Suicide Kings by George R. R. Martin and Melinda M. Snodgrass Read Free Book Online Page B

story: “. . . and the latest contestant voted off Season Three of
American Hero
is . . .”
    She blinked. It couldn’t be Season Three. They hadn’t even finished Season Two. She was supposed to do a guest shot on Season Two.
    She looked down at herself.
    She was huge. Bigger than huge. Enormous. Bigger. Humongous. What was bigger than humongous? She didn’t even look like a girl anymore. They had draped something over her. A parachute maybe? She could feel the rolls of fat that rippled down her front. It was impossible for her to be this big.
    It came back to her then. A spinning golden necklace. Drake grabbing his chest. His eyes. His eyes were white and glowed and burned. She had embraced him and—
    No. No. No. No. NO!
    Blythe van Rennsaeler
Memorial Clinic, Jokertown Manhattan,
New York
    The darkness and the cold lasted the briefest second, and then they were standing just outside the emergency room of the Jokertown Clinic. Noel willed his body to shift back into his normal form. It felt like the muscles were crawling across his bones, and there was an ache in the bones themselves as he was returned to his normal height.
    Niobe had already gone in ahead of him, and was talking to the joker receptionist. The clinic was relatively quiet at 7:00 a.m. There was only a wino sleeping in a corner and a joker mother clutching her four-year-old as he alternated between sobs and hacking coughs.
    Niobe gazed at the little fellow with naked longing in her green eyes. Unlike his mother, he was completely normal though to Noel’s mind the green snot crusting his upper lip and his beet-red face made him a more unlovely sight than her.
    The receptionist made a call, and he and Niobe settled into chairs to wait. A television hung on the wall was set to MSNBC. Noel’s attention was caught by the heading—The sudd. A helicopter shot was panning across anexpanse of reeds and water. On bits of dry ground that humped like the backs of prehistoric water beasts hiding in the swamp, destroyed tanks belched smoke into the air. Bodies, doll-like at this height, floated in pools and bled onto the ground.
    Noel read the scrolling subtitles.
The Sudanese government had voted to join with the Caliphate. Dr. Nshombo, leader of the People’s Paradise of Africa, has charged the Sudanese with genocide against the non-Muslim black tribesmen of the south, and moved into the Sudan to protect them. Clearly a major battle between PPA and Caliphate forces has occurred.
    Noel turned away from the lure of the flicking box. It wasn’t his problem. He was done with political games on a world stage. A pox on both of them.
    But there was no way that Prince Siraj could be compared to the madman who led the armies of the PPA. Siraj was a cunning politician, and killed when expedient. Dr. Nshombo was a cold ideological killer. Tom Weathers was just a killer.
And they all hate you. Why not take one of them off the table? Make Siraj an ally rather than an enemy? You were close friends once.
    Because I don’t know if I can trust him now. Those boys of Cambridge are dead
, Noel replied to that part of himself that sometimes missed the excitement of the game and that sense of serving a greater cause.
    Fifteen minutes later the centaur doctor came clattering through the door. Dr. Finn took Niobe’s wrist in his hand, feeling for her pulse. “Worse or better?”
    “Better,” she said.
    “That’s good.”
    “If . . . if something were to go wrong . . . I won’t try again. I can’t watch any more of my children die.”
    Niobe wasn’t just talking about the miscarriages. She was thinking of the hundreds of “kids” born from her ace power. Her “tail” was actually an ovipositor. Within minutes of sex, two to five eggs would move through the tail, be laid, and hatch into tiny children. They were usually aces, and their powers seemed to be linked to Niobe’s needs at a given moment.
    They were the primary reason she had been able to escape from a