The Crystal City Page 0,49

this morning."

"You're speaking of my beloved brother, sir," said Calvin. "Nobody gets to call him names but me."

"Beg your pardon, sir," said the man. "I'm Jim Bowie, at your service. And if I'm not wrong, you just proved to me that Alvin ain't the only dangerous man in his family."

"Don't get no ideas about siccing this mob on me," said Calvin. "My brother plain hates to kill folks, but I got no such compunction. You turn the mob on me, and they'll all blow to bits as if they'd swallowed a keg of gunpowder. You first."

"What's to stop me from killing you right here?" said the man. And then, suddenly, he got a panicked look on his face. "No, I was just joking, don't do nothing to my knife."

Calvin laughed in his face. "Want to see the house go up real spectacular?"

"You're the artist," said the man.

Calvin found his way into the structure of the house, the thick heavy beams and posts that formed its skeleton. He hotted them up all at once-and so hot did he make them that they didn't so much burn as melt. The outer layer of each piece of wood burnt so fast that as the ashes peeled away it looked as if somebody had just flumped a busted pillow on the ground and released a hundred thousand feathers all at once.

The house collapsed, sending up such a cloud of smoke and ash and hot, searing air that it burned the hair and eyebrows and eyelashes right off the men in the front row. Their skin was also burned, and some were blinded, but Calvin didn't feel any particular pity. They deserved it, didn't they? They were a murderous, house-burning mob, weren't they? The ones who was blind now, they'd never join a mob again, so Calvin had flat cured them of their violence.

"You look to be a useful man to have as a friend," said the man with the knife.

"How would you know?" said Calvin. "You haven't seen me with any of my friends."

The man stuck out his hand. "Jim Bowie, sir, and I'd like to be your friend."

"Sir, I don't reckon you have many friends in this world, and neither do I. So let's not pretend to love each other. You have something you want to use me for, and I'm perfectly willing to consider being used if you can let me see what's to gain from it, and why it's a good and noble undertaking."

"They ain't no good and noble undertakings. Everybody I know of gets undertaken has to be dead first and doesn't seem to enjoy it."

Bowie was grinning.

"What do you want from me, Mr. Bowie?"

"Your company," said Bowie. "On an expedition. A job your brother turned down on account of I think he was scared."

"Al ain't afraid of anything," said Calvin.

"Anybody isn't scared of the Mexica might as well shoot out his own brains, cause they ain't worth keeping."

"The Mexica?"

"Some of us think it's time civilization came back to Mexico."

Civilization ... like this? Calvin watched the remaining mobbers cavorting and gamboling in front of the hot glowing embers and laughed.

"A mob's a mob," said Bowie. "But the Mexica are evil and need destroying."

"No doubt they do," said Calvin. "But why is it your job?"

"I got tired of waiting on God."

Calvin grinned at him. "Maybe we got something to talk about. I never been to Mexico."

Alvin felt someone nudge him, shake his shoulder.

"Sun coming," said a woman's voice.

La Tia, that's who it was.

"Everybody already pass over," said another woman. Dead Mary's mother.

"What's your name?" Alvin murmured. "I don't know your name."

"Rien," she said.

Dead Mary reached out and took his bleeding hands in hers. "Get up, you wizard you. Get up and cross over the bridge of your blood."

He tried to rise, with her helping, but at once he felt faint and his legs gave way under him. He fell face forward onto his hands and even his elbows buckled, and his face struck the surface of the crystal bridge. The heavy weight of the plow made the poke slide off his shoulder. It made the whole bridge shimmer with life, and Alvin felt himself suffused with warmth. With peace. It was all done. He could sleep now.

At once the bridge began to give way under him.

"No!" cried La Tia. "Hold up that bridge! You can't sleep now!" She reached down and lifted the poke from the surface of the bridge. At once the shimmering stopped, and Alvin could concentrate again. No,