Last Call (Last Call 1)

"That's difficult to say. In effect, the computer has been turned off while it tries to heal itself. The brain is—is sort of like an ice-cream sundae. The cherry on top is the cortex, the part that makes us human, with thinking and consciousness and all. Under it are the peanuts and chocolate and so on, that govern other functions, and, below that, the ice-cream itself is the maintenance level, the part that handles breathing and heartbeat and so on. The cherry is the first to shut down in a trauma like this—and so far it's the only part that has shut down."

Crane dully supposed that the man had chosen a trivial, happy metaphor to allay some of their shock and worry. He looked at Ozzie and Diana, and considered his own feelings, and decided that it had only made everything even more disorienting.

Diana glanced blankly at Ozzie, then back at the doctor. "Is he in a coma?"

"That is a word that describes this, yes," Bandholtz said, "but he's young, and getting state-of-the-art care. Listen, he won't regain consciousness tonight. You'll want to be alert when you see him tomorrow, so go home now. I can give you a sedative, if you think—"

"No," she said. "I'll be fine. Before we go, I'd like to see him." She glanced toward Crane. "Alone."

"Okay," the doctor said, "very briefly. You understand he's on life support systems—there's what's called a triple lumen catheter inserted under his collar bone to make sure the blood pressure in the lungs doesn't rise, and—"

"I just want to see him."

"Right, I'll take you to him. You two gentlemen can go back to the waiting room."

Ozzie sat next to Crane in the truck, Diana in the seat behind them. Whenever traffic let him, Crane angled his head to see her in the rearview mirror; she was squinting steadily out the side window, the passing lights alternately lighting and shading her profile.

She finally spoke when he had made the right-hand turn onto the Strip under the red and gold lights of the Barbary Coast.

"Even if they'd somehow agree to fly Scat to an out-of-town hospital," she said thoughtfully, "he'd be easily traceable—and I'd go with him, and the bad guys would know I would."

Ozzie took a breath as if to argue, then just exhaled and nodded.

"True."

The Flamingo was a rippling glare of fire-colored light on their right, but suddenly real orange flames and luminously billowing smoke flared beyond the traffic ahead of them, and Crane swore and lifted his foot from the gas pedal.

"It's the volcano out in front of the Mirage," Diana said. "Every twenty minutes it goes off. The locals are getting used to it, not that many of these people are locals." She yawned. Crane knew that kind of yawn—a sign of long-sustained tension, not of boredom. "I have to stay in town," she said, "and I won't be too hard for them to find, even if I visit the hospital in disguise. I need an edge. I need some … power here, some weaponry."

"We've got guns," said Crane, "we can help—"

"Maybe I'll want your help, and maybe I won't," she told him. "And I'll take a gun. But what I mean, what I need is—is this kind of power." In the rearview mirror Crane saw her wave at the gigantic casinos around them. "Certain people want me killed because I'm some kind of a threat to them, I'm the Queen of Hearts, right? I'm the flesh-and-blood daughter of my mother, who was somebody they felt they had to kill."

Ozzie started to speak, but she silenced him by tapping his shoulder with the backs of her fingers. "I want to learn how to be an active threat," she said, "not just a passive one. I want to be the target that comes alive and starts shooting back. I want to become this Isis—with whatever powers Isis has, whatever it is they're afraid of."

They were directly across from the blazing Mirage volcano now, and Crane glanced to his left at the crowds of people standing along the railing beyond the sidewalk. His window was rolled down, and he could hear the roar of the flames over the crowd sounds, and even from way over here he thought he could feel the heat.

He considered what Diana had said. This is all yours, Ozzie, he thought. I'm out of my depth here.

For nearly a minute Ozzie just frowned at the traffic ahead.

Then he said thoughtfully, "Christ. Move all-in. You've been getting penalized like a player in a tournament who oversleeps and automatically gets all the antes and blind bets deducted from his absentee buy-in, and those involuntary bets have—have cost you, horribly. Now you're awake, though you're under the gun with a Jack and a Four down and a Queen showing. But they're suited." He shifted around on the front seat. "Could you fish me a beer out of the ice chest there, honey? It's okay," he added to Crane, "the Four of Hearts is allowed to drink. The Jack's still not, though."