Smith's Monthly #31 Read online

  CONTENTS

  Short Stories

  Gods Have History: A Poker Boy Story

  A Long Way Down: A Bryant Street Story

  The Case of the Man Who Saw: A Pilgrim Hugh Incident

  A Bad Day for the Dream: A Cold Poker Gang Story

  Playing in the Street

  Full Novel

  Death Takes a Partner: A Mary Jo Assassin Novel

  Serial Fiction

  Laying the Music to Rest (Part 4)

  Nonfiction

  Introduction: A New Series

  Subscribe to Smith’s Monthly

  Copyright Information

  Full Table of Contents

  Introduction

  A NEW SERIES

  I didn’t mean to start a new series. Honest, I didn’t.

  But last July, when I wrote 32 short stories in 31 days, I wrote two stories about an assassin by the name of Mary Jo.

  When my wonderful wife, writer and editor Kristine Kathryn Rusch, read the two stories, she said they would make a good new series.

  I think I shuddered.

  Honest. I shuddered.

  Why?

  Because I have a bunch of series going on right now.

  Not a bunch, a whole bunch, a large amount, more than I can remember.

  You get the idea.

  Let me see if I can list some of the series I have going on.

  Thunder Mountain, a time travel series usually set in the Old West of Idaho and Oregon.

  Seeders Universe, an epic space opera series that spans galaxies.

  Poker Boy, a series following the adventures of a superhero in the gambling universe.

  Bryant Street, a series of short stories about the fear of subdivisions and mundane life.

  Ghost of a Chance, a series of novels and short stories about ghosts who save the world.

  Cold Poker Gang, a series about retired detectives who solve cold cases in Las Vegas.

  Doc Hill Thrillers, a series following a professional poker player and his team as they solve crimes.

  Buffalo Jimmy, a series (with only one book so far) following a young man and his friends through the Old West.

  Earth Protection League, an sf series of stories and one novel that follow old people taken from nursing homes to save the galaxy.

  Pilgrim Hugh Incident, a series with a very rich detective who rides around in a limo and solves very strange cases very quickly.

  Golf Thrillers, a series where two Seattle detectives travel to play golf and end up solving crimes.

  Buckey the Space Pirate, a series of short stories with a guy who dresses in costumes talking with an oak tree that does limericks.

  I have a hunch I have forgotten some.

  And now, with this volume I add in one more series to that list:

  Mary Jo Assassin, a series following an ancient and deadly assassin working and living in modern America.

  If you have been following and reading all thirty issues of this magazine before this one, you are familiar with the series, and more than likely have favorites.

  In this volume, I have also included a Poker Boy story, a Pilgrim Hugh story, a Cold Poker Gang story that kicked off another novel, and a Bryant Street story.

  I hope Mary Jo becomes a favorite after this issue. I do plan on writing more stories in her world. After all, following an assassin can be a lot of fun.

  Just don’t try to outsmart her.

  Thanks for reading.

  —Dean Wesley Smith

  Lincoln City, Oregon

  April 15th, 2016

  Poker Boy often solves problems and saves the world with his mutant talent of asking stupid questions.

  Sometimes really stupid questions.

  So when he asks the seemingly simple question over lunch one day about how the gods originated, he stirs up more than even Poker Boy bargains for.

  So how did the gods originate way back before Atlantis? Might be better to just not ask. Too late for Poker Boy. He asked.

  GODS HAVE HISTORY

  A Poker Boy Story

  ONE

  I had learned a long time ago for me, meaning about five years or so, that there was no such thing as perfect answers.

  Every answer I seemed to get over the years to my often-stupid questions seemed to have more than one answer. Or worse yet, the answer was shaded in “it depends” which is a color that seems to be more like a cloud of mist.

  Today, the question I had asked of Patty and Stan seemed to be getting a combination of “it depends” and more than one answer.

  A double whammy.

  Patty Ledgerwood, aka Front Desk Girl worked as a superhero in the hotel and lodging part of the world. Stan, my direct boss, was the God of Poker. As Poker Boy, a superhero, I worked for him and made my living playing poker when not running around saving people or the entire planet.

  But even though Stan was my boss, basically I ran the team and he was part of the team. It was a complicated relationship, but we both seemed to be just fine with it. I knew he was the boss, he understood I was, at times, so new to this business of gods and superheroes, that I had no idea what was happening.

  I was just good at questions that seemed to poke others into action and thus save the world from whatever evil was threatening it at the moment.

  Patty and Stan and I were sitting in the big diner booth in the center of my invisible floating office over Las Vegas. Besides a few chairs, the booth was the only furniture in the big square glass room. The booth looked like I had lifted it from a 1950s diner.

  The walls of my office were perfectly clear and I had put a wood railing about belt high all the way around the room so I didn’t feel like I might fall off the floor at any moment.

  Patty, who had her long brown hair pulled back and was wearing a wonderful white blouse and jeans instead of her normal MGM Grand front desk uniform, sat beside me. She had brown eyes that could hold me frozen it seemed and her touch actually could calm me. That was one of her many superpowers.

  She had a day off and after lunch we were planning on jumping to our new home that was being built in the Oregon Coastal Range to see how things were moving along. And then we planned on having a nice dinner in Portland at a restaurant we both loved there before jumping back here for a movie and other activities that often happened on date night.

  Stan had on a button-down gray sweater, gray slacks, and loafers. His hair was cut short and he was the most forgettable-looking person I had ever met. He took the “not be noticed” approach to poker while I had always taken the more flamboyant approach by wearing a black fedora-like hat and a black leather coat all the time.

  I considered that coat and hat my superhero costume. Not sure if it actually helped me, but it sure felt like it did at times. And besides, I liked it.

  The question I had asked had been simple, or so I thought. “When did the gods actually start. And how?”

  I was really tired of always being surprised by my lack of knowledge of the thousands of gods and more thousands of other superheroes that roamed the planet taking care of every tiny niche of human life. In fact, right now we were waiting for milkshakes and burgers to be brought to us by Madge, who owned a real diner in downtown Vegas where my team used to meet before we got this office. Madge was a superhero in the food service area.

  Also, it seemed that at five years, I was one of the youngest of all superheroes working. I had been an orphan growing up, so I had no idea who birthed a superhero kid. Not a clue.

  Superheroes basically stopped aging in their late twenties and could live forever, from what I understand. I had no idea how old exactly Patty was, but I know it was hundreds and hundreds of years older than me.

  I would like to say that being in l
ove with an older woman didn’t bother me, and most of the time it didn’t. But every so often she would reveal a part of her past from hundreds of years earlier and I would feel pretty darned inadequate.

  I usually got over it quickly when she kissed me. More than likely another one of her superpowers. I didn’t mind at all.

  So my question about the origin of the gods had been with the idea that Patty and Stan could help me start to fill in some knowledge gaps.

  But Stan had just laughed and said, “Not really sure, to be honest.”

  Stan was a master at avoiding a direct answer and that felt like a real avoidance. I knew Stan had been alive in the Atlantis days. We had even rescued his two missing daughters from that time. So he had to have had some idea.

  Patty had smiled at me. “Why would that matter?”

  “So you know?” I asked her.

  “I honestly don’t,” she said.

  Stan shrugged.

  At that point, Madge came up carrying a cheeseburger basket with fries for Stan and one for me and Patty to split.

  She also had a vanilla milkshake for Stan and one for me and Patty. The milkshakes were so huge and rich and wonderful that Patty and I were lucky to even get through half of one each.

  Stan always managed to finish one of his own.

  The cheeseburger and fries smelled wonderful and Patty grabbed the salt shaker to salt the fries.

  “Madge,” I said, “Do you know the origin of the gods and superheroes? About when they started and how?”

  She laughed. “Do I look that old to you?”

  “Don’t answer that,” Patty said to me, laughing.

  “Just thought I would try to learn a little history today is all,” I said, raising my hands in surrender.

  “I honestly have no idea,” Madge said, laughing, as she vanished into the portal leading back down to her diner.

  Now I was really puzzled. I glanced at Stan. “Do you think Ben could join us for lunch?”

  “You’re not going to let this go, are you?” Stan asked, staring at me to try to get a read on me.

  “Do I ever let anything go?” I asked.

  Both he and Patty laughed and then he vanished.

  I turned to Patty as she started to pick up her half of the cheeseburger. “You honestly don’t know?”

  “I don’t,” she said. “Honestly, until you asked the question, never thought about it.”

  She bit into her half of the cheeseburger as my warning bells in the back of my head started to go off.

  Patty didn’t know.

  Stan didn’t know or wouldn’t say.

  Madge didn’t know.

  I had a hunch that I had just stuck my finger into a large hornet’s nest and didn’t even know it.

  Typical for me and my stupid questions.

  Just damn typical.

  TWO

  Stan appeared about one minute later with Ben, the oldest superhero I had ever met, at least in looks.

  Ben looked like a college professor, with bifocal glasses and a tweed jacket and vest that he seemed to always wear. He had been the god of lamplighters, but Stan and I had found him one day, almost faded completely away and got him to move to be a god in the books and library area. That had perked him back up and he was happy.

  It seems that for centuries and centuries, he read everything he could, including the entire library of Alexandria, which was now part of the Library of Atlantis. And he remembered everything he had read.

  So he had become the historian of my team, the person we turned to when information from the past might save our lives. Amazing how often it did.

  “Stan tells me you are trying to learn some history,” Ben said, sliding into the booth next to Stan. “As I have offered in the past, I am always willing to help.”

  “I appreciate that,” I said, wiping my mouth of any stray ketchup from the burger. “My question seemed simple, but turns out it’s not. Basically I was curious as to how the gods and superheroes started. And how we became immortal and all that.”

  Patty and Stan and I all watched Ben as his face went white.

  Now some major alarm bells were going off in my head. I had really stumbled into it now.

  Stan glanced at me, raised an eyebrow. He was surprised as well and more than likely feeling the same worry.

  Damn, it had been a nice lunch and I had gone and ruined it by my stupid questions.

  Ben took a deep breath and turned to Stan. “I think we need to talk with Laverne.”

  Now both of Stan’s eyebrows went up and he nodded, put down the fry he had been about to eat and the two of them vanished.

  Laverne was the most powerful god working right now. She was Lady Luck herself. The more I learned about her, the more powerful I understood she actually was.

  “Got any idea what I just caused?” I asked Patty.

  She just shook her head. “Maybe there’s a reason I didn’t know the answer to your question.”

  “My little voice is telling me it’s not a good reason,” I said.

  “It’s not a bad reason either,” Laverne said as she and Stan and Ben appeared.

  Ben and Stan slid back into the booth and Laverne pulled up a chair at the end of the booth and took one of Stan’s fries.

  Laverne had on a gray silk suit with a blue blouse under it. She had her long hair pulled back and tied off, making her classic beauty look stark and very powerful.

  “I have put a shield around this office so that no one, and I mean no one, can hear what I am about to tell you four.”

  Suddenly I wished I had not taken as many bites of the cheeseburger as I had.

  “Ben knows this,” Laverne said, “and since I trust you three with the world’s life at times, I figured I can trust you with this bit of history.”

  I nodded thanks.

  “So you want to know where and how the gods and superheroes started?” Laverne asked, turning to face me.

  “It seemed like a simple question,” I said. “Appears it is not.”

  “Our official history is, of course, fairly well known,” Laverne said. “We fought on the side of the elves and the dwarves to defeat the Titans, who were trying to control and dominate the world.”

  I nodded. “So most of the textbook stuff has truth in it?”

  “It does,” Laverne said. “We did not expect to be worshipped after the win and didn’t much like it, to be honest, which is why we quickly went underground and our history became myths, including the god and superhero parts.”

  I nodded at that. That much I understood. They were all called gods, but no god I had ever met actually acted like one. They just all had powers.

  “So we evolved on the planet before that?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “No race that now lives on this planet originated here.”

  I started to open my mouth and then what she had said sunk in and I shut it.

  “Even the Silicon Suckers at one point in the far distant past came here from other worlds in this galaxy,” Ben said. “The Titans did as well. So did dwarves and elves, and humans and gods. The war with the Titans did not start on this planet and did not end here either.”

  “Is it over?” Patty asked.

  “For the moment,” Laverne said.

  Oh, great, just great.

  Stan had lost his entire poker face and was just staring at Laverne. Ben was watching Laverne, taking his lead from her, clearly.

  Beside me, Patty was breathing in a slow, shallow fashion, clearly upset.

  “So we are all aliens?” I asked.

  “Not after forty thousand years here on the planet,” Laverne said, laughing. “I think we can all be called locals just fine. Just as the Silicon Suckers and the dwarves and elves are.”

  “Oh,” was all I could think to say.

  And honestly, that felt intelligent to me at that moment.

  THREE

  Laverne looked at all four of us and smiled. “Hard to imagine, isn’t it?”

&nb
sp; “Very,” Patty said.

  Imagining was the least of my issues at the moment. I just wanted to get my brain working to even have a thought that made sense.

  “There is something I need to show you all,” Laverne said.

  A moment later I found myself standing next to Patty in a dark space that smelled faintly of cleaner.

  The lights came up slowly until the massive space was bright with light. What was around me made no sense at all to my poor poker brain. There were a good fifty chairs at what looked to be some sort of futuristic computer station.

  All the stations were coming to life as well, showing readings in a language that looked like something from Egypt to me.

  The gigantic room had a high, domed ceiling and was layered in half circles all facing a massive front wall that was blank. Most of the panels and chairs were around the walls on the top half circle.

  There was a secondary circle of stations on a slightly lower level and then down in the center was a station with four chairs. Two big ones sort of melded together and one on each side of the big one.

  Everything seemed to be focused on the massive blank wall that filled a third of the room in front of the lower level.

  It looked like a control room for a massive power station or something.

  “This is the bridge of our ship, Olympus,” Laverne said.

  Ship! What kind of ship?

  Again my poor brain was going back into lockdown. For being a hero who had helped save the world a bunch of times, I was sure having trouble today just keeping it together.

  “Welcome back,” Chairman,” a soft, female computer voice said. “Welcome Commander.”

  The huge screen in front of the massive room came alive, but it showed nothing but a faint light.

  “It is good to be back,” Laverne said.

  “Agreed,” Ben said.

  Laverne was called Chairman and Ben had been a commander. Confused didn’t even begin to describe how I was feeling. Numb seemed to be closer to accurate.