Deseret (5 page)

He scanned the girls closely and he missed Tam, Brigit bless
poor Mother Harrison for bringing such an idjit into this cold, hard world.

Tam walked around the block and entered the Deseret’s bar by
a side door, a little service entrance with no sign, either in or out.
 
He’d known there was a side
door—he’d looked for it—before he’d been willing to go in the
front, the first time.
 
A hot,
grimy, humid little hall let him after a short trot into the cool, airy bar, chilled
by overhead fans.
 
The bar was
huge, all marble and dark woods with a high ceiling and stone columns like a
cathedral, and busier than the number of its guests warranted.

Tam eased into a seat at a tiny booth and slipped out a
Husher under the table.
 
Fumbling
through instructions printed on a plaque in the center of the table, he wrote a
drink order and his room number on a card chit, stuffed it into a glass
cylinder and shoved the cylinder into a tube in the wall.
 
The systems reminded him of the Lion
House and made him feel vaguely uneasy.
 
With a soft
whumph!
the tube
sucked the cylinder away, and three minutes later his drink jogged around to
the table in the hands of a fresh-faced young blonde girl wearing yellow and
black stripes.
 
Tam smiled and
ogled her once (doesn’t a man have a duty to affirm their prettiness to all the
pretty girls? otherwise, who are do they make themselves pretty for?), but
shooed her away to continue his watch on the lobby.

He saw three Pinkertons.
 
One paced back and forth just inside the door and watched
the lobby (and Tam kept his head well down, like a serious drinker or a man
reading over his whisky) and two spoke with the concierge.
 
He was fully prepared to shoot any Pinkerton
that came up to him with one of their bloody-damn-hell cheap calotypes, but
none did.
 
They must have searched
the bar patrons before he’d arrived.

When the Pinkertons finished their conversation, they left
by the front door.
 
Tam waited ten
careful minutes before putting the gun back into its holster and tossing down
the last of his drink.
 
No point in
wasting good whisky, me boy.

The Deseret Hotel had a lift, and it was a good one.
 
He and Sam Clemens had ridden it up and
down earlier, Clemens looking all nonchalant and impressed with his own
sophistication, but Tam had barely been able to keep his mouth from either
dropping open or spewing out curse words.
 
The lift was smooth and cool, with no jerking in its action and no steam
leaking into the carriage.
 
It was
a work of genius, ultra-modern and perfect, not like the herky-jerk affairs
that shifted men up and down inside the mine shafts of Pennsylvania.

And Tam ignored it.
 
If there were any Pinkertons still lurking around, for sure they’d have
their beady little eyes on the lift.
 
Instead, he limped up the Hotel’s stairs, cursing to himself with every
twinging step.

His wounded arm and leg ached, and so did his ear where it
had lost a piece to the midget.
 
He
itched to rough the dwarf up, but he had promised Clemens he wouldn’t.
 
He could scare the little bastard,
though.
 
He could put the fear of
God and all His angels and Tamerlane O’Shaughnessy into the little bugger, and
if the moment arose when it became necessary to break his word to Clemens, he
wouldn’t mind it so much, so long as he was able to explain why he’d had to do
it.

No Pinkertons in the stairwell.
 
Tam kept one hand on the grip of a Husher and the other
ready to whip out his spring-loaded stiletto.

Maybe he ought to kill him after all, necessity or not, and
just apologize to Sam when the deed was done.
 
Maybe that would be wisdom.
 
What would Mother O’Shaughnessy do, if she were in Tam’s
position?
 
The Pinkertons were
nosing after him, after all, and the dwarf knew that he had killed their man in
Fort Bridger.

No Pinkertons in the hall upstairs, either.

But the dwarf had killed the other one.
 
Maybe he could turn the little fellow
into the Pinkertons and blame him somehow for both deaths?
 
Or kill him and leave both Hushers on
his body somewhere the Pinkertons would find it?

Tam listened at the hotel room door; no sounds of Pinkertons
inside.

But even framing the midget wouldn’t make the Pinkertons his
friends.
 
He’d still killed their
precious little Taffy Bevan and they knew it.
 
There was nothing for it; he had to kill the dwarf.

Tam opened the door.
 
“Hell and begorra!” he cursed.

Loops of cut rope lay on the floor.
 
He knew even before he ran into the
bathroom to check, pistol in hand, that the dwarf was gone.

The boy was gone, too.

In a reflex action he checked his own pocket, and of course
the cylinder with its cargo of manic everything-eating beetles was safely
stowed away.
 
Bloody idjit, he
mocked himself.
 
As if the dwarf
might have snuck up on him on the street and picked his pocket.

No, but he might have snuck up to the Pinkertons on the
street and turned Tamerlane O’Shaughnessy in.
 
It was a good bloody-damn-hell job that Tam had kept out of
sight in the hotel, and no wonder Pinkerton Harvard was standing outside the
front doors.

Tam slunk back to the Hotel’s lobby, waiting in obscure
shadows and watching to be sure it was Pinkerton-free before he approached the
concierge.
 
The man was little and
square and clean and the brass nameplate on his chest said
SORENSON
.
 
This
was the same fellow who had just been talking to the Pinkertons, he was sure of
it.

“Ah, good afternoon to you, Mr. Sorenson,” Tam started.

“And to you, Mr. O’Shaughnessy,” the desk clerk returned.

Tam grabbed the grip of his Husher and almost drew it.
 
At the same time, he looked
involuntarily at his chest and was almost surprised to see that he wasn’t also
wearing a nametag.
 
Ah, but he
knows you because you’re a hotel guest, me boy, Tam thought.
 
Calm yourself, he’s done nothing to
you, and you can always kill him later.

But it wasn’t good that Sorenson knew him.
 
That meant that if the Pinkertons
showed the man a calotype, he would have recognized it, even if they called it
something bloody stupid like
Seamus McNamara
.

Or do they finally know my real name?
 
Did they show him a calotype and say
here’s
Tam O’Shaughnessy, call us when you see him if you want a little bit of that
reward money? Maybe that’s how he knows my name now…

The calotype… suddenly he remembered that he was still
carrying it around, in the pocket of his coat.
 
It felt like it burned him.
 
He should get rid of it, somewhere, but the lobby of the
biggest hotel in the city was not the right place.

“Ah…” Tam hesitated.
 
Where in bloody-damn-hell is my share of the famous Irish smooth talking
now that I need it?
 
The lobby was
far too busy with people, or he might have shot Sorenson on the spot, out of
sheer embarrassment.
 
Or knifed the
bastard.

“Some gentlemen were looking for you, Mr. O’Shaughnessy,”
Sorenson continued blandly, as if Tam weren’t standing there stammering and
drooling like an idjit with his heart all full of murder.
 
“Some
foreign
gentlemen.”

Foreign?
 
Yes,
of course, because this was the Kingdom of Deseret, and nothing to do with the
United States of America at all.
 
But Sorenson didn’t talk like someone who had just turned Tam in to the
Pinkertons.
 
“Oh, ah…”

“I had no instructions from you or Mr. Clemens, so of course
I told them I didn’t know you.”

“Jesus, thank you,” Tam blurted out.
 
In his relief, he almost squeezed the
Husher’s trigger.

“You can call me Sorenson,” the clerk smiled mildly.
 
“
Mister
or
Brother
,
depending.
 
Some of our Mexican
brothers and sisters are named Jesus, but I was born in Copenhagen and my
parents named me Anders.”

“I see.”
 
Tam
adjusted his hat on his head and realized he was sweating, silly fool that he
was.
 
He had dodged a bullet, and
through no clever maneuvering of his own.
 
Still, the Pinkertons were out there somewhere, and it would pay to keep
that clearly in mind from now on.
 
“Sorry, Mr. Sorenson.”

“I asked where you might contact them in case I did see
you,” Sorenson continued, “but the gentlemen declined to give me any further
information.”

“Brigit’s dugs, I bet they did, ha!” Tam couldn’t help
himself.
 
Stop acting like an
amateur and a dunderhead, Tamerlane O’Shaughnessy, he told himself.
 
He straightened up his posture and his
coat and felt better for it.
 
He’d
have felt even better if he could have kicked the Harris right in his balls at
that moment, and then stabbed the man in the face.

The clerk only smiled mildly at him, but Tam saw that the
little man’s hands both rested on the counter, palms down.
 
Tam coughed and dug out the double
eagle Sam had given him by the Lion House.
 
It was one of the few gold coins he had; Sam Clemens was a
good egg and could be counted on, but if Tam had one complaint it was that his
boss did have a tendency to keep all the money to himself.

Tam plunked the coin down on the counter and it immediately
disappeared, whisked away by the little clerk’s fingers.
 
“And how else can I help you today, Mr.
O’Shaughnessy?” Sorenson asked.

Excellent question.
 
“Have you seen a dwarf in the lobby this afternoon?” he asked.
 
“The little fellow might conceivably
have been in the company of a small boy.”

“In fact, he was,” the concierge smiled.
 
“I gave them directions to the train
station just before the foreign gentlemen arrived.”

Chapter Seven

“I could kill you where you stand, Edgar.”

The voice came from behind him, and it was Roxie’s.
 
Since it was Roxie talking, the words
might be complete and utter lies, a bluff.

Then again, it was Roxie, and she probably
could
kill him where he stood.

Poe turned around slowly, grateful his pockets were
empty.
 

“Shall I call you
Reynolds?
” he asked.

He had just put on his biggest overcoat, the one with all
the pockets inside.
 
He had put it
on intending to carry away in the coat’s pockets Hunley’s four canopic jars,
designed to specification of the Madman Orson Pratt.
 
For all his rumination on the subject, Poe had no idea what
the jars did, and knew only that the designs had left Hunley’s smartest men
scratching their heads and wondering.
 

But he had seen some of Hunley’s other Egyptiana at work,
and if he was going to be shot in the body, he didn’t want some pestilential
plague of death accidentally unleashed against his own flesh.
 
Years of training and experience kept
him from shuddering as his imagination was invaded by a vision of himself
thrashing out death throes in the grip of a brass scarab swarm, or melting in a
puddle of acid, or bursting into flame.

Roxie sat on Jed’s bunk.
 
He hadn’t seen her because she’d been behind the door, and
it had been dark.
 
He kicked
himself for moving so quickly.
 
She
held something in her hands that looked like a small glass globe, full of
sizzling blue light.

“We both know that’s not my name,” she said quietly.

“You have an accomplice,” he inferred.
 
If he was going to die, at least he’d
know how.
 
Besides, talking might
buy him time.

Roxie nodded.
 
“She replaced the hair you’d left in the door after I came in.”

“I was reckless.”

“You always were.”

“Not since Baltimore,” Poe said, and he meant it.
 
“I learned my lesson, and I’ve been
very careful.”

“It only takes one mistake.”

For years he had dreamed of this moment.
 
He thought he had seen it in every
possible configuration, the final confrontation between himself and Eliza Roxcy
Snow.
  
He had seen himself
poisoned, stabbed, strangled and burned in acid, because that was an outcome he
feared and half-expected on a daily basis.
 
Mostly he had seen himself as the one doing the killing, by
gun, by knife, by throwing her hated, beautiful body under the wheels of a
train, by shoving her head into the clocksprung jaws of a cotton thresher, but
always by some means that was satisfyingly physical and violent.
 
And always he imagined himself first
delivering a final oration, telling Roxie that she was evil, that she had a
heart of stone, that whatever Satan there might be in whatever hell he could
muster would surely delight in adding her to the infinite ranks of his
gibbering minions.

Now here he was, and he didn’t have the will for any of
that.
 
“You were my mistake,” he
said simply.

“And you were mine.”
 
She looked so sincere that he couldn’t laugh, no matter how outrageous
her words were.
 
He wondered what
game she was playing.

He considered his weapons.
 
They were virtually none.
 
The Seth Beast was locked away in the hold of the
Liahona
.
 
He
didn’t carry a gun.
 
He had the
hypocephalus tucked into a pocket of his vest—he would have to try to get
it out and use it on her.
 
He
doubted it would have any effect, though, not with her training and her iron
will.
 

To set up his play, he hazarded a fake cough.
 
It came out a little more forcefully
than he meant it, and brought several more in its wake, involuntary, before he
managed to stop it.

“Consumption?” Roxie asked.
 
She did an excellent job of feigning an expression of
heartfelt concern, the straight lines of her face melting into compassion.
 
Poe wanted to applaud, and invite her
to take a bow for her theatrics.

Instead he nodded.
 
“It hardly matters now.
 
I
assume you’ll kill me with that device you’re holding.”

“You know me so well.”

“Poison?
 
That
would be appropriate, and typical.
 
What is it, a gas?”

“I don’t want to kill you, Edgar,” she said.

“You’ve had a change of heart since Baltimore, then,” he
quipped, and he faked another cough, smaller this time, and this time it didn’t
trigger anything further.
 
He
wondered if she had seen him hypnotize Lee in the Shoshone stockade.
 
She might not let him get a
handkerchief.
 
If he went for the
hypocephalus and she attacked, he must be prepared to defend himself.
 
He moved, relaxed, into a more centered
and balanced position, a basic and inobtrusive defensive stance of baritsu.
 
For the thousandth time, he thanked
Robert in his heart for the years of training and discipline.

Roxie hesitated.
 
“That wasn’t me,” she finally said.

“You probably expect me to believe that,” he rejected her
claim of innocence.

She stood up.
 
“I expect you to be shrewd enough to know that sometimes, in our
business, the dagger doesn’t know that it’s the dagger.”

Well, that rang true, but then, verisimilitude was the
strength of the best lies told by the best liars.
 
And Roxie was the very best.

“And the dagger,” she added, “never
wants
to be the dagger.”

He coughed, reached for his vest—

and Roxie raised the glass ball over her head.

“Don’t move!” she snapped.

He froze.

“You would deny a dying man a handkerchief into which to
cough up fragments of his lung?”

“This is Wyoming; spit it on the floor,” she told him, her
voice the perfect mixture of cold steel and tortured pity.
 
“I don’t know which is worse,
Edgar.
 
That you might truly be
dying, or that you might be faking your own death to take advantage of my
feelings.”

So much for the hypocephalus.
 
It was to be a desperate physical attack, then.
 
Poe braced himself, looked at the way
she stood and thought about how he would try to grab her and which direction he
would throw her when he did.
 
Would
the gas kill both of them?
 
Of
course not.
 
It would be something
to which she had already taken the antidote, or to which she was immune.
 
Or maybe the Madman had fitted her with
a device in her mouth or her throat, which would filter out the toxins.

If Pratt could save her body, his mind lurched desperately
and counter to its discipline, couldn’t he save mine?
 
He wrenched his attention back to the moment.

“It’s worse than either of those, my dear,” he mocked
her.
 
“I
am
truly dying
and
I want to take advantage of your feelings.
 
Sadly for me, you have none.”

Suddenly Roxie backed away, turning and retreating towards
the door.
 
“My associate is
outside.”

“The pretty young dilettante,” Poe guessed.
 
“The brunette with the freckles, who
kicks so high.”

“Even if you survived this—” Roxie brandished the
sparkling globe, “she’d kill you with her bare hands.
 
She’s a champion of the eastern fighting arts, and a
stone-hearted killer.”

“She’s your protégée.
 
How else could she be?”

Roxie opened the door with a hand behind her.
 
“Remember this,” she told him.

Then she threw the globe down to the floor—

it shattered into a thousand pieces in a sparkle of light
and a dying
pfizzt!
—

she disappeared into the hallway of the
Liahona
—

and shut the door behind her.

Poe took a gulp of air and jumped for the door.
 
As he grabbed the knob, he heard a loud
click
outside.
 
She’s locked the door, he thought.
 
Don’t panic.
 
Just open the lock from the inside.

He thumbed the latch that should have unlocked his cabin
door; the latch didn’t budge.
 
Poe
felt his own heart beat faster.

He didn’t have a gun.
 
He needed something to smash the door with.
 
He scrambled, fumbled with the combination, lungs bursting,
opened his big steamer trunk and pulled out one of the four canopic jars.
 
It was a little stone thing the size of
a pickle jar, pinkish, and with a monkey’s head.
 

He spun and smashed it against the doorknob, using the
monkey end like the head of a hammer.

Crack!

No effect.
 
His
lungs were bursting.

Please, don’t let this jar burst open and spill out
something evil.
 
He imagined it
sprouting octopoid tentacles, a swarm of wasps, a cloud of burning acid.

He swung again.

Crack!

The door and the jar held firm.
 
His body trembled, he desperately needed to cough.
 
She was a devil, to torture him this
way, to force him to hold his breath.

Was it some kind of test, to see if he was really
consumptive?
 
No, that was both too
diabolical and also idiotic.
 
His
head was beginning to spin and the room around him was bathed in unnatural
white light.

He swung a third time.

Crack!

The door stood steady.
 
The canopic jar was unmarred.

His lungs betrayed him.
 
Poe dropped the jar,
thunk!
, and sank to his knees in the puddle of glass fragments.
 
He coughed violently, hacking up bloody
phlegm onto the carpet, gasping and sucking in air between coughs.
 
The air was canned and stale, was he
being poisoned?

He spat blood, onto his own hands and the floor and the
glass, blood and phlegm, and he expected to fall over and die.

But he coughed and spat again, drew in a deep breath…

And lived.

The canned air was just the regular stale air of the
interior of the big steam-truck.
 

The poison hadn’t worked.

He looked at the glass fragments, at the little filament
inside it, and realized that he’d been a fool.
 
It wasn’t that the poison hadn’t worked.

The little bulb had never had poison inside it at all.
 
It had been an electricks device, some
sort of hand-held light.

A bluff.

He laughed, but only for a moment, before sobering up.

What, then, had Roxie wanted?

Poe tore off his false nose and threw it into the corner of
the room.

*
  
*
  
*

John Moses had been a little bit too confident about their
ability to ride the train for free.
 
He told his name and his father’s name and that he needed to go home (to
some place called
Ogden
) and, sure
enough, the conductor with the stylized bumblebee on the front of his cap let
him on board the shiny brass and steel train.
 
He even gave the boy a warm smile and a pat on his little
head.
 

Jed, though, got a hard stare.

He coughed awkwardly once or twice and scratched at the
plascrete with his toes, hoping the conductor would have a heart and usher him
aboard as John Moses’s friend.
 
Meanwhile, he looked around the station.
 
Half a dozen platforms lay side by side, linked by parallel
catwalks overhead, steel, with wheel-and-compass designs alternating in their balustrades
with smiling steel suns.
 
Jed knew
for certain that no train connected from anywhere in the United States to the
Kingdom; if there had been one, he and Poe would have taken it.
 
Did Deseret connect to Mexico,
somehow?
 
Or to the Republic of California?
 
Or New Russia?
 

The conductor didn’t budge and finally Jed gave in.
 
He dug deep for a little cash, the last
of his rectangular California pieces, got a return ticket, and was at last
allowed onto the same carriage as the boy.
 
The inside of the train was leather and wood and brass, with
sliding glass windows and clean red carpet with gold bees woven into it and a
restaurant car and everything.
 
It
was the nicest train Jed had ever ridden, not that he was a train man.

They took a seat just before the porter reached them.

“Standard English or Deseret?” he asked.

“Deseret,” Jed said, just for kicks, and produced a
nickel.
 
It was a
mistake—whatever
Deseret
was, it
wasn’t English and the dwarf couldn’t read it.
 
The pages were covered with strange squiggly characters he
couldn’t make out.
 
The same kind
of incomprehensible gibberish, he realized, as was painted on the side of the
Liahona
.
 
“Why
didn’t anybody tell me they speak Chinese here?” he grumbled.
 
Only it wasn’t true.
 
They spoke perfectly good English, as
good as any American and better than half the people in Arkansas.