Blind God's Bluff A Billy Fox Novel - By Richard Lee Byers Page 0,24
your bandages.”
“Oh. Right.” I know: So far, I wasn’t exactly coming across like a rocket scientist. Chalk it up to being rattled. You might think I would have gotten used to Gimble last night. But while we were playing poker, I understood how to relate to him, no matter how strange he looked. It was different now.
He waved at a conversation pit made up of chairs and a couch Wotan had missed, or else replacements for ones he hadn’t. “Shall we sit? Get to know one another?”
“Okay.” I figured the more I learned about Gimble and, well, everything, the better off I’d be. As I flopped down, and he sat with a smooth, slow motion that reminded me of a cherry picker lowering a worker to the ground, I said, “The little squirrel guys. They’re not anything like you.”
“No,” he said. Now that he’d moved around a little, his head had started nodding and probably wouldn’t stop for quite a while. “I won them and their lands in 1936. Before that, I’d never set foot in Pittsburgh. Of course, even if I’d come into existence there, it might not reflect in my appearance. I’m unique. That’s what nice about being a higher mechanical. No offense.”
“None taken.”
“So, how are you taking to our society? Our world?”
I considered trying to bullshit him and decided it probably wasn’t worth the effort. “Is it that obvious I’m a newbie?”
“Surprisingly, no. Not from your demeanor. But given your talent for cards, I assume you would already have made a name for yourself if Timon hadn’t just brought you up from the human world.”
“I get it.”
“But you didn’t answer my question. How are you holding up?”
“Well, I don’t keep wondering if I’ve gone crazy, or keep pinching myself to make sure I’m not dreaming. If there are people who really act like that, I guess I’m not one of them.”
No point adding that, while I had no doubt the lords and their world were real, that wasn’t the same as feeling like I belonged there, or not being scared shitless from time to time. Admitting that would show weakness, and even though we were making nice, I hadn’t forgotten Gimble was my opponent.
“But I’ve got to say,” I continued, “if anything was going to freak me out, it might be you. You call yourself a ‘mechanical.’ So somebody really did build you like a toaster or a car?” I smiled. “No offense.”
If I had offended him, I couldn’t tell it. Which was no surprise, since his painted face didn’t change, no matter what. “Essentially,” he said. “Although it required crafts and knowledge most humans couldn’t understand.”
“I’m a little surprised anybody would feel the need to build a lord. It seems like if there was an opening, you could always find a guy like Wotan or the Pharaoh eager to fill it.”
He laughed, which made him seem even more like a creepy decoration on a midway. “You’re right, but I was built to be a toy. I had to murder my maker and run to get my first taste of freedom.”
“But once you got out of his home fief, you were safe?”
“Not entirely. His family sent hunters after me. And in theory, anyone in authority could have arrested me. Fortunately, most of them didn’t know about my crime, and those who found out rarely cared what had happened in some faraway part of the world.”
“Still, it can’t have been easy to climb the ladder from killer on the run to lord.”
“You’re right, it wasn’t. The struggle for mastery is bitter and never-ending. And I hate to see a young man who tried to protect me tossed into the thick of it.”
As Victoria used to point out when she was urging me to find a career, or at least a real job, I was almost thirty. But that probably did look young to a guy who’d won the deed to Pittsburgh during the Depression.
I smiled. “For me, it’s just a poker game. At least as long as I stay in the hotel.”
“I think you’re shrewd enough to realize it’s more complicated than that.”
“Well, maybe. I have figured out that you people admire cheating if it’s done with style.”
“Have you also noticed we’re good at holding grudges? Have you thought about what will happen to you when the game is over?”
I shrugged. “I’ll take the cash Timon’s paying me, go back to the human world, and never see any of you guys again.” I didn’t know if that was