Eden's Jester (5 page)

“No,” I said. One thing I wasn’t short of was unanswered questions.

He watched the ringlets of smoke spiral up from the arm of the lawn chair where his hand rested easily. Time was never in short supply for me. His was running out. I’d get his answer. Maybe Death had the answer. If he didn’t, who would? My friend sniffed and dismissed whatever thoughts had intruded on his peaceful afternoon.

“So, what brings you by? Just visiting?” he asked.

“Someone I met reminded me of you. I wanted to come by.”

“And something’s bothering you,” he said.

“Yeah.” He could always tell what I was thinking. I often wondered if he had some Engineering skills.
 

“Aeson is up to something. This time in your neck of the woods. The little voice inside my head is telling me something big is up,” I said.
 

“You mean the little voice that’s always trying to get you snuffed?”

“Yeah. You know the one.”

“Right,” he said. “It tried to off me more than once, too.”

I told him about the Gathering, leaving nothing out. My friend was an expert at putting puzzles together. He had been something of a detective for a lifetime. His intuition was reliable, much more so than mine. After hearing the details, he lit another cigarette and didn’t say anything for a long time.

“It sounds good to me,” he said, finally.

“I know. It sounds good to me, too. Which is how it normally sounds, right before the locusts show up.”

He stood and stretched, as if he had just woken up, even though it was two in the afternoon. It was clear he had been drinking for a while.
 

As he paced back and forth in front of me, an old habit that indicated he was on the job, I could see he missed the puzzles.

“What we have to do is try to understand how Aeson views our current progress, then list how he might react. Local debacle aside, how do we look from his point of view?”

I thought it over. “He probably thinks we’ve peaked, or stagnated. If we’re not in a major war or disaster, he always thinks that. The guy’s a creep.”

“Check. And you don’t have to be an evil genius to know he’ll try to put us back into one of those holes. But
how
is the question. You can’t do anything about it unless you know the ‘how.’ It wouldn’t hurt to know the ‘when,’ either,” he said.

Everything I knew about Aeson, his motives, his methods, and his history, told me my friend was right.
 

“Well, the only similar situation where Aeson was a key player was back in the day, in early Europe. The Huns were his invention. He claimed they had as much right to expand as the Europeans.”

The old man grinned. “You told me that story, I think. Isn’t that the one where you taught the Vikings how to build those rowing ships, and then promised them free farm land to get them to come down and neutralize the Huns? How’d that work out?”

“You got your Swedish bikini team. So don’t complain,” I said. “Besides, those Vikings brought a lot of great culture into the West. Anyway, it seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“My Scandinavian ancestors thank you. But those kinds of tactics are not so possible these days. It’s much harder to bring peoples to such a state. And I don’t see anything ready to pop. Do you?”

“No,” I said.

“Then it must be something on the side. Something we won’t expect.”

Diomedes’ warning rang in my ears. “Or multiple things.”

I sighed and ran my fingers through my hair. The sun didn’t convey any warmth.
 

“What’s eating you?” asked my friend.

“Why?”

“You’re tense. Normally, you’re excited at this stage in the game. Now, you’re tense.”

“I don’t know. Sometimes I wonder . . . I sank a ship today.”

“That was you?”

“Yeah.”

“So?”

“I don’t know.”

My friend took a long drag on his cigarette, and blew a cloud between us. He squinted to see me through the smoke. He didn’t say anything.

“I sink lots of ships,” I said.

My friend sucked his glass dry. “Yeah. You have a knack for that.”

Waves lapped against the shore. A fish jumped. How many fish lived in this river? From the bank, you rarely saw them, but there must be thousands, hidden in the brown depths, struggling each day to resist the pollution, avoid predators, and eat. Did Death kill them, too? Who determined the seasons of fishes?

I pulled myself out of it. There wasn’t time to consider the merits of Death killing people. That was his business, after all. He knew what he was doing.
 

“Anyway, I’ve got to get ahead of Aeson on this,” I said. “He snuck up on me with this one. For him to announce his intentions at a Gathering means he’s fairly far along in his plans.”

“Hmm. Well, in any case, you don’t have enough information. Get more and come back. Maybe I can help then.”

“Any suggestions?” I asked.

“Find out who his favorites are these days. Look for ones who seem to have nothing to do with his plans. They’d be the ones to watch out for. Sort of like the gunslinger who’s not looking at you. He’d be the fastest. Knowing who they are would tell you a lot, I think. Or, you could talk to him.”

“You think that’s a good idea? He’s still pissed about Detroit.”

“I don’t doubt it. But Aeson is a professional. He won’t let the past get in the way of his future. Or you could squeeze Diomedes. Sounds like he knows more than he’s giving up. That’s the scariest part.”

“I know. He’s always been open with me. Keeping me in the dark isn’t like him,” I said.

“Well, neither Aeson nor Diomedes do anything without a well-thought-out plan. If Diomedes is going to work Aeson over, I’m sure you’ll find out, probably sooner than later.”

“Yeah. Anything I can do for you in the meantime?” I asked.

“You could visit more. Most of my friends have taken the big sleep, and no one here speaks Yiddish. And you could get me an answer to my question before I die. Other than that, I have everything I need.”

We talked for quite a while about the things we’d seen together, both good and bad, things finished and undone. Ours was a good story. We were both proud of our work together, even though neither of us knew exactly what it all meant or where it was all going.
 

I left him there, watching the river go by. He said he didn’t dwell on the past. But I suspected he visited it more than he let on.
 

CHAPTER FIVE

Detroit is like ground zero of an immense tire fire. The place is dark and dirty. It stinks. Black soot and grey concrete mute the senses, suffocating hope. I couldn’t understand why my friend would choose to ride out his final days there. I felt sorry for him.

For me, Oxford was home. There was no cloud over my favorite coffee shop—not normally, anyway.
 

As I approached, I felt a familiar ethereal ripple spreading gently away. Similar ripples from my own arrival glided toward the shop. A traveler, or travelers, had barely beaten me here.
 

I don’t have many rules. Rules make decisions take too long. But one rule that has served me well: never be the last guy to show up. Being last makes it hard to be the surpriser and not the surprisee.
 

I chose Oxford largely because it was far off the beaten path and didn’t get many visitors of the supernatural kind. The rural countryside and expansive gravel pits provided the privacy I needed to lay low when the need arose.
 

I briefly considered bolting, but rejected the knee-jerk idea. Whoever was in the shop came to see me, on my turf, and almost certainly sensed my arrival as I had sensed theirs. Curiosity trumped caution, as it did only rarely, and I strode through the doorway, stopping just inside, combing the room for the unwelcome visitors.
 

At the table tucked into the back corner sat two Engineers quietly watching the shop. Their eyes, always half in the prime material plane and half in the ethereal plane, never lost sight of you. There was no hiding from these guys, at least not in any conventional way.
 

I recognized both as Melanthios’s enforcers.
 

Apolik, sturdy and still, was his messenger, retriever, and stereotypical blunt instrument. He was a hulk with a granite face and shiny bald pate. He met my gaze in a Nasferatu-ian manner.
 

The other, Rolic, slouched in his chair and slid a large cup of coffee back and forth between his hands. His slicked-back dark hair and wrinkled black suit reminded me of a strung-out mortician.

Neither made any sudden moves.

I walked over to their table, but remained standing. “Apolik and Rolic, what brings you to my door? I hope all is well with His Rigidness,” I said.
 

Sarcasm was lost on the likes of these two, but it calmed my own nerves, which were increasingly edgy these days.

“Elson, Melanthios has summoned you. You must come,” Apolik said as he stood up.

He glared an unspoken challenge. Two on one was a losing proposition. That’s why enforcers travel in pairs. These two were well trained in the art of wrapping the cosmos into a club and beating you with it. But it wasn’t their mastery of the multiverse that made me cautious. While Engineers could control matter and energy to varying degrees, neither could be used to actually harm an Engineer. Not that I haven’t tried. But we were spirit beings, and the only way for Rolic and Apolik to directly affect me was to smash their souls into mine in a battle of wills: the Psychic Duel.

A decisive victory meant that the very fabric of an Engineer could be damaged, or even maimed. But that was rare and occurred only in duels between the most powerful Engineers. Normally the loser suffered a lot of pain and struggled to think and act for himself. In other words, the loser became enslaved.

But there was a downside to the Psychic Duel for both the winner and the loser. No matter what the outcome, each combatant would be marked with the imprint of his opponent’s soul forever. Traces of their opponent’s personality, and sometimes memories, would remain. Duels always left a mark.

Your own level of determination, willpower, and experience made you more or less formidable when dueling. That’s why enforcers traveled in pairs: two on one was almost a guaranteed victory. And, since I didn’t want any part of these muscle-heads in my dreams, I decided to play nice.

“You know, Apolik, I was just thinking the other day that I needed to see the man himself. I have some information he should hear,” I said.

“That’s good, Elson. I understand he has many questions for you.”
 

“Well, that’s good then. Shall we go? Or do I have time for some coffee?”

“Elson, you know that when Melanthios sends us from his presence, he expects us to return immediately.”
 

Rolic said, “But we could get some to go, and one for the boss as well.” Apolik stood statue still.

“Right,” I said, and walked to the counter, where Jill was watching the three of us. She looked Apolik and Rolic up and down.

“Who are your friends, Elson?” she said.

“Sorry, Jill. They’re not your type, if you know what I mean. I just need four larges to go.”

She looked over my shoulder. “You don’t know the half if it, Elson. I don’t think they like you. Want me to spike their juice?”

“Uh . . . I don’t think that would help. But hold that thought. I may take you up on it later,” I said.

She studied Apolik as if she were a ninja about to attack.
 

“Don’t trust that one.”

“Yeah . . .” It was comforting to have Jill’s intuition looking out for me, since my own usually meant me harm.

“The other one is okay, though,” she said, referencing Rolic.

I grinned at the enforcers. Rolic was brushing away coffee he had just spilled on his lap. Apolik stared at me as if I were the neighbor’s dog dumping on his lawn.
 

“Hey, if that guy from Sweden shows up, tell him I need to talk to him, would you?” I asked Jill.

“Sure thing, Elson. Here you go.” She handed me a carrier for the coffee. A wispy silver streak in her long black hair caught the sunlight, drawing a bright line down her locks. She looked older, harsher. I looked back at the enforcers, wondering what is was about them that had gotten under Jill’s skin.

It took Jill longer to pour the coffee than it did for us to arrive in Washington D.C., Melanthios’s stronghold. We were greeted by an ancient wooden gate greyed by centuries of sun and rain. A path extended into the forest behind us, curving down toward the steep bank of the Potomac River. I could hear a soft deep rumble not too far into the woodland as millions of gallons of water drifted past. Ahead of us, the gate granted us access to a wide lawn, which flanked Melanthios’s headquarters.

The place was a Revolutionary War-era house. Tall and white, it looked new. The enormous lawn was green and healthy. Cherry trees surrounded a pond with a fountain statue of George Washington. Several different kinds of birds popped from tree to tree, their jumbled songs filling the air.