The Devil's Dictionary, page 10
Jenka pushes the button. Lion does the same.
A second later, he hears a thick Moldovan accent coming through a speaker in the helmet. “What can I tell you,” says Jenka, “stealth flying motorcycle test drive. I was in neighborhood.”
“You saved my life,” says Lion.
“Dah,” replies Jenka dryly. “Now you owe me sex favor.”
“Probably true.”
“You have sister? Maybe she owe me sex favor, too?”
“Fucking Jenka,” says Lion, shaking his head.
“Dah, fucking Jenka is what we are talking about.”
Lion laughs, then winces. “Where are we going?”
“PRML,” says Jenka, banking right into the clouds and leaving the burning colony in the rearview.
“I need a hospital. My arm’s dislocated.”
“We land over there,” he says, pointing at a park in the distance. “I fix arm.”
“You’re not fixing my arm.”
“No worry, I learn on internet. Then we go to PRML.”
“I need a hospital.”
“PRML,” says Jenka. “You will want to first be there.”
“Why?”
“Penelope. PRML was last place anyone saw Penelope alive.”
PART IV
PRESENT TENSE, THE PACIFIC RIM MEGA-LINKAGE
The Black Coal of My Moldovan Heart
The next few hours are hazy. Lion remembers a parrot named 2 Chainz and a flying motorcycle covered in mirrors. He remembers landing someplace with trees. He remembers a ray gun: thin, silver, and aerodynamic.
A ray gun?
Then he puts it together.
Jenka landed in the park, popped a hatch, and extracted a silver injection gun—that was the ray gun. It must have been loaded with some heavy-duty painkiller. A memory of Jenka injecting him is hard to find, but the shoulder of his good arm hurts from where the needle went in, and the shoulder of his bad arm no longer hurts from being dislocated.
Thankfully, Lion has zero recollection of Jenka fixing his arm.
He also has no memory of leaving the park. Yet they must have left, because Lion is stretched out on a cot in the back corner of a storage room. The ceiling is bare wooden planks, thick with cobwebs.
Where the hell is he?
Lion sits up and sets his feet on the floor. He sees a wall lined with metal bookshelves overflowing with office supplies and medical equipment. Coffee cans, cardiac-arrest paddles, and an ancient confocal microscope. There’s a dirty window behind the shelves, and beside it, an old wooden rack holding seven pairs of skis and a cluster of ski poles.
Looking in the other direction, Lion sees another wall, mostly dominated by a glass-fronted gun cabinet. Five injection guns occupy the left side of the cabinet. Three are rifles, for shooting tranquilizer darts. The other two are of the handheld variety, similar to the ray gun that Jenka used on Lion. On a shelf toward the cabinet’s bottom, there’s a line of small glass vials filled with liquids.
Lion tries to stand—which goes better than expected. A quick body scan reveals his arm isn’t ready to throw baseballs, but he can move it without much pain. There’s bruising down his right leg and his head hurts, but in that distant way that means painkillers are on the job.
Walking over to the cabinet, Lion reads the labels off the glass vials. Telazol, ketamine, carfentanil. That explains the blank spot where his memory used to be. They’re all potent animal tranquilizers.
Behind him, a floorboard creaks.
Lion spins around to find Jenka standing in an open doorway, still wearing his all-white motorcycle gear. With his helmet off, Lion sees Jenka hasn’t changed his hairstyle. It’s a bleached white pompadour, making him look a little like a pale, skinny Elvis.
“Welcome to PRML,” says Jenka, with zero warmth in his tone.
“Thank you for saving my life.”
“It was not my first choice.”
“So you’re still pissed?”
When Lion told the world about Sietch Tabr, he did so at Jenka’s considerable expense. To say they have unfinished business, that would be putting it mildly.
“I am undecided,” says Jenka.
“You lost a lot of money because of me.”
“Dah,” says Jenka. “Old news. How is arm?”
“You didn’t learn that on the internet.”
“No, in war. I was medic.”
“I didn’t know you were in a war.”
“You could fill dump truck with metric tons of shit you do not know.”
“So you are still pissed.”
“Sir Richard made the money back,” says Jenka, taking a step forward and revealing more of the doorway behind him. Through it, Lion sees a small research laboratory: a mass spectrometer, an industrial glass sterilizer, and a woman in a red ski suit peering through an electron microscope while absently feeding apple slices to a Siberian husky near her feet.
“You wanted change,” says Lion. “That happened.”
“No. You wanted change. I wanted revolution. These are not same thing.”
“The Splinter wasn’t enough? Humans First just blew up an Anti-Nagel colony.”
“Dah,” says Jenka. “But is still wait-and-see game.”
“Wait and see what?”
“If underdog win.”
“Which underdog?”
Jenka snorts. “This is lesson I learned from you. The über-underdog: plants, animals, ecosystems. Empathy for all—or don’t you remember.”
“I remember.”
“Wait here,” says Jenka, spinning around to walk out of the room. Through the doorway, Lion watches the woman feed another apple slice to the husky. Jenka returns ten seconds later, carrying a small black box, ornate and etched with dragons.
Lion’s seen this box before. “Ghost Trainwreck #69, I presume?”
“The weed will help with arm,” says Jenka, opening the lid and revealing a row of twelve joints inside stoppered test tubes. He shuts the lid again and passes the box to Lion. “You must go on porch to smoke.”
“Tell me about Penelope.”
Jenka points at a coatrack in the corner. “You should put on parka to go on porch.”
Jenka takes a step toward the door, then stops and turns around again. “Know this, Lion Zorn. The dragon box is gift from Sir Richard. From me, box is not gift. From me, you only get the black coal of my Moldovan heart.”
“Thanks for saving my life,” says Lion.
“You are welcome,” says Jenka, walking out the door.
I Have an Allergy
Lion starts toward the coatrack, but before making it halfway across the room, he notices his backpack sitting under the cot.
Lion’s pretty sure he left it in his hotel room at the Braveheart.
Dragging the pack out from under the bed, he unzips the main compartment, seeing his black down puffy wadded up beside the JOBZ, his toiletries stuffed into their stuff sack, the death punch, and a paperback copy of Frank Herbert’s Dune, which he carries everywhere for luck.
Lion grabs his down puffy and a couple of test tubes from the dragon box, then walks into the lab, trying to sling the coat around his shoulders. He stops walking near the husky because the slinging isn’t going well. The coat keeps slipping off his shoulders before he can grab it with his good hand and finish the job.
The woman in the ski suit notices, slides off her stool, steps around the dog, and walks over. She’s in her late thirties, with blue eyes and brown hair, worn straight and long, and skin weathered from a life spent outdoors.
“Let me,” she says, lifting the jacket onto Lion’s shoulders and sliding in front of him to zip it closed. “I’m Lizzy.”
“Lion.”
“I know.”
Over her shoulder, he notices mountains through a window.
“Where am I?”
“Genoa, Nevada.”
“That doesn’t help.”
“Just outside the southeastern gate of the Pacific Rim Mega-Linkage.” She points toward the door. “If you went out that door and up the mountain, you’d be at the bottom of the Heavenly Valley ski area. If you kept going for a little while longer, you’d hit Lake Tahoe.”
“Lake Tahoe,” says Lion, doing a rough calculation in his head. It was early evening when he met Ichika in Seattle. It’s daylight now, and he’s in Nevada. “How long was I out?”
“A while,” she says, walking back to the counter. “Go talk to Jenka. I’ve got to get you to the main gate before three-thirty and…”
“And what?”
“Your arm. I was planning on snowmobiling you over, but with the sling, you’ll have to ride one-handed.”
“I’ll be okay.”
“You’re sure? It’s only fifteen minutes by snowmobile. Part of it will be bumpy, but the bike has sure-grip seats.”
“I won’t bounce off?”
“No. But it might not feel so great. The other option is the truck, but the roads are bad, and with all the new snow, it could take a while.”
“What’s a while?”
“An hour. Longer if they haven’t plowed.”
Lion wants to find Penelope. He wants to find a warlord. He doesn’t have time for a long drive. Then he remembers the Ghost Trainwreck.
“I’ve got weed for pain,” he says. “I’d rather get there fast.”
“Good,” says Lizzy, pointing at an array of jars stacked on the far end of the counter. “Before I can go home tonight, I have to catalog all these samples.”
Lion glances at the jars, noticing they contain decapitated snake heads, floating in formaldehyde. The sight of dead animals brings bile to his throat.
He looks away quickly.
Seeing his reaction, Lizzy covers the samples with her jacket. “Sorry.”
“I have an allergy.”
“My sister’s an em-tracker,” she says. “You don‘t have to explain.”
Once his breathing steadies, he looks over at Lizzy again, then points at the samples beneath her jacket. “Were those inland taipan heads?”
She nods.
“What’s an Australian snake doing in the Sierra Nevada mountains?”
“Go talk to Jenka.”
Is Not New Problem
Walking onto the porch, Lion is greeted by blue skies and snow-covered mountains. It’s about twenty-five degrees, but there’s no wind and the sun is out. He removes a test tube from his pocket, uncorks it, and slides out a joint, thinking, despite the circumstances, it’s a hell of a view.
Jenka stands at the edge of the porch, smoking a thin black cigarette. Beyond him, a pair of electric snowmobiles and the stealth flying motorcycle sit beside one another in a small snow-covered field.
“Who am I meeting at the front gate?” asks Lion.
Jenka, lost in thought, doesn’t hear him.
Lion repeats the question.
“At gate,” says Jenka, snapping out of his daydream, “you are meeting no one. In office, you meet Sir Richard. The office has holo-chat. Sir Richard is in Cambodia.”
“What happened to Penelope?”
“I know little more than you.”
“I don’t know anything.”
“Dah,” says Jenka, taking a drag on his cigarette. “Is not new problem.”
Lion hits the joint, exhales, and says, “Sir Richard told Penelope that something went wrong in PRML.”
“Dah,” says Jenka again, stabbing out his cigarette in an ashtray. “Do you know Heavenly Bypass?”
“The underground tunnel with ski runs built over it?”
“Two tunnels. One is a local habitat corridor. The second is a regional corridor, over three hundred meters across. Wide enough to accommodate migrating—what is word?”
“Moose?”
“Megafauna,” replies Jenka. “That is word. That is moose, bear, wolf, mountain lion—”
“I know what megafauna means,” Lion interrupts. “What does this have to do with Penelope?”
“There is a bar for skiers near the entrance to the main tunnel. Ten days ago, that bar was last place anyone saw Penelope.”
“Ten days?”
“According to bartender, Penelope had a drink, asked a couple of questions, then left to go to look for something in park. She went on skis, took equipment, sampling jars.”
“Ten days is a long time.”
“This is field biology research station. People in park for weeks at a time is business as usual. But there are rules. People go in pairs, with strict check-ins. Unless there’s storm, every twenty-four hours. Penelope went alone, without partner, did not sign out equipment. Then there was a storm.”
“She never checked in?”
“Under sunny skies, communication is shaky. In storm?” He shrugs. “When she didn’t check in, Sir Richard tried radio, tried phone, tried satellite thermal.”
“The satellites couldn’t find her? How long were they overhead?”
“The first time, not long. The second time, a day later, much longer. They found other park rangers, moose, bear, wolf, mountain lion, but not Penelope. That was when Sir Richard sent a search party into park and asked me to find you. I found you. The search party did not find Penelope.”
“How did you find me?”
“You are like song,” says Jenka. “Band on run.”
“My one-man band.”
“It’s not true.”
He thinks for a moment. “Lorenzo. You called Lorenzo.”
Jenka shakes his head no.
“Why would Lorenzo give me up?” asks Lion, suddenly puzzled. “Especially to you, no offense.”
“Calling is not my bag. Computers are my bag.”
“You hacked Lorenzo’s computer?”
“Is ugly word, hack. I ask question. Computer answer question.”
“You should be in jail.”
“Dah,” agrees Jenka. “But does not change fact. My computer says Lorenzo’s smartphone is in Brazil. So why, I ask, does his phone request an Uber ride from Vince Vaughn Memorial Diner in Los Angeles to Braveheart Hotel in Seattle? Perhaps because you are stupid, you did not know that every Uber autonomous has camera in car.”
“But you were at the Space Needle.”
“At Braveheart, I am told the famous Lion Zorn is meeting the famous Ichika Adel at the famous Anti-Nagel colony.”
“Miriam gave me up?”
“Perhaps, because you are stupid, you did not know that Sir Richard owns Braveheart Hotel. No offense.”
“Sir Richard owns the Braveheart?” But Lion’s not even surprised.
“I decide to party crash meeting with Ichika,” continues Jenka. “But Humans First riot got in way. I arrived right after guy with spiky hair shot Stinger missile into colony. Fine American craftsmanship, that Stinger missile.”
This catches Lion’s attention. “A guy with spiky hair fired a Stinger?”
Before Jenka answers, the door to the research station bangs open and Lizzy strides onto the porch. She has Lion’s backpack in one hand and a snowmobile helmet in the other. “I got a text from Sir Richard,” she says, passing Lion the helmet and backpack. “We have to go.”
He takes the helmet but is still staring at Jenka. “A spiky-haired guy shot a Stinger missile?”
“I will see you in office,” says Jenka. “There’s Wi-Fi in visitors’ center. Ask internet. The spiky hair missile video went viral.”
Lizzy starts toward the snowmobiles. Lion taps out his joint, slides on the backpack and helmet, then follows her into the yard.
He stops near the hoverbike and glances back at Jenka. “What about the snakes?” he calls. “I saw the sample jars. The billionaire who got killed by an inland taipan snakebite—that’s what Penelope was investigating, right?”
“Not taipan,” yells Jenka.
“What?”
“Lizzy!” shouts Jenka. “Permission granted.”
Lizzy stops walking, looks at Jenka, and points at Lion. “You want me to tell him?”
“Dah. But he is idiot, so do not expect him to understand.”
Syn-Bio Chimera
Standing beside an electric snowmobile, Lizzy takes off her glove and presses her thumb against a red starter button. Lion sees the blue flicker of a fingerprint scanner, then hears a soft click as the machine kicks to life. Lizzy straddles the sled as Lion climbs on behind. As he does, he feels the sure-grip seat mold around his thighs, snugging him tight.
“Tell me about the snakes,” he says.
“Hold on,” replies Lizzy.
She revs the throttle and starts off into the trees. Lion wraps his good arm around her waist and leans into the turns. The electric engine is almost completely silent, but the roar of the snow being hurled backward by the treads discourages further conversation.
Lion looks at the scenery, thinking it looks cold. Ten days in the mountains is a long time, especially during a storm. Penelope can handle herself in almost any situation, but alone in a winter storm in the mountains?
Banking left, Lizzy passes through a tight copse of trees, over a hill, and onto a snow-covered fire road. Without turning around, she calls, “How’s your arm?”
“Pretty good.”
“No pain?”
“Ghost Trainwreck on the job.”
“Good,” she says, slapping his thigh. “Here comes the fun.”
Running hot down a smooth fire road, they slice through a small valley before Lizzy cuts right into the forest, following a long ridgeline up the mountain. Granite boulders dot the scenery like ancient sentinels. Pine trees, their boughs heavy with snow, watch them as they pass.
Lizzy tops a rise, eases off the throttle, and calls back to him: “They’re not snakes, or not entirely.”
“What are they?”
“Syn-bio chimera. A genetic hybrid: icefish and snakes—plural. Both inland taipan and black mamba.”
“Black mamba?”
“Most aggressive snake on Earth. Someone found the genes that produce the aggression and spliced them into the genes of the deadliest snake on earth.”
“The taipan.”
“And that’s just what we’ve figured out so far,” says Lizzy, swinging the snowmobile around to face a steep rise that leads to the mountain’s crest. Way too steep, in Lion’s estimation, for a snowmobile carrying two passengers.
