The Last Hot Time (16 page)

"This one says you can," Doc said. There was a brown bone, more than a yard long, set in sand-colored concrete. "I think it's real.

Cloud put his fingertips delicately on the surface. "It is genuine, Doc. Touch it."

Doc put a hand on the bone. It felt cold, smoothed by who knew how many hands before.

"Now take my other hand."

Abruptly the light was slanting and fierce, yellowed by dust in the air. Doc's vision was tilted to the right. His head hurt; so did his back and right hip. There was a heavy, sweetish, boggy stink. Just before his eyes was a clump of fat-stalked plants, bristling with fine green shoots: the fresh scent made his mouth water, and he pressed his head forward, but his body wouldn't follow. He stuck out his tongue, but it did no good. His . . . tail? . . . stirred heavily, making his hip hurt even more.

Beyond the plants, blurry in the distance and haze, a mottled tan shape moved. Teeth inches long flashed in an enormous mouth, and the shape stumbled closer. Alarms rang somewhere in Doc's consciousness, pulling at his muscles to move.

Doc knew what was about to happen, and that he couldn't do a thing to stop it. This is bad, he thought idiotically, but could not clearly identify just what was Bad about it, why it filled him with such urgency and rage. The one obvious and understandable thing in his mind was the sight and smell of those green shoots: if he could get a mouthful of those, things would be much better. Everything else would pass.

The allosaur stomped closer.

There was a pop inside Doc's head, and he was back in the museum hall, Cloudhunter's hand on his shoulder, Doc's fingers tingling against the dinosaur bone.

"I thought the sight would be interesting," Cloud said, his voice a soft, plaintive rumble. "I am very sorry if I displeased you."

"No . . . I . . ." He shook his head to clear it. "The dino died."

"Not then. Memory needs time to dwell in the bone. It never knows its death." Cloud took his hand away slowly. "] would never hazard you, Doc. Still . . ."

"Don't be sorry, please, Cloud. It was wonderful. I didn't have any idea you could do things like that."

"Oh," Cloudhunter said, and turned to the text panel next to the bone. "Seventy million years. The depth of it . . ."

"How old are you. Cloud?"

"'I?" Cloud seemed startled by the question, and Doc worried that he had violated some Trueblood rule. "I couldn't tell you in years. I was not there to see the gates closed. Some of the Ellyllon were, and all of the Urthas—the Highborn." He put his fingers on the dinosaur bone again. "Seventy" million years ... I don't know if even Urthas live so long." He gave Doc a sidewise grin. "Though I shouldn't say such things. Come on, let's see more."

The next hall was lined with totem poles, painted headdresses of wood, pottery and spears.

"These are American native, I think?" Cloud said. "From nearby?"

Doc read the labels. "These are from the Pacific Northwest. Seattle—that's more than a thousand miles. Alaska's at least twice as far."

Cloud absorbed this, looked around again. "Are your people somewhere here. Doc?"

"Uh ... I don't think so. Just a moment." He found a wall-mounted building plan, scanned the listings. What was he looking for, exactly? Midwestern Tribes of Uncertain European Ancestry?

When he turned back, Cloud was crouching by a little girl, showing her the silver bracelet on his left wrist. Doc had a sudden hollow feeling in his stomach. He looked around for worried parents. There they were, closing in quick. He'd never beat them to Cloudhunter unless he sprinted. Maybe that was the best idea, he thought: create a diversion. But he just walked as quickly as he felt he could, and tried to work out the soft answer that turneth away wrath.

". . . and these are the names of my sisters. They are very long names in English, but we also call them First Star, and Lilac, and Cools as Rain."

"Those are pretty names," the child said.

The father said, "Does the blue stone have a meaning?"

"There are four like this, cut from the same large stone," Cloud said. "Each of us has one in a band like this. There is no meaning beyond that."

The girl said, "Momma, if I have a brother, could we have bracelets like that?"

The woman laughed. "If you ever do, my dear, we'll see."

The man said, "Would there be any offense if we did that?"

"It would be your choice, and the jewelry of your making. There could be no offense to take. But I am being rude. This is my friend Hallownight. He has been explaining the museum to me."

Doc shook hands with the father.

The woman said to her husband, "I was thinking—what about that piece of rock crystal your grandmother brought with her from Greece? We wouldn't need to use it all, just have a few pieces cut."

The man looked thoughtful, then smiled broadly. "Just the thing." He held out his hand to Cloudhunter again. "That's a wonderful idea. Thank you so much."

"I am glad that it pleased you."

The family moved on. Cloudhunter watched them go, then said quietly to Doc, "The girl will have a brother, the summer of next year."

"You know that?"

"I believe the parents do as well. Are human children troubled by their brothers and sisters?"

"Sometimes. They get upset that their folks seem to like the new baby better."

"Is that true?" Cloud asked. The question was perfectly innocent—as a child would ask it, with no prior knowledge.

"I suppose it is sometimes. I don't have any brothers or sisters."

Cloud was silent. Somehow his silence seemed to echo in the long hall.

Doc said, "I mean ... I had a little sister, but she died when we were both small."

"Oh," Cloudhunter said. "I am very sorry." He looked in the direction the family had gone. "Their fear is, I think, of some old pain, some loss they fear to come again."

Doc considered this. Cloudhunter had used the Touch, of course, but it was apparent he was also interpreting what the magic had shown him. Maybe guessing as well. He wondered how Cloud had known he was lying—well, not telling all the truth —about his sister.

For the first time since he had crossed into Shadow. Doe fell a desire for magic, a Touch of his own. To be able CO read a patient's

history from the bones and flesh themselves, know without being told where the worst pain was. . . . He glanced at Cloudhunter, who was examining an eagle-headed totem pole and showed no sign of hearing Doc's thought.

How did the Touch show itself?

This wasn't the time to ask. Stagger Lee had said that elves lived their whole lives with magic: there was no reason to suppose Cloudhunter knew what it was like for humans. And there were halls and halls left to explore, a whole world inside walls.

I hirty-five points," Stagger Lee said, examining Doc's cards. "Good thing for you we're not playing Hollywood."

Doc nodded and took a long swallow of beer. They were playing in his apartment, to kill a slow afternoon. He was down a substantial number of points—gin rummy didn't seem to be his game— but he couldn't remember how much they'd agreed the points were worth. "Sure you wouldn't rather play poker?"

"What can you do in poker for two? 'Here's your cards. Yup, that pair wins. Next deal.' Now, two players left out of a table full, that's interesting." He scooped up the cards and began shuffling. "Hey, it's not that long till Monday."

"Yeah. Another beer?"

"Much obliged."

Doc refilled Stagger Lee's glass from the keg. As he set the beer on the table, Stagger fanned and interleaved the cards in an elaborate shuffle, and said, "Last Deal still bothers you, doesn't it?"

Doc sat down slowly. "You've got a right to do what you want with yourself."

"Cool. Now say that again like you believe it."

"Look, have I ever said a word to you about it? To anybody?"

"No," Stagger said seriously, "and I appreciate that. But you act like the word's stuck right there north of your xiphoid, and a good Heimlich would pop it right out. More to the point, about half an hour before Last Deal, the fun content of poker seems to take a serious drop for you.

"It's poker. It's not about fun."

"Nice sidestep."

"I. . . just don't think I get the idea of never knowing who you're going to sleep with."

"We always know who. There aren't any strangers at Flats's place. Which is the question." He took a long swallow of his beer. "Don't be offended, but a big reason I didn't warn you about it the first time you were there is that you were a stranger, and you wouldn't have been allowed in anyway."

"Stagger, what's this about?"

"Oh, well, the game wasn't going anywhere, cards made me think of Monday night, one thing led to another. I also thought it was about time to make sure of the situation. I take it you haven't just been politely waiting for an invitation to join the game?"

"No."

"Fair enough. The other thing that you might as well know is that, on any given night, as many of those couples are going to spend the evening listening to Dave Brubeck, cooking an elaborate late dinner, reading comics, or whatever as end up playing sixty-nine pickup. Don't get me wrong: much as I like Brubeck, I am nonetheless bisexual as I ever was."

Stagger finished his shuffling. "Now, if you won't misunderstand, how about I teach you honeymoon bridge?"

l#oc and Ginny went to the Laughs show the following Friday. The films had an odd, flat, gray quality, with black halos around any bright light; Stagger Lee explained that they were "kinescopes," films made from early television.

The shows had little comedy sketches, musical numbers, blackout jokes that lasted only seconds. Some of the longer playlets had no characters at all, just kitchen utensils or office machines moving to music; not really funny, past the first surprise, but oddly engrossing, watching the machinery dance.

The artist's name was Ernie Kovacs. During an intermission. Stagger said, "If you'd seen a lot of television, this probably wouldn't look like much to you."

Ginny said, "Why?"

"Because ten years later, twenty, thirtv, the rest of television started to catch up to Kovacs's ideas. Do you remember what he

said in the third program, about 'the first rule of television is, if something works, beat it to death'? Forty years after he said that, thirty after he died, TV was still following that law" Stagger looked past them, into an unseen distance. "If television is ever allowed to function again, I think we could reconstruct everything good about it from Ernie."

Doc said, joking, "Is the world ready for that?"

"No," Stagger said seriously. "The world is never ready for anything until it's too late. By which time something else has arrived."

They watched a sketch of people getting ready for something special, a party or a night out. There was no dialogue, just music, as the men in one apartment and the women in another showered, shaved, made up, dressed (Doc found himself staring hard at the technique of the garter strap in closeup). This tie wouldn't knot; that stocking was torn. The music was driving toward something, some tension that would have to be released.

A doorbell rang; the women dashed to answer it. Then, abruptly, Doc knew. There were three women in the apartment. There were two men at the door.

Two left with two, and the third woman, her hair and dress perfect, turned away. The camera was looking down on her from above, above the walls of the apartment. Doc did not think anyone in the theater was breathing, all waiting for a doorbell, a telephone. The woman wandered from one room to the other, small in the depths of the shot.

The walls of the apartment collapsed outward, the break of the chambered heart. The music crashed to a stop.

He found Ginny's arm, wrapped his fingers around it.

One of the ushers was leaning over Doc. "Mr. Hallownight, you're needed outside, sir."

He and Ginny went to the lobby. Stagger Lee was pulling on a long wool coat and scarf. He looked worried. "Doc, Patrise wants us. Now."

"What is it? Somebody hurt?"

"Not yet. Ginny, I'm sorry. We didn't know—Mr. Patrise didn't know, it came up suddenly and we've got no time. Will you get home okay?"

"Sure," she said. "tJnless I can help."

"Patrise didn't ask for you. Good of you to offer, but you'd better not get involved. Take notes on the good bits, will you?"

She nodded, caught Doc's sleeve. "Call me when you get home, okay?"

"Oh. Yeah, I will."

Doc and Stagger slid into the TR3. "So where are we going?"

"Down by the river." He reached inside his coat, brought out a large, odd-looking pistol with a cylindrical wooden grip. "Nice night for a drive," he said. "But what the hell."

Doc drove into the iron tunnel under the L tracks. "Magic's weaker down here than near Division, right? Does all this iron have something to do with that?"

"Heard about cold iron, have you?"

"Yeah. Did it keep the Truebloods out of the Loop? When they first came back, I mean?"