Aces Abroad

She cradled the man's body for just a moment, realizing that the spider-creature was patiently regarding them from twenty yards away. "You are next, imperfect cousin," came the ground-out words. "You are brave, but I don't think you can help the cause of my people any more than the Wombat." Murga-muggai started forward.

Cordelia realized she was still clinging to the gun. She aimed the H and K mini at the spider-creature and squeezed the trigger. Nothing happened. She clicked the safety on, then off again. Pulled the trigger. -Nothing. Damn. It was finally empty.

Focus, she thought. She stared at Murga-muggai's eyes and willed the creature to die. The power was still there within her. She could feel it. She strained. But nothing happened. She was helpless. Murga-muggai was not even slowed.

Evidently the reptile-level had nothing to say to spiders. The spider-thing rushed toward her like a graceful, eight-legged express train.

Cordelia knew there was nothing left to do. Except the one thing she dreaded most.

She wondered if the image in her mind would be the last thing she would ever know. It was the memory of an old cartoon showing Fay Wray in the fist of King Kong on the side of the Empire State Building. A man in a biplane was calling out to the woman, "Trip, him, Fay! Trip him!" Cordelia summoned all the hysterical strength left within her and hurled the empty H and K at Murga-muggai's head. The weapon hit one faceted eye and the monster shied slightly. She leapt forward, wrapping arms and legs around one of the pistoning spider-creature's forelegs.

The monster stumbled, started to recover, but then Cordelia jammed the flint knife into a leg joint. The extremity folded and momentum took over. The spider-thing was a ball of flailing legs rolling along with Cordelia clinging to one hairy limb.

The woman had a chaotic glimpse of the desert floor looming ahead and below her. She let go, hit the stone, rolled, grabbed an outcropping and stopped.

Murga-muggai was propelled out into open space. To Cordelia the monster seemed to hang there for a moment, suspended like the coyote in the Roadru

Cordelia watched the flailing, struggling thing diminish. A screech like nails on chalkboard trailed after.

Finally all she could see was what looked like a black stain at the foot of Uluru. She could imagine only too well the shattered remains with the legs splayed out. "You deserved it!" she said aloud. "Bitch."

Wyungare! She turned and limped back to his body. He was still dead.

For a moment Cordelia allowed herself the luxury of angry tears. Then she realized she had her own magic. "It's only been a minute," she said, as if praying. "Not longer. Not long at all. Only a minute."

She bent close to Wyungare and concentrated. She felt the power draining out of her mind and floating down around the man, insulating the cold flesh. The thought had been a revelation. In the past she had tried only to shut autonomic nervous systems down. She had never tried to start one up. It had never occurred to her.

Jack's words seemed to echo from eight thousand miles away: "You can use it for life too."

The energy flowed. The slightest heartbeat. The faintest breath. Another.

Wyungare began to breathe. He groaned.

Thank God, thought Cordelia. Or Baiame. She glanced around self-consciously at the top of Uluru.

Wyungare opened his eyes. "Thank you," he said faintly but distinctly.

The riot swirled past them. Police clubs swung. Aboriginal heads cracked. "Bloody hell," said Wyungare. "You'd think this was bloody Queensland." He seemed restrained from joining the fray only by Cordelia's presence.

Cordelia reeled back against the alley wall. "You've brought me back to Alice?"

Wyungare nodded.

"This is the same night?"

"All the distances are different in the Dreamtime," said Wyungare. "Time as well as space."

"I'm grateful." The noise of angry shouts, screams, sirens, was deafening.

"Now what?" said the young man.

"A night's sleep. In the morning I'll rent a Land-Rover. Then I'll drive to Madhi Gap." She pondered a question. "Will you stay with me?"

"Tonight?" Wyungare hesitated as well. "Yes, I'll stay with you. You're not as bad as the preacher-from-the-sky, but I must find a way to talk you out of what you want to do with the satellite station."

Cordelia started to relax just a little.

"Of course," said Wyungare, glancing around, "you'll have to sneak me into your room."

Cordelia shook her head. It's like high school again, she thought. She put her arm around the man beside her. There were so many things she needed to tell people. The road south to Madhi Gap stretched ahead. She still hadn't decided whether she was going to call New York first. "There is one thing," said Wyungare.

She glanced at him questioningly.

"It has always been the custom," he said slowly, "for European men to use their aboriginal mistresses and then abandon them."

Cordelia looked him in the eye. "I am not a European man," she said.

Wyungare smiled.

FROM THE JOURNAL OF XAVIER DESMOND

MARCH 14/HONG KONG:

I have been feeling better of late, I'm pleased to say. Perhaps it was our brief sojourn in Australia and New Zealand. Coming close upon the heels of Singapore and Jakarta, Sydney seemed almost like home, and I was strangely taken with Auckland and the comparative prosperity and cleanliness of its little toy jokertown. Aside from a distressing tendency to call themselves "uglies," an even more offensive term than "joker," my Kiwi brethren seem to live as decently as any jokers anywhere. I was even able to purchase a week-old copy of the Jokertown Cry at my hotel. It did my soul good to read the news of home, even though too many of the headlines seem to be concerned with a gang war being fought in our streets.

Hong Kong has its jokertown too, as relentlessly mercantile as the rest of the city. I understand that mainland China dumps most of its jokers here, in the Crown Colony. In fact a delegation of leading joker merchants have invited Chrysalis and me to lunch with them tomorrow and discuss "possible commercial ties between jokers in Hong Kong and New York City." I'm looking forward to it.

Frankly it will be good to get away from my fellow delegates for a few hours. The mood aboard the Stacked Deck is testy at best at present, chiefly thanks to Thomas Downs and his rather overdeveloped journalistic instincts.

Our mail caught up with us in Christchurch, just as we were taking off for Hong Kong, and the packet included advance copies of the latest issue of Aces. Digger went up and down the aisles after we were airborne, distributing complimentary copies as is his wont. He ought to have read them first. He and his execrable magazine hit a new low this time out, I'm afraid.

The issue features his cover story of Peregrine's pregnancy. I was amused to note that the magazine obviously feels that Peri's baby is the big news of the trip, since they devoted twice as much space to it as they have to any of Digger's previous stories, even the hideous incident in Syria, though perhaps that was only to justify the glossy four-page fotospread of Peregrine past and present, in various costumes and states of undress.

The whispers about her pregnancy started as early as India and were officially confirmed while we were in Thailand, so Digger could hardly be blamed for filing a story. It's just the sort of thing that Aces thrives on. Unfortunately for his own health and our sense of camaraderie aboard the Stacked Deck, Digger clearly did not agree with Peri that her "delicate condition" was a private matter. Digger dug too far.

The cover asks, "Who Fathered Peri's Baby?" Inside, the piece opens with a double-page spread illustrated by an artist's conception of Peregrine holding an infant in her arms, except that the child is a black silhouette with a question mark instead of a face. "Daddy's an Ace, Tachyon Says," reads the subhead, leading into a much larger orange ba