The Devil Delivered and Other Tales Read Online Free Page A

talk soon, then. Bye, and good luck.”
    William climbed to his feet and drained his bottle of water. He walked back to the counter and set the phone down.
    “Still planning on heading out tomorrow?” Stel asked.
    “Yep.”
    “Well”—she smiled—“I think I’ll keep your room clean and ready, just in case you come to your senses.”
    William smiled back, then headed over to the pool table. The tall, well-dressed man was racking the balls for a solo game. The local boy sat at a distant table, looking glum. William leaned on the table and picked up the cue ball. “Finally,” he said, “some competition.”
    “I’ll break,” the man said.
    William dropped the cue ball into the man’s hand. “Mother wants me to do some spying for her,” he said.
    Daniel Horn nodded. He walked around the table and set down the cue ball. “It’s a hard life, William, and you’re harder than most.”
    William found a cue stick. He raised one end and sighted down it, pointing the tip at Daniel, as if holding a rifle.
    Leaning on the table for his opening shot, Daniel paused. Their eyes locked. “Careful,” the young Lakota said, “that once belonged to Sitting Bull.”
    William lowered the cue stick. “She wants me to follow up a rumor about you closing the borders.”
    “You want me to tell you? I will.”
    “Nope. All I want to know is, open or closed, will you let me do my research?”
    “That what you call it?”
    “That’s what I call it.”
    Daniel’s eyes narrowed as he prepared to break. “Don’t see why not,” he said. A moment later the cue ball was a white blur; then a loud crack scattered the balls. Two thumped into pockets. Daniel looked up and grinned. “Better get out of that bootsuit, William, you’re in for a hot one.”
    William shook his head. “I live in my bootsuit. It lives on me. We are one.”
    “Sometimes you scare me, William.”
    “Sometimes I mean to, Daniel.”

 
    TWO
    Entry: American NW, July 1, A.C . 14
    Something heavier than an angel, something more like a witch, a woman of earth and stone—only this could have made her so tenuous to his touch. It is now an age of angels, gauze-thin and adolescent. But when he’d looked upon her face, something elder had been visible, a time abandoned in despair; he’d seen the solid anguish lining her face, and he made his smile soft as he let her into the room.
    Sweat of the land between them, a smell of moss and cobble-cool flesh that he imagined alabaster and serene. Stel had left him with a gift, a warmth like sun-brushed wood taking root into what had been virgin soil. Not virginity of the flesh, but of the spirit.
    Days since his last meal. Things out there crowding ever closer, eager to know this new stranger in the dreamtimes. What made the night important: he was already almost gone, wind-tugged away from civilized life. It could have been easy, to have just simply left, without a backward touch or glance.
    One last time crawling out of his thermal-controlled rad-shielding skin, once more unto the mortal coil. He thought then that a ghost stepped into him, a presence that understood the value of certain gestures to humanity—the one she’d give to him, the one he’d give to her.
    A young man crafted by the tools of progress.
    An aging woman tired of sleeping alone.
    Touched human.
    Touched young.
    “That wasn’t pity,” he said afterwards.
    “That wasn’t bad,” she replied.
    Net
    CORBIE TWA: Somethin’s cooking at Boxwell Plateau. Any shivers on the vine?
    STONECASTER: Just this, Corbie Twa, the Argentinians made an official call to the Lady at Ladon Inc. NOAC got to them, goes the very soft twang. So maybe Boxwell’s dead. And Ladon’s homeless one more time. The last time.
    CORBIE TWA: What about Saudi?
    STONECASTER: You’ve been in the Swamp too long, mucker. Saudi was knifed a week ago. Now NOAC’s got the embargo sewed up tight. Ladon can’t even buy a scrap heap and a hamburger.
    JOHN JOHN: This path ain’t