. . .
“Yes,” says Tom. “Yes, he does. You can’t, Linus. You can’t. I will never forgive you if you go after him and get the Devil cleaned out of you. You can’t. It’s wrong. Don’t you get it? It’s wrong. You can’t let him. You are supposed to be exactly who you are.”
At this the antichrist hesitates.
He picks Tom up. He cradles the human in his arms.
The black dog pants. The black dog whuffles. The black dog leaves its muddy footprints all over the just-cleaned floor.
“Let’s get you home,” says the future Mr. Enemy.
“I won’t be trapped this way forever, will I?” says Tom.
“Of course not,” the antichrist says.
He walks forbidden paths with Tom, whose tears sizzle in the heat.
“Of course not,” agrees Tom, crying Friedman. “I’ll get out of this trap. Six months tops. You’ll see!”
– 5 –
Tom is sick for most of a year. Then he gets better. He finds himself on an uncharted island with his guardian Bertram, who has half a golden face.
“I think I liked writhing in fever and agony better,” says Tom.
“That’s the spirit,” says Bertram bluffly.
. . .
Tom is weak, but he recovers.
“I’d thought I’d cut off half your face,” Bertram says, “and put it over mine. But it turns out I’m almost as bad at being awful as I am at being good.”
“That’s amazing, sir,” says Tom. “You must’ve shot all snake-eyes in the great craps game that is life.”
“Ha,” says Bertram. He shrugs it off. He goes out to stare at the endless surf.
The NHS does not cover hospital bills for recuperation facilities on private islands, even for complications arising from having ophidian DNA unexpectedly swiffed off of one’s genome or having half of a golden face. Eventually the debts become staggering and a coalition of savory health care interests and unsavory criminal bank-lords confiscate Bertram’s island with a mercenary fleet.
“You’re welcome to stay, Tom,” says chief doctor Miriam Clepper, but he shakes his head.
“You’d just run endless experiments on me to better understand the nature of humanity’s ophidian successors,” sighs Tom.
“That’s so,” admits Dr. Clepper. “But we’ve got cake!”
. . .
So Tom and Bertram move to London and become milliners instead. Bertram sniffs wistfully at the mercury and loads Tom’s arms up with various hats.
Tom gives him a hatful glare.
“I do still loathe you,” Tom says, “You know.”
“That’s fine, boy,” Bertram Gulley says.
“I’ll kill you when I’ve got a good chance!”
But he doesn’t.
. . .
It’s not Tom that kills Bertram Gulley. It’s not even complications arising from his golden face. It’s Lucy Souvante, space princess assassin, aka the evil prophet of space.
– 6 –
Bertram opens the door. He sees Lucy standing there. He gapes.
“You’re on record,” says Lucy softly, “as being one of my sister’s previous targets. I don’t suppose you know what exactly happened with her death?”
“I don’t know what —”
. . .
Lucy’s eyes hold a prophecy of damnation. Bertram staggers. He throws his arm in front of his face.
He babbles, “She gave me a slim chance for survival! I took it! We were playing a game!”
He falls down. She advances.
“We too will play a game,” says Lucy Souvante, “then. Rock-paper-scissors. For your life.”
“I —”
She is counting. One, two, three. He throws rock. She throws paper. He looks up from her hand to her face.
“Best two,” he says, “out of three?”
This rules revision does not take place.
. . .
She rips his throat out. He falls, gushing, to the floor.
She looks around his apartment.
She sifts through it.
. . .
Tom opens the door. He comes home. He looks from Bertram to Lucy and he frowns.
“Oh?” she asks. She turns.
He is displaying an extraordinary variety of expressions. Finally he goes and he kneels beside Bertram Gulley’s corpse.
“Ignore that,” she says. “Boy. Let’s play rock-paper-scissors.”
But he shakes his head.
“It’s a fair game,” she says.
Tom is staring into Bertram’s eyes. He is frowning. She walks over. She slaps him. He catches her hand. He flings her over. He lands kneeling on her stomach with one hand on her throat. “I know you,” he says. “We met in the future.”
She pulsates. She diffuses into a black cloud of malice. She blasts him back against the wall.
She holds him there.
She recoalesces. She flips up her umbrella one-handed. She levels its tip at him.
“You were saying?” she says.
Tom’s eyes blaze. For a moment, he is almost a science adventurer again. He sees how to do it. Knee her in the stomach. Take the umbrella. Thumb it to anti-aerated weaponry. Stop her from throwing any rock-paper-scissors moves —
. . .
Lucy sighs. She drops him.
“You are uninteresting,” she says.
“A long time ago,” Tom says, “we met in the future, and I had friends there, and I had children there, and you killed them.”
“That’s extremely notional,” says Lucy.
“You’d stalked them one by one,” he says, “because they were your enemies; only, when you found out who Maria was named after, you got the most awful look on your awful face.”
“What?” Lucy says.
“She should’ve technically been your god-daughter, I guess,” says Tom. “That’s what she would’ve —”
Lucy is shaking her fist, one, two, three, and he can’t help himself, he throws paper.
So does she.
. . .
Lucy scowls.
“Well,” she says, “that’s all very good, and you probably expect me to go away and let you have kids and raise them and name them after my sister, but I’ll hardly —”
“No,” says Tom.
There is something awful in his voice. It stops her.
“They’re all already dead and gone.”
“What?”
“So just kill me,” he says. “It’s OK. The humans will throng and live, or you’ll kill them, or whatever, and it’s all gone, and even stupid Bertram Gulley and his golden face”
— and Tom here kicks it —
“Just kill me,” he says.
. . .
“I don’t want to cause a time paradox,” Lucy says, reflexively acting as Devil’s advocate. “That’s not kosher.”
“I killed her,” he says.
“What?”
“I killed Maria,” Tom lies. “Your sister Maria. I slaughtered her with science. She wasn’t even doing anything mean. I just woke up and thought, ‘you know, I’ll kill my nanny now. Because I’m an evil snake-person and I ought to die.’”
“You?” Lucy laughs.
She drags herself up.
“Don’t make me laugh,” she says. “My throat hurts. You didn’t kill Maria. It was — that golden-face. Or some . . . unsavory interest. Or a giant wolf or an evil storm. It wasn’t you.”
“It was me,” says Tom. “I was too consumed by my self-loathing. I didn’t want to be an ophidian world-inheritor any longer. So I sabotaged her space gun. It blew up. I lived. She died. End of story.”
Lucy’s face twists.
“I’m ready to face my punishment,” says Tom. “Like gold-face there. Just . . . just end it.”
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