Endgame: The Calling (44 page)

“Blood for blood,” Kala reminds him, her teeth stained red.

“Yes,” he confirms, and pulls his pistol from behind his back.

Kala’s head tilts. “You wait until now? You could have done it first, and taken the key.”

“So that’s what that is?” Baitsakhan’s eyes just barely drift from Kala’s onto the ball.

And that is all she needs. Misdirection. Just like with Jalair. These Donghu are all the same.

Baitsakhan fires, but Kala is on top of him, smashing his wrist with the ball.

This is too easy.

All too easy
.

Christopher runs as soon as Baitsakhan pulls the gun.

To see better he flicks on the smartphone just as he reaches the exit, and nearly runs full bore into a smirking young man wagging his finger.

Christopher gasps.

“You lost, kiddo?” Maccabee asks. “No matter. I found you. Pretty soon, you’ll wish I hadn’t.”

Kala jabs an elbow into Baitsakhan’s shoulder. The gun goes off again, but Kala has his arm like a vise and the shot hits the dirt. She backs him to the golden altar and rakes her left thumb across the gun’s magazine release. The clip falls to the ground. She lets go of his wrist, knowing he will raise the weapon to fire the sole round left in the chamber.

Predictable fool.

She clamps her arm over his and the gun goes off. And that’s it. No more bullets in this fight.

She lets him have it with her fists, one of which still contains the glass Earth Key, pummeling his stomach and ribs. He balls up defensively, tears falling from his eyes. Muscles bruise; bones snap. When he stops moving, she stops too. She steps back. She is disgusted. He’s pitiful.

“Blood for blood,” she says slowly, mockingly.

Christopher has seen kids Maccabee’s size before, usually on the football field. He recognizes that cocky smirk from any number of opponents at sectionals. The best way to deal with these types is hard and fast. Christopher loads up and lets fly with a haymaker. But Maccabee catches his fist and holds it. Maccabee’s smirk widens into a full-fledged grin. Christopher drops the phone and swings with his other hand. Without releasing his fist, Maccabee blocks the punch and simultaneously hits Christopher hard across his left shoulder. Before Christopher can react, Maccabee raises a foot and brings it down on his knee. The pain is excruciating and the
pop
stomach-churning. The phone lies screen up on the floor, illuminating the pair from below. In accented English, Maccabee says, “What else you got?”

But Christopher has nothing.

“In that case . . .”

The last thing Christopher remembers is the guy’s head coming hard for his. Maccabee lowers the boy to the floor, unsheathes his knife, and takes off at a jog toward the altar.

His bloodthirsty partner needs help.

Kala pulls back her hand. It will land squarely on Baitsakhan’s throat and collapse his windpipe and his trachea, crush his Adam’s apple and break his neck. He stares up at her, his eyes already dead, waiting for the blow.

“Good-bye, silly child,” she says. “Blessings.”

As she raises her arm, her back lights with a sharp pain, followed by a chill. She cannot move. A hand grips her shoulder and keeps her from collapsing to the floor. She knows immediately that her spinal column has been severed. Her arms and legs are paralyzed.

Her eyes widen.
I am the fool.

Baitsakhan manages to stand, his face wet with sweat and blood and tears. His eyes red and swollen. His cheek oozing.

“You look like shit,” observes Maccabee, his knife still in Kala’s back.

“Shut up,” growls Baitsakhan. “Let me finish this one.”

“Whatever you say,” Maccabee says with a snicker.

Baitsakhan spins to Kala and spits on the ground. “Blood for blood, Sumerian,” he hisses. “Blood for blood.”

Knuckey Lagoon, Northern Territory, Australia

Alice pokes the remnants of a campfire with a stick. It is night. The sounds of the outback surround her. The clicking, the cooing, the yelping, the hissing. The serenade of a limitless army of crickets.

Home.

The thick Milky Way turns like a wheel overhead. She moves the coals around, drawing a spiral in them. But not just any spiral. A special one. A Fibonacci spiral.

Hydrogen, helium, lithium, oxygen, aluminum, scandium, selenium, cesium, actinium.

The cesium was tricky because originally she thought it was calcium, but that didn’t fit. Also, the clue passed over boron for a reason that Alice cannot fathom.

But undoubtedly this is what her clue referred to. And it was seconded with the numbers of the Players’ lines.

1, 2, 3, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89 . . . the atomic numbers of the elements of her clue. Add 5 for boron between 3 and 8, and a 0 and a 1 at the very beginning, and that’s it.

The Fibonacci sequence.

It can go on forever.

Yet starts in nothing.

It is found throughout nature. In shells, in flowers, in plants, in fruit, in the inner ear. In galaxies. In our very hands: not counting thumbs eight fingers total, five digits on each hand, three bones in each finger, two bones in one thumb, and one thumb on each hand. The ratio of one instance to its predecessor approximates, sometimes with eerie accuracy, the golden mean: 1.618. For example, 89/55=1.6181818181818 . . .

Alice rubs her face. Her head hurts. All these numbers and formulas. She’s done a lot of studying since leaving the bar in Darwin. Too much for her tastes, but she has to figure this out.

Where do the numbers fit into Endgame? The line numbers, she realized, are also Fibonacci numbers. The Players are like a list of otherworldly isotopes: Mu-2, Celt-3, Minoan-5, Nabataean-8, Donghu-13, Olmec-21, Koori-34, Harrapan-55, Sumerian-89, Aksumite-144, Cahokian-233, Shang-377. But what does
that
mean, if anything?

Where do they fit?

She does not know.

She stares at the fire for 18 minutes. The only sounds are the slight breeze and the crackle-pop of the burning scrub.

Then the yellow, glowing eyes of a dingo appear on the far side of camp.

“C’mere, mate.”

The eyes don’t move.

Alice holds out her hand. Makes a low, submissive sound.

The dog pads toward her, enters the light of the faltering campfire. A black nose. Mottled fur. Dark eyes.

“That’s it. There you are.” Alice throws the dog a scrap of charred snake meat. The dog sniffs and gobbles it up.

“Was just wondering what I should do, mate.”

The dog looks up from its snack. Cocks an ear. Hell, she got answers talking to some American tourist; might as well try a dingo.

“Should I stay and wait for round two, or leave Oz and go out for this first key?”

The dog looks at her seriously. Points his nose to the heavens. Sniffs. Alice looks up too. Sees a massive green-and-orange-tailed shooting star streak through the sky.

The Player and the wild animal, each looking as feral as the other, lock gazes.

The dog sits on its haunches.

Alice nods deeply.

“Yeah. I think you’re right. Round two it is. When it starts, I think I’ll go after that little wanker that chopped Shari’s finger.”

The dog lies down. Puts its head on its forepaws.

“Yeah.”

The Milky Way.

The dark.

The little fire.

“I’ll wait.”

Lord Krishna’s home, swallowed and gone.
^lxvi

Alt
n Odas
, 25 m Underground, Turkey

Chiyoko watches Maccabee carry Kala’s frozen body to the exit. She can hear and see everything from her perch. Baitsakhan has the black orb. He paid for it with blood and pain and a huge helping of humility. Christopher is moaning but still unconscious. When they reach the exit Maccabee pushes Christopher aside with his foot. He lowers Kala onto a large waist-high stone.

“You’re welcome, by the way,” Maccabee says, not quite feeling the gratitude he expected for saving Baitsakhan’s ass.

Baitsakhan grunts.

Pompous fool,
Chiyoko thinks.

She considers killing them. She would do Maccabee first, then the boy. But it’s too risky. She can kill only one at a time, after all, and that split second, even with his wounds, might be all that the Donghu would need.

No. There has been enough underestimation here for one night. Patience.

“This is it, Maccabee.” Baitsakhan holds out the ball. “Earth Key. She found it for us!”

“Let me see that,” Maccabee says, unconvinced.

Besides, one will eventually kill the other. And before that happens, they will probably eliminate at least one other Player. They are idiots, but for now they remain useful.

Baitsakhan sweeps an arm through the air. “Look at this place! It has to be.” He draws his knife and points it at Kala. “Isn’t that right, sister?”

“Get screwed!” she says in partially formed words.

“She’s got a lot of spunk,” Maccabee says, chuckling. He gestures to Baitsakhan. “Bring the light closer.”

Baitsakhan does. “My god,” Maccabee says, staring into the orb. He sees the contours of the continents and the oceans and the mountains, all right there, alive in his hand, just beneath the orb’s surface. “I think you’re right.”

Christopher struggles to get up and says, “Wha—?”

The Players ignore him.

Baitsakhan leans in to Kala’s face and says, “What else do you know? What was your clue?”

Kala is fading. “I said, get screwed.”

“Where is Sky Key?” Baitsakhan asks. He lets the point of his ancient blade rest on her chest, between her breasts.

“You’ll never find it.” She coughs, her mouth full of blood. “Not smart enough.”

“I don’t intend to find it. I intend to take it. Just as I have taken this.”

“Just as
we
have taken this,” Maccabee interjects.

Baitsakhan says, “Yes. We.”

“Won’t happen,” Kala mumbles.

“It will.”

“He’ll kill you first.” She points her eyes at Maccabee. “He’ll kill you soon, child.”

“Mind your business, dead one,” Maccabee snarls.

Baitsakhan kneels in front of her. He lets his blade rest on her thigh. “If you won’t tell me, I’ll kill you.”