Smoke That Doesn't Bark: A Poker Boy Story Read online

  The Smoke came back around the table and sat down again as we all tried to piece the thing we had seen in fast motion from the Bookkeeper’s mind.

  “He seemed to only be working with probability equations,” Screamer said.

  Patty nodded.

  “So what in the world made him even start on those equations?” I asked. “A person like the Bookkeeper just doesn’t come up with all dogs dying out of the blue.”

  We all sat in silence trying to dig back through the wave of information we had all gotten from the connection with the Bookkeeper’s mind. It was like trying to sort through a library of information. The closer you looked, if in the wrong spot, the deeper you got into the wrong details.

  Like rewinding a DVD, I ran back over the Bookkeeper working on the problem until the moment he first sat down at a computer with the idea. Then I slowed down what I was seeing, still in reverse, until I finally got to the trigger point.

  “Oh, no,” The Smoke said softly.

  He must have gotten to the same point I had managed to get to in the information in our minds.

  “How is that possible?” I asked The Smoke.

  “What possible?” Patty and Screamer asked at the same moment.

  “Please,” Patty said. “I don’t want to play around in that guy’s mind anymore than I have to.”

  “Basically,” I said, glancing at The Smoke, “At noon today all dogs are going to become human. Sort of.”

  He nodded. “That’s what it looks like.”

  Before I could ask him the dozen questions I had for him, Marge said, “What’s that smell?”

  She was waving her hand in front of her face while carrying a tray of milkshakes with the other.

  “Sorry,” I said. “A little perfume bottle accident.”

  She half-dropped the milkshakes and tray on our table. “Smells more like a perfume factory disaster,” she said, heading for the door at full speed. She opened it and blocked it open, then headed for the back room. “Got to get a cross-breeze in here.”

  I glanced at the milkshake in front of me, but had no desire to drink it at the moment. Not only would it just taste like purple lilacs, but with what we had discovered by putting all the pieces together, the Bookkeeper was going to win his bets.

  “Is it possible for a dog to become human?” Screamer asked. “Isn’t that something like being a werewolf?”

  “Wolves become human, yes,” The Smoke said. “I am a werewolf, actually.”

  I was so startled, I just opened my mouth and then closed it again with no words coming out.

  Patty just stared at him.

  “Full moon stuff and all?” Screamer asked.

  The Smoke, smiled, sort of, without showing his teeth. “No, I can turn at will and have complete control over both forms.”

  “So is that what’s going to happen to all the dogs?” Patty asked. “Are they suddenly going to have your power?”

  The Smoke shook his head sadly. “I was a human first before my power came about. Dogs have much smaller brains and would not understand their new form or how to live as humans. They would still have the minds and actions of dogs.”

  “This is a disaster,” Screamer said. “Millions of new humans are suddenly going to appear. Humans that need help and can’t take care of themselves as humans. This is going to crash our entire economy.”

  “So what’s causing this?” Patty asked. “Or who? And why?”

  “Back to what triggered the Bookkeeper to figure it out,” Screamer said.

  “No one is causing this. We have no villains,” I said and The Smoke nodded.

  “Radiation spike,” I said. I could see clearly how the Bookkeeper had read a study on a coming short, intense burst of radiation from a radiation cloud in space that the Earth would pass through. The focus of the hit would be the North American continent and it would only last for a fraction of a second exactly at noon Vegas time. Scientists believed it would be harmless and were just planning on studying the coming burst. But when the Bookkeeper learned of the exact frequency of the burst, he started to work the probability equations.

  The Smoke just nodded. “The Bookkeeper somehow knew a very closely guarded secret among the animal gods on how to turn an animal human.”

  “Are more than just dogs going to be changed?” Screamer said. “I’m having a hard time imaging mouse-sized humans running around.”

  “Luckily, no,” The Smoke said. “If the Bookkeeper is correct on the information he has on the frequency and duration of the burst, it will be only dogs. All dogs.”

  “So what are we going to do?” Patty asked.

  I knew exactly what needed to be done. I didn’t think it was possible, but I sure hoped it would be.

  “We’re going to call in the big guns,” I said, smiling, remembering what had happened outside of the Bookkeeper’s home when it blew up.

  “Big Guns?” Screamer asked, looking at me with puzzlement.

  I turned to The Smoke. “What level are you over in your world of deities?”

  “I’m a superhero like you three,” he said. “I can change my shape at will into a dozen different animals, pass through walls like a ghost, and hear and smell things from a great distance.”

  “And your bosses?” I asked. “What can they do?”

  The Smoke made a poor imitation of a shrug in his expensive suit. “I do not know. They are gods, they can do about anything as far as I know.”

  “And they are working on this as well?” I asked.

  “They are,” he said.

  I nodded, then turned to Patty and Screamer. “Seems we need a God Summit to fix this problem.”

  “A what?” Screamer asked.

  Patty just laughed. “You’re not thinking what I think you are thinking, are you?”

  I smiled. “I am.” Then I turned and shouted into the lilac-smelling air, “Stan!”

  # # #

  One hour later the four of us with Stan were standing in front of Lady Luck’s huge oak desk. As best as I could tell from the faint light starting to fill the winter sky over Vegas, her office was floating a few thousand feet in the air. It looked like any other corporate president’s office except for the large pair of white dice sitting on the corner of her desk, and the fact that the windows were on all four sides of the room and there was no building under us.

  Lady Luck was dressed in a business power-suit of dark silk, with a white blouse under the vest. Today her hair was brown and pulled back tightly, giving her a serious look that would scare just about anyone, since her features were classic Greek with the sharp, pointed nose and high cheekbones.

  I hated standing or even being around Lady Luck. As a professional poker player, if she got mad at me I could go on a very long and very dry spell of bad cards. Sure, poker was a game of skill, but without a little luck at times, losing would happen much more often.

  I had just gotten finished explaining to her what we had found and my suggestion to stop the problem. She was just staring at me with the best poker face I had ever seen.

  I just stared back, keeping my poker face in complete control as well.

  “This will take a lot of power to cover the entire continent with a shield like you are suggesting,” Laverne said. “I do not have that much power. In fact, all of the Gods under my control don’t have that kind of power, even for the fraction of a second it will need to be in place.”

  “I was afraid of that,” I said. “But if you combined forces with the animal gods and some of the others, as many others as would be possible, then there might be enough. Right?”

  I honestly had no idea if I was correct or not, but I sure hoped I was. Otherwise the world was in for a very tough time with millions of more humans showing up suddenly, all in need of care just as dogs had needed.

  I couldn’t even imagine just the toilet training issues alone.

  She stared at me and then laughed. Having Lady Luck herself laugh at you is not something I had ever imagined happeni
ng. Her laugh was sharp and high and it cut.

  “You are suggesting something that has never been done before,” she said. “All the gods working together. We’ve never even been in the same time zone or area of the planet at the same time before, let alone work together on anything.”

  I nodded and said nothing.

  Lady Luck walked to the window of her office and stared down at the lights of the Strip below. Then she said “Burt!”

  The round, red-faced God of Casino operations and second in command of all the gambling universe under Laverne appeared beside Stan and close to Laverne.

  “What do you think of what Poker Boy and his crew are suggesting?” Laverne asked Burt.

  “We might get enough of the Gods to help if we called in a few chits and asked for a few favors,” Burt said. He turned to The Smoke. “What about your bosses?”

  “I have already conferred with them and they will follow whatever decision Laverne makes on this. Only a few of them have the power of the shield that will be needed, but they will add what they can.”

  I didn’t say anything, but it was just another example of how Laverne had grown in power over the centuries to become one of the most powerful gods of them all. She only answered to the Fates, and I doubted she even talked to them much these days.

  She nodded. “The gods that will help will meet back here in one hour. We have a lot of invitations to send out and little time to do it.”

  Laverne then nodded to me. “Be prepared to state your case in one hour.”

  I was about to ask just what she meant by that when the four of us found ourselves back at our normal booth in The Diner.

  The front door was still open and the place smelled much better. None of us had eaten our milkshakes or The Smoke hadn’t even gotten his hamburger when we had vanished from the place an hour before. We had left Madge more than enough money to cover everything before Stan jumped us away to Laverne’s office.

  “The Weird Bunch is back again,” Madge said, coming out from the back room. “What would you like to order this time that you won’t eat?”

  I was too stunned at what Laverne had said before we jumped back here to even order, so Patty had Madge bring me a vanilla milkshake again. I doubted I would drink it.

  What did Lady Luck mean that I needed to be prepared to state my case? After I sat for a moment with that question going over and over through my mind, I turned to Patty.

  “What did Laverne mean by me stating the case?”

  Patty smiled, but it was the smile I had seen her use on me a number of times when she was humoring me.

  Screamer laughed an uneasy laugh. “Laverne is going to pull in as many Gods from around the planet as she can and have you explain to them what everyone needs to do.”

  I opened my mouth, then shut it. I had enough trouble talking to just Stan and Laverne and Burt. How in the world was I going to talk to dozens of different gods all at once? And with so much at stake?

  I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t. Very shortly the average IQ of the human race was going to drop dramatically.

  # # #

  After a half hour of talking with my friends, I was starting to calm down. Finally, with Patty’s hand resting on my arm to give me strength, I started to focus on the real problem. If I could get past the stage fright, I had to have an exact plan.

  I sipped my vanilla milkshake and then turned to The Smoke. “Do you have the exact frequency needed to change dogs into humans?”

  “I do,” he said.

  “So, are there other frequencies of radiation we need to worry about that change other animals into humans or frogs into cats or things like that?”

  He nodded. “There are a few. But the frequency that is due to hit here is exact, and harmless for the most part except for this problem we are facing. All we have to do is block it exactly and we will be fine.”

  “Better,” I said. I turned to the air and shouted “Stan!”

  A moment later the restaurant froze with Madge behind the cash register ringing up the money we had giver her for our current batch of food and drinks.

  “Need a little help,” I said to the Poker God now pulling up a chair on the end of the booth. “When you and Burt stopped that explosion at the Bookkeeper’s house from spreading anywhere but upward, what kind of field was that? And how did you generate it?”

  “You all have one form or another of the same power,” Stan said. He looked directly at me. “When you take people out of time, as I have done here now, you simply imagine them slipping between the molecules, right?”

  I had to admit he was right. I did it that way. I nodded.

  Stan turned to Patty. “When you are working with an upset customer, how do you calm them?”

  She nodded. “I change some hormone molecules in their minds to a calming substance that makes them feel good and happy.”

  Stan turned to The Smoke, who was already nodding. “When I go through walls, I simply imagine the molecules very wide apart so that I can slip through them, like turning the structure of the wall into a gas for an instant.”

  “Exactly,” Stan said, turning back to face me. “All Burt and I did was harden the air around the explosion so nothing could get through for the brief moment of the explosion.”

  “And that’s exactly what we need to do,” I said, “for the few seconds the radiation is hitting North America. We need to harden the air enough to block an exact frequency.”

  “It will work,” Stan said. “If we have enough power to generate the hardening field for long enough and at the right time.”

  “So how many Gods are coming to help?” I asked.

  Stan stared up at the ceiling for a moment, clearly somewhere else, then said, “Six hundred and twelve.”

  “There are six hundred and twelve gods?” Screamer asked as I sat back, stunned.

  Stan smiled. “Oh, there are more than that. But only six hundred and twelve have accepted Laverne’s invitation to help.”

  “How in the world is she going to coordinate all of them?” Screamer asked.

  “She’s not,” I said, closing my eyes and trying not to panic. “That’s what she wants us to do.”

  “I’m afraid so,” Stan said. “I’ll be back in a half hour. She’s got a mess with the seating chart that needs all of us working on it. Us Gods, you know, have egos.”

  Suddenly the noise of the café and the street outside flooded back in and all I could do was lean back in the booth and try not to panic.

  Unsuccessfully.

  # # #

  After about five minutes, with Patty’s gentle touch on my arm, I was calm enough again to work on the problem.

  We all four talked for a few minutes, then Screamer said exactly the conclusion I had been coming to. “There’s just no way to get over six hundred gods with different levels of powers to cover everywhere completely.”

  I nodded. “To do that would take years of math and someone like the Bookkeeper to figure it out, and that’s if we knew exactly the level of every God’s powers. And we don’t and never will.”

  “So how do we do this?” Patty asked. “Are we going to be happy with saving only some dogs and not all?”

  I hated that thought. I hated it every time I couldn’t save a single dog.

  “No,” I said, “we need all the power to go through one source and out over the entire continent, to form a complete dome of hardened air for a second or two.”

  “And who’s going to do that?” The Smoke said.

  “We are,” I said. “All four of us together, linked.”

  Screamer opened his mouth, then shut it again. Patty just shook her head slowly. The Smoke seemed frozen.

  But for the first time in a couple of hours I was starting to feel more confident.

  “With the four of us linked, The Smoke can form the dome and make sure we are blocking the right frequency, Screamer can hold us together and add energy, and Patty and I can control and funnel the energy to the shield that T
he Smoke forms.”

  “That’s going to be a lot of power,” Screamer said.

  “I don’t think we’ll survive it,” Patty said. “We’re not gods.”

  “And that’s why we can do it,” I said. “We’re the workers, the superheroes who get our hands dirty every day saving lives. We don’t need to touch the power, just like a fireman with a powerful hose of water doesn’t touch the water. We just aim it.”

  “I hope you’re right, Poker Boy,” The Smoke said.

  “If I’m not,” I said, “we’ll be dead and a lot of dogs will be human.”

  I glanced at the clock on the wall. “We only have a few minutes. We need to practice this a few times.”

  Screamer nodded for The Smoke to touch his shoulder and then reached for Patty and my hands.

  It took us a moment, but then we each settled into our spots in the bigger mind we had created with Screamer’s connection.

  I thought directly at The Smoke that he should imagine hardening the air over the booth next to ours in a way that would only block a certain frequency.

  He did, and then Patty and I formed an imaginary hose and connected it to the shield to power it. We ran through it twice, then Screamer let us go.

  “I want to practice that with Stan feeding us some light energy just before we go.”

  Everyone nodded, so once again I called for Stan.

  “Almost time,” he said as he appeared at the same moment as taking us out of time.

  “One quick practice session,” I said. I quickly explained what we were doing. Stan nodded. “Might just work.”

  For Stan that was as encouraging as he ever got.

  Screamer linked the four of us up and we could hear Stan ask, “Ready?”

  “Ready,” we said as one out of four mouths.

  He started a slight flow of energy toward us and Patty and I captured it easily into the mouth of the imaginary hose we had formed in our minds and sent it directly to the shield.

  Expand the shield, I thought to The Smoke, so that it covers as much as you can with the energy coming to you.