Dealer's Choice by George R. R. Martin Page B

Atlanta. He was as persuasive as ever. “ALL RIGHT.” Tom said. “I’M IN.”
    Von Hagendaas smiled. “Of course you are,” he said. “I never doubted it. We’re offering them amnesty, you know. You can’t get more fair than that.”
    “They don’t deserve amnesty,” Snotman said angrily. “I deserve amnesty. They deserve punishment. Humiliation. Pain. Everything they gave me. Doubled.”
    “That kind of attitude won’t do anybody any good,” Danny Shepherd told him sharply.
    “I think…” Modular Man began.
    Snotman turned on him. “You’re a machine. Nobody gives a damn what you think. We might as well ask the jeep its opinion.”
    The android gave him an apprehensive look, and fell quiet.
    General Zappa said. “I saw the body bags at Fort Dix after last month’s try for the Rox. If there’s one chance in the million that talking will save that from happening to my command, I’m taking that chance.” He turned to Gregg Hartmann. “You’ve got the ball, Senator. Just put it right over the plate.”
     
    Building things was one of the Outcast’s favorite pleasures. Adding to the maze of caverns underneath the Rox was bliss. The Outcast grinned as he worked. Anymore, he could actually fee/ the energy coursing through him. The channel in which the power ran was almost visible, leading from his mind to the sleeping vastness of his Bloat-body — the engine driving the fantasy of the Rox. The governor’s body was a deep well and the Outcast drank deeply from his other self.
    Every day his surging will was stronger. Every day he could do more, as Bloat gorged himself on the waste products of the Rox. Every day he could spend more time dreaming himself as the Outcast, no longer trapped in Bloat.
    Ahh, my dear Kelly/Tachyon. I wish you were here. I wish you could be with me now. I could love you the way you deserved to he loved, you and little Illyana…
    That was the only sadness in him at all. The Outcast hummed tunelessly as he worked, and he smiled.
    Tendrils of purple-blue light splashed from his fingertips and from the stone set in the knob of his staff, leaping out into the darkness of the cavern far under New York Bay. He wove the light like a fabric, fashioning it.
    “Let me guess: a dragon.”
    “Right,” the Outcast said, not looking at the penguin. The voice was enough to tell him who it was. “Every good dungeon needs a dragon.”
    “Y’know, fat boy, for someone with a half-decent imagination, sometimes you ain’t as creative as you could be. I mean, c’mon, a dragon’s such a cliché. A standard, overused icon like a unicorn. You read too much Tolkien as a kid, y’know that? I think — hey! Whassa matter?”
    The lines of force composing the Outcast’s blossoming dragon form snarled and twisted, the solidity of the contours fading. “I don’t know…” he said. He raised his staff higher, straining to pull more energy from Bloat’s reserves. Something drained the energy from him, pulling it away. As the Outcast struggled to retain control, a huge, glowing white sword materialized. Swinging through the darkness with an audible whuff , the weapon sliced the birthing dragon in half and then shattered into a hundred streaming meteors. The penguin made a sound like a strangling cat. Pumping furiously with its tiny legs, it skated away over the rocky ground, its funnel hat askew. The Outcast reverted to Teddy behavior at the magical assault, burying his head in his hands as streamers of burning phosphorus hissed past him.
    “This isn’t the way,” a voice said. Teddy (No, he told himself, I am the Outcast. Not Bloat, and especially not Teddy…) peeked through his fingers. An ancient, olive-skinned man in a brightly colored serape was staring back at him. The old one’s face was leathery and almost flat. It had an Indian look to it, alloyed perhaps with Spanish blood, like pictures Teddy/Bloat/Outcast had seen of native South Americans.
    “You have interfered too many times.