American game where extremely large men dressed in padding and tight pants jumped on each other and patted each other’s asses. For a country that was so uptight about fags this seemed an odd sport to be the national pasttime.
Noel reached for his bourbon and soda, and groaned faintly as he shifted on the couch to reach the glass. It felt like a cannonball had replaced his gut, and he surreptitiously undid the button on his slacks. It was Thanksgiving—that peculiar American holiday that seemed to be a celebration of gluttony and taking advantage of the Indians.
But there had been no choice. He and Niobe were living in New York because of fertility treatments at the Jokertown Clinic. Her parents were close by in Massachusetts. And Niobe was determined to show off her famous and successful husband to the old money society that had shunned her when her wild card expressed and she became a joker. Noel had consented to be displayed like a prize Scottish salmon because they had treated Niobe so shabbily, and gloating was a perfectly acceptable response.
Murmuring about “needing the lavatory,” Noel made his escape from the company of men to go in search of his wife. In the kitchen he discovered hired help busily washing up the dishes and packaging the leftovers into plastic containers. Noel was rich now, but he hadn’t been raised rich. They had lived modestly on his mother’s salary as a Cambridge professor. In his house there was no hired help.
He paused in the hallway and listened. The soprano piping of women’s voices in the living room vied with the ba
sso shouts and bellows from the den. As he walked down the long hall, past a rather impressive modern art collection, he buttoned his pants and suit coat.
The living room was done in shades of gold and green, and a fire in the large marble hearth made the room seem cozy and warm. Outside, the big pines in the front yard groaned in the wind. It would snow by morning. Thank God they had a way home from this circle of family hell even if they closed the airport.
Arranging his features into a pleasant smile, he approached the women seated on sofas surrounding a low table that held a silver tea and coffee set. The scent added to the feeling of conviviality, as did the staccato of conversation. He was pleased to see that Niobe was chattering with the best of them, and that her chic equaled or excelled the other women.
It was amazing what a year of contentment—and the tender care of hairdressers in New York, spas on the Dead Sea, and couture in Paris—had done for her hair, skin, and wardrobe. The only jarring note was the thick tail that wrapped around his darling’s feet. At least the laser treatments had removed the bristles.
Their eyes met, and Noel was pleased to see the triumph brimming in hers. He came around behind the sofa, leaned down, kissed her on the cheek, and made a single white rose appear. Niobe blushed, and he was pleased to see her cousin Phoebe look down and frown into her tea. The woman had spent the afternoon placing her fingertips on his forearm, leaning forward so her breasts would be displayed, and generally making a fool of herself.
“You’re not watching?” his mother-in-law said.
“Forgive me, but they’re fools. They’re watching large men grunting and falling down in the mud. I, however, am no fool. I would rather spend my time with the ladies.”
Their laughter fell like ice around him. Niobe wasn’t laughing. He knew her husky little chuckle. She was looking at him, wide-eyed and questioning. He gave her a reassuring smile.
He studied his mother-in-law’s profile, and briefly regretted he’d abandoned his previous profession. If ever a person deserved killing it was Rachel Winslow. When Niobe’s wild card had turned, she had tried to pass her off as a cousin’s child, and when Niobe had been driven to attempt suicide her parents had sent her away to a facility where she was treated like a cross between a lab rat and a sex toy.
His wife handed him a cup of tea. The china was so thin and fragile that it felt like a cricket’s wing in his hand. He looked down and realized she’d already doctored it with a dollop of cream. It squeezed his heart to know that there was someone in the world who knew how he took his tea, and liked his eggs, the temperature of his bathwater. And he returned the favor. They were bonded physically, emotionally, and mentally, and she had helped to close the hole in his heart left after the death of his father a little over a year ago.
He settled onto the sofa next to Niobe and sipped his tea. Noel found himself reaching for one of the cheese crackers. God knew he wasn’t hungry, but nerves made him want to do something with his hands, and he wasn’t allowed to smoke in his in-laws’ house. He was saved from more calories when he felt the cell phone in his left pocket begin to vibrate.
He set aside his cup, pulled out the phone, murmured an apology, and retreated to stand by the window. The caller ID offered only unknown caller, but he recognized the foreign exchange number—Baghdad!
He knew a lot of people in Baghdad, but they only knew his identity as the Muslim ace, Bahir. Only one person knew that Noel was Bahir—his onetime Cambridge house mate, now head of the Caliphate and implacable enemy, Prince Siraj of Jordan.
This was a clean phone. The fact that Siraj had the number meant the Caliphate’s intelligence services had been working overtime. Looking for him and finding him. Tension buzzed along every nerve as Noel considered his options.
Better to know what he’s up to. Noel answered the phone.
“I didn’t know if you’d take the call,” came that familiar baritone.
“I almost didn’t.” Silence stretched between them. Noel pulled out his cigarette case.
Finally Siraj spoke. “I need your help. Will you come to Baghdad, now?” Anxiety roughened his fruity BBC vowels.
It was the last thing Noel had expected. He fumbled out a cigarette and thrust it between his lips. “Ah, well . . . let me see . . . the last time we met you had your guards shoot me. The time before that you had me thrown into an Egyptian prison. I think I’ll skip the third time. It might be the charm for you.”
“I give you my word I won’t make a move against you. I really do need your help.”
Siraj suddenly sounded very young, like the friend who’d gotten into trouble with a professor’s daughter and come to Noel for help, or the friend who’d loaned him the money to pay off his gambling debts when Noel had become fascinated with the ponies in his sophomore year.
But there was no place for sentimentality. “Why?”
“Half of my armor’s been destroyed in the Sudd. This is my last army, Noel, and it’s all that stands between the Caliphate and the People’s Paradise of Africa. And you in the West do not want Nshombo and Tom Weathers controlling the oil. Trust me.”
“Well, that really is the crux of the problem. I don’t trust you. Sorry about your army, but I’m out of the game. For good. Just an average citizen now. Lovely talking to you.” Noel hung up the phone, and rejoined Niobe.
She looked up at him, and he was struck again by her beautiful green eyes. “Was that Kevin?” she said, referring to his agent.
“Yes,” Noel lied.
“You have a cigarette in your mouth!” his tanned and brittle mother-in-law said, forcing the words past clenched teeth.
“Yes, but it’s not lit. I’ll go outside and rectify that.”
Stellar
Manhattan, New York
Wally tugged on the collar of his tuxedo. The tailor had insisted the tux fit him perfectly. As perfectly as anything could fit a man with iron skin and rivets, anyway. But it sure didn’t feel right.
He stopped fiddling with the bow tie. He didn’t know how to tie it; it would be embarrassing if he had to ask a waiter to help him fix it.
The elevator glided to a stop. It jounced slightly as Wally stepped out.
“Hey, Rusty! Get over here, you.”
Ana Cortez stood outside Stellar with a phone to her ear. It looked like she had stepped outside to take a call. She smiled and waved to Wally as he clanked out of the elevator lobby.
His footwear, like his tuxedo, had been specially tailored for him. The fancy Italian shoes looked nice, but they were pretty flimsy; they did little to lessen the pounding of iron feet on a marble floor. Wally would have preferred a less formal Thanksgiving.
Back home, denim overalls and work boots were perfectly acceptable holiday attire. He’d considered going home to Minnesota for the holiday, but in spite of the growing loneliness and homesickness that hovered over him like a cloud these days, he’d decided against it. Every visit home felt more awkward than the last one.
It wasn’t that he didn’t want to see Mom, Dad, and Pete. He missed them pretty bad. More than anything he wanted to go back home to the days before American Hero. He wanted to spend one more Saturday afternoon watching TV with his brother, while their dad snored in his easy chair.
Thing was, Pete had never traveled farther from home than Duluth. His folks had been born and raised on the Iron Range. It was their whole world. Sometimes Wally wished he could go back to being that way, too.
His family imagined Wally’s life was glamorous. Exciting. Full of adventure. And it made them so happy, thinking that. The last time he went home, he thought his folks were going to burst with pride. Wally Gunderson, the hero. Wally Gunderson, international traveler. Wally Gunderson, troubleshooter for the United Nations. Pete always questioned him about the places he visited for the Committee, all the people he worked with, all the good deeds he’d done.
Every visit, it got harder and harder to tell them what they wanted to hear. To avoid telling them about the boredom, the
loneliness, the dread and fear he felt every time the Committee sent him someplace new, the sense of confusion about what he was doing and why he was doing it, the sense that he’d stopped being heroic a long time ago.
Wally hadn’t spent much time at home after his trip to the Caliphate.
“Rusty’s here,” Ana said into her phone. She cupped her hand over it. “Kate says hi.”
“Howdy, Ana. Howdy, Kate.”
Into the phone, Ana said, “He says howdy back . . . uh-huh . . . uh-huh.” She laughed. “I doubt it . . . I should go. Happy Thanksgiving to you, too. Call me later and we’ll compare notes.” Ana shut her phone with a snap. “I’m glad to see you. You look good.”
“You too, Ana.” Her dress looked expensive. It even matched the blue in her earrings.
She reached up to give him a quick hug. Wally dwarfed her. “Gosh,” he said. He returned the hug, gently.
He looked into the restaurant, where white-coated waiters carried trays, pitchers, and bottles between the tables. They looked like photo-negatives of Wally, except not as large. Inside, the clink of cutlery chirped through the murmur of conversation. Unfamiliar faces, unfamiliar voices. A sad feeling crept over Wally.
He went inside with Ana. The maître d’ greeted them. He didn’t bother to ask if they were on the guest list; everybody knew Rustbelt and Earth Witch, two of the Committee’s founding members. He paused in the act of ushering them toward the hors d’oeuvres when he noted the gouges Wally’s heels left in the floor. The pencil-thin mustache quivered on his lip. He sniffed. But he didn’t raise a fuss. His establishment was full of aces.
Not that Wally knew many of them. The Committee wasn’t like it had been in the beginning. It was much bigger nowadays. Which was good, really, since it was becoming more international. No longer just a bunch of kids from some dumb TV show. It felt more professional, but also more sterile. He’d met a few of the newer members in passing at other Committee functions—Garou, Noppera-bo, the Strangelets. One of the new guys, Glassteel, nodded companionably at Wally as he passed; they’d worked together in Haiti. They made a pretty okay team, though Wally had liked working with DB the best, and DB was gone now.